NASA Dawn Asteroid Mission Told to "Stand Back Up", Reinstated! |
NASA Dawn Asteroid Mission Told to "Stand Back Up", Reinstated! |
Mar 28 2006, 07:58 AM
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Senior Member Group: Members Posts: 3419 Joined: 9-February 04 From: Minneapolis, MN, USA Member No.: 15 |
Just 'cause I said I would...
Hopefully, though, this whole episode has made its point -- NASA isn't afraid to tell overbudget missions to stand down. I just *really* wish we could get the magnetometer back on the beastie, though... -the other Doug -------------------- “The trouble ain't that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain't distributed right.” -Mark Twain
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Guest_BruceMoomaw_* |
Mar 30 2006, 06:31 PM
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Guests |
One of the major mysteries of the belt is how Vesta -- which is pretty obviously one of the originally differentiated protoplanets in the Belt -- could have survived almost intact while almost everything else in the Belt was smashed into very small pieces by collisions. There was a recent piece of work by (I believe) Erik Asphaug proposing a time history of the Belt, and of the statistical distribution of different-sized fragments within it, that could explain how this happened. I'll track it down. (There is also Eric Nimmo's recent theory that Vesta may actually be a protoplanet from the inner-planet zone that wandered out into the Belt later on.)
Two other notes: (1) The "EVE" mission Russell's team is proposing as a follow-up of Dawn would look at Hygeia -- which may be the biggest of the D-type asteroids -- and Psyche or some other M-type. This really WOULD allow us to complete our initial survey of the Belt. (2) Even among the M types, however, there is currently a knock-down fight as to whether they really are all metallic. Some of them show signs of hydration, which implies that we may have wildly misinterpreted what they're made of -- they may be made not of nickel-iron, but of relatively low-temperature hydrated minerals. Others, however, DO seem from their near-IR spectra and radar reflectivity to be metallic. |
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