Asteroid Grand Tour |
Asteroid Grand Tour |
Apr 7 2007, 01:31 AM
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Merciless Robot Group: Admin Posts: 8784 Joined: 8-December 05 From: Los Angeles Member No.: 602 |
This article from JPL describes recent efforts to derive a main belt multi-asteroid mission trajectory...any of you orbitsmiths out there have some early thoughts/observations?
-------------------- A few will take this knowledge and use this power of a dream realized as a force for change, an impetus for further discovery to make less ancient dreams real.
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Jan 7 2017, 06:33 PM
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Solar System Cartographer Group: Members Posts: 10184 Joined: 5-April 05 From: Canada Member No.: 227 |
"roughly 2,200 asteroids within .1 au."
"That's an average of 2.4 close approaches per day." It's a nice idea... but 0.1 AU is 15 million km, so most of these are not exactly close approaches in the sense we think of them with typical flybys. You could do great survey work and really expand the phase angle photometry, but you would probably have to work hard to get more than a handful of close approaches. Phil -------------------- ... because the Solar System ain't gonna map itself.
Also to be found posting similar content on https://mastodon.social/@PhilStooke Maps for download (free PD: https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/comm...Cartography.pdf NOTE: everything created by me which I post on UMSF is considered to be in the public domain (NOT CC, public domain) |
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Jan 7 2017, 07:32 PM
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#3
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Member Group: Members Posts: 684 Joined: 24-July 15 Member No.: 7619 |
"roughly 2,200 asteroids within .1 au." "That's an average of 2.4 close approaches per day." It's a nice idea... but 0.1 AU is 15 million km, so most of these are not exactly close approaches in the sense we think of them with typical flybys. You could do great survey work and really expand the phase angle photometry, but you would probably have to work hard to get more than a handful of close approaches. Phil Yep, I typed and retyped "close" versus "closest"... but "close enough for spectra and phase curves" is what you'd get. (edit) Hmm, quick fact check- visibility at .5AU. New Horizons got usable data from two ~100-150 km KBOs at .5 & 1.8AU distance, in really low light. Illumination comparison would be asteroids at ~3 au versus KBOs ~40AU, is square of distance so 40AU^2 = 1600 while 3AU^2 ~10, so asteroids get about 160 times the illumination that KBOs do. KBOs visibility ¶x 150km^2 = 1 illumination unit x .5AU distance Asteroid visibilty ¶x 12km^2 = 160 illumination units x .5AU distance So, New Horizon's camera in the asteroid belt could get light curves from 12km objects at .5AU? Then, eh 5.3km objects within .1AU? |
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