CE-2 flyby of Toutatis |
CE-2 flyby of Toutatis |
Aug 25 2012, 04:27 PM
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#1
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 1729 Joined: 3-August 06 From: 43° 35' 53" N 1° 26' 35" E Member No.: 1004 |
I thought it was time to split the subject from the Moon forum.
Admins, can you move the relevant messages here? anyway, just out: an interesting blog article by Bill Gray explaining how he recovered the probe and how he computed the orbit yielding the 13 December flyby date Chang'e 2: The Full Story |
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Dec 15 2012, 02:58 AM
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#2
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Administrator Group: Admin Posts: 5172 Joined: 4-August 05 From: Pasadena, CA, USA, Earth Member No.: 454 |
Beginning to look at the image and try some early (read: arm-waving) interpretation. Some things I notice: there are boulders that remind me of Itokawa. But they're sparse; it's substantially smoother than Itokawa. So I'd interpret that to mean it is mostly covered in a regolith. I also see circular depressions of a wide variety of sizes, the sort of thing one would tend to interpret as impact craters. Some have sharper edges than others. Of course, you have to be cautious; smaller ones especially might be collapse pits. I'm intrigued by the apparent roughness of the larger end. Again, though, I need to be careful; its apparent roughness could be due to lighting geometry. It's a pretty low-phase-angle image. Overall, it seems faceted. A slope map of this thing would be fascinating.
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