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_* |
Apr 1 2006, 12:16 AM
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Guests |
Oh, yes. Might be worth doing anyway, though, if you can't get element measurements even during regular slower prograde flybys. By contrast, near-IR mineral spectrometers (along with cameras) could probably get good mineralogical data even during such a high speed flyby, and as John says you might get a much larger number of them during the probe's operating lifetime.
Perhaps the most important question is the extent to which near-Earth asteroids (which are so much more easily accessible and samplable) provide an adequate sample of the different types of Main Belt asteroids. They seem to be diverted from the Main Belt into the inner System only when they wander into one of the narrow zones in which Jovian gravitational resonances divert them inward -- but the Yarkovsky Effect seems to have moved a substantial number of the smaller asteroids (and their meteoric fragments) inward or outward from their original orbits over the Solar System's lifetime, and so has presumably provided these "escape hatches" from the Belt with a hefty shovelful of asteroid samples from all sorts of different zones in the Main Belt. There is apparently still some debate over just how well Yarkovsky works, though -- and it does not work on significantly larger asteroids. |
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