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Mars Base

NASA to Reveal Vesta Discoveries by Dawn Asteroid Probe | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/discoveries-nasa-thursday.html

scibyte46 Asteroid Vesta dawn

shared by Mars Base on 09 May 12 - No Cached
  • NASA will showcase the latest discoveries from an asteroid probe orbiting the huge space rock Vesta on Thursday (May 10) in a press conference for reporters and the general public.
  • will present a new analysis of Vesta based on the latest observations from NASA's Dawn spacecraft
  • Dawn spacecraft launched in 2007 on a mission to visit two huge space rocks in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • Dawn arrived in orbit around Vesta in July 2011
  • Vesta is the brightest asteroid in the solar system and second most massive object in the asteroid belt
  • Last month, NASA extended Dawn's stay at Vesta by an extra 40 days to give the spacecraft more time to study the asteroid
  • spacecraft has revealed that many new details about Vesta
  • it is rich in iron and magnesium
  • experiences chilly temperatures that range from minus 10 degrees Fahrenheit (minus 23 degrees Celsius) in the sunlight, to minus150 degrees F (minus 100 degrees C) in shadowed areas.
  • Scientists think Vesta is a 4.5 billion-year-old relic left over from the formation of the solar system
  • In August the probe will move on to the Texas-size Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt and a space rock so large it is considered a dwarf planet.
  • expected to arrive at Ceres in February 2015
Mars Base

Asteroid's troughs suggest stunted planet - 0 views

phys.org/...id-troughs-stunted-planet.html

scibyte65 Vesta

shared by Mars Base on 27 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • Scientists have been trying to determine the origin of these unusual troughs since their discovery just last year
  • new analysis supports the notion that the troughs are faults that formed when a fellow asteroid smacked into Vesta's south pole. The research reinforces the claim that Vesta has a layered interior, a quality normally reserved for larger bodies, such as planets and large moons.
  • ggest of those troughs, named Divalia Fossa, surpasses the size of the Grand Canyon by spanning 465 kilometers (289 miles) long, 22 km (13.6 mi) wide and 5 km (3 mi) deep
  • ...20 more annotations...
  • The complexity of their formation can't be explained by simple collisions
  • New measurements
  • taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft last year
  • indicate that a large collision could have created the asteroid's troughs
  • would only have been possible if the asteroid is differentiated – meaning that it has a core, mantle and crust
  • By saying it's differentiated, we're basically saying Vesta was a little planet trying to happen
  • previous research has found signs of igneous rock on Vesta, indicating that rock on Vesta's surface was once molten, a sign of differentiation
  • If the troughs are made possible by differentiation, then the cracks aren't just troughs, they're graben
  • graben is a dip in the surface that forms when two faults move apart from each other and the ground sinks into the widening gap
  • Vesta's troughs have many of the qualities of graben
  • observations indicate that Vesta is also unusually planet-like for an asteroid in that its mantle is ductile and can stretch under a lot of pressure
  • not yet fully convinced that Vesta's troughs are graben
  • There are other qualities of Vesta that could be clues to how the troughs formed
  • unlike the larger asteroid Ceres, Vesta is not classified as a dwarf planet because the large collision at its south pole knocked it out of its spherical shape
  • if Vesta has a mantle and core, that would mean it has qualities often reserved for planets, dwarf planets and moons—regardless of its shape
  • believes the south pole collision knocked Vesta into its current speedy rate of rotation about its axis of about once per 5.35 hours
  • may have caused the equator to bulge outward so far and so fast that the rotation caused the troughs, rather than the direct power of the impact
  • enigma why Vesta rotates so quickly
  • Dawn has already left to explore Ceres, so all the data it will retrieve on Vesta is in hand
  • scientists will continue to sort that data out and improve on computer simulations of Vesta's interior
Mars Base

Photos of Asteroid Vesta Reveal Bright Surprises | Dawn Spacecraft | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/-vesta-surprising-surface.html

scibyte39 Vesta MarMedia

shared by Mars Base on 21 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • amazing new photos
  • reveal strange features never-before-seen on an asteroid
  • Dawn spacecraft highlight odd, shiny spots that are nearly twice as bright as other parts of the asteroid
  • ...9 more annotations...
  • suggesting it is original material left over from the space rock's birth 4 billion years ago
  • Vesta is one of the largest and brightest objects in the main asteroid belt
  • bright material originates from Vesta and has undergone little change since the formation of Vesta over 4 billion years ago
  • photos show surprisingly bright spots all over Vesta
  • bright areas range from large spots (around several hundred feet across) to simply huge, with some stretching across 10 miles (16 kilometers) of terrain
  • [Video: Vesta — Asteroid or Dwarf Planet?]
  • Astronomers have known about variations in Vesta's brightness for some time
  • Photos taken by the Hubble Space Telescope before Dawn arrived at the asteroid also revealed the bright patches.
  • scientists suspect the bright patches on Vesta were exposed during violent collisions with other space rocks
Mars Base

Dawn Finds Asteroid Vesta is Rich in Hydrogen - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...roid-vesta-is-rich-in-hydrogen

scibyte64 dawn

shared by Mars Base on 21 Sep 12 - No Cached
  • The giant asteroid Vesta appears to have
  • hydrogen
  • Dawn spacecraft reveals hydrated minerals in a wide area around Vesta’s equator
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  • Dawn did not find actual water ice, there are signs of hydrated minerals such as hydroxyl
  • source of the hydrogen within Vesta’s surface appears to be hydrated minerals delivered by carbon-rich space rocks that collided with Vesta at speeds slow enough to preserve their volatile content
  • pitted terrain – looking much like potholes – mark where the volatiles, perhaps both hydroxyl and water, released from hydrated minerals boiled off
  • Hydroxyl has recently been found on the Moon in permanently shadowed craters at the lunar poles
  • scientists thought there might be a chance that water ice may have
  • around the giant asteroid’s poles
  • unlike Earth’s Moon, however, Vesta has no permanently shadowed polar regions
  • strongest signature for hydrogen actually came from regions near the equator. And there, water ice is not stable
  • The holes that were left as the water escaped stretch as much as 0.6 miles (1 kilometer) across and go down as deep as 700 feet (200 meters
  • collisions converted the hydrogen bound to the minerals into water, which evaporated
  • The pits look just like features seen on Mars, but while water was common on Mars, it was totally unexpected on Vesta in these high abundances
  • ults provide evidence that not only were hydrated materials present, but they played an important role in shaping the asteroid’s geology and the surface we see today
  • the first direct measurements describing the elemental composition of Vesta’s surface
  • elemental investigation by the instrument determined the ratios of iron to oxygen and iron to silicon in the surface materials
  • new findings solidly confirm the connection between Vesta and a class of meteorites found on Earth called the Howardite, Eucrite and Diogenite meteorites
  • have the same ratios for these elements
  • n, more volatile-rich fragments of other objects have been identified in these meteor
Mars Base

Curiosity Captures First Ever Asteroid Images from Mars Surface - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...eroid-images-from-mars-surface

scibyte128 Curiosity

shared by Mars Base on 25 Apr 14 - No Cached
  • surface of the Red Planet during night sky imaging.
  • The Curiosity rover has captured the first images of asteroids even taken by a Human probe from the
  • two asteroids caught in the same night time pointing on the Red Planet. Namely, asteroids Ceres and Vesta.
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  • snapped by Curiosity’s high resolution Mastcam camera earlier this week on Sunday, April 20, 2014
  • whilst she was scanning about during daylight for her next drilling target at “The Kimberley” waypoint she pulled into at the start of this month.
  • Ceres and Vesta appear as streaks since the Mastcam image was taken as a 12 second time exposure.
  • “This imaging was part of an experiment checking the opacity of the atmosphere at night in Curiosity’s location on Mars, where water-ice clouds and hazes develop during this season,” said camera team member Mark Lemmon
  • “The two Martian moons were the main targets that night, but we chose a time when one of the moons was near Ceres and Vesta in the sky.”
  • Ceres, the largest asteroid, is about 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter. Vesta is the third-largest object in the main belt and measures about 350 miles (563 kilometers) wide.
  • the tinier of Mars’ moons, Deimos, was also caught in that same image.
  • Mars largest moon Phobos as well as massive planets Jupiter and Saturn were also visible that same Martian evening, albeit in a different pointing.
  • The two asteroids and three stars would be visible to someone of normal eyesight standing on Mars.
Mars Base

The Moon Is 100 Million Years Younger Than Thought | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/100-million-years-younger.html

scibyte104 moon

shared by Mars Base on 24 Sep 13 - No Cached
  • new research suggests.
  • The moon is
  • younger than scientists had previously believed
  • ...23 more annotations...
  • leading theory of how the moon formed 
  • it was created when a mysterious planet — one the size of Mars or larger — slammed into Earth
  • about 4.56 billion years ago, just after the solar system came together
  • new analyses of lunar rocks suggest that the moon, which likely coalesced from the debris blasted into space by this monster impact, is actually between 4.4 billion and 4.45 billion years old
  • make the moon 100 million years younger than previously thought, could reshape scientists' understanding of the early Earth
  • several important implications of this late moon formation that have not yet been worked out
  • , if the Earth was already differentiated prior to the giant impact, would the impact have blown off the primordial atmosphere that formed from this earlier epoch of Earth history
  • Scientists know the solar system's age (4.568 billion years) quite well
  • they can pin down the formation times of relatively small bodies such as asteroids precisely
  • by noting when these objects underwent extensive melting
  • a consequence,
  • of the heat generated by the collision and fusion of these objects' building-block "planetesimals."
  • analysis of meteorites that came from the asteroid Vesta and eventually rained down on Earth reveals that the 330-mile-wide (530 kilometers) space rock is 4.565 billion years old
  • Vesta cooled relatively quickly and is too small to have retained enough internal heat to drive further melting or volcanism
  • tougher to nail down the age of larger solar-system bodies
  • Earth likely took longer to grow to full size compared to a small asteroid like Vesta
  • every step in its growth tends to erase, or at least cloud, the memory of earlier events
  • Scientists keep getting better and better estimates
  • as they refine their techniques and technology improves. And those estimates are pushing the moon's formation date farther forward in time.
  • The moon is thought to have harbored a global ocean of molten rock shortly after its dramatic formation
  • Currently, the most precisely determined age for the lunar rocks that arose from that ocean is 4.360 billion years
  • here on Earth, scientists have found signs in several locations of a major melting event that occurred around 4.45 billion years ago
  • evidence is building that the catastrophic collision that formed the moon and reshaped Earth occurred around that time, rather than 100 million years or so before
Mars Base

Big Meteorite Discovered in Antarctica | Meteorites & Antarctica | Space.com - 0 views

www.space.com/eteorite-found-antarctica.html

scibyte84 meteorite

shared by Mars Base on 01 Mar 13 - No Cached
  • 40-pound (18 kilogram)
  • Initial tests show it is an ordinary chondrite, the most common type of meteorite found on Earth
  • This is the biggest meteorite found in East Antarctica for 25 years
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  • More than 38,000 meteorites have been found in Antarctica, but only 30 bigger than 40 pounds (18 kg).
  • The Russian meteor that burst into fragments above the Chelyabinsk region on Feb. 15 is also an ordinary chondrite
  • charred black crust stands out
  • in the
  • snow, and the cold, dry climate helps preserve any organic chemicals inside the rocks
  • The expedition collected 425 meteorites in 40 days, with a total weight of 165 pounds (75 kg).
  • they may have found one Mars meteorite and one piece of the asteroid Vesta among the many discoveries.
  • A team from Belgium and Japan discovered the
  • meteorite as the members drove across the East Antarctic plateau on snowmobiles
Mars Base

Runaway Planets Tossed From Galaxy at Fraction of Speed of Light | Space.com - 1 views

www.space.com/speed-planets-light-speed.html

scibyte40 exoplanet

shared by Mars Base on 24 Mar 12 - No Cached
  • Planets in tight orbits around stars that get ejected from our galaxy may actually themselves be tossed out of the Milky Way at blisteringly fast speeds of up to 30 million miles per hour, or a fraction of the speed of light, a new study finds.
  • would be some of the fastest objects in the galaxy, aside from photons
  • In terms of large, solid objects, they would be the fastest. It would take them 10 seconds or so to cross the diameter of the Earth
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  • In 2005, astronomers found evidence of a runaway star that was flying out of the Milky Way galaxy at a speed of 1.5 million mph (2.4 million kph).
  • part of a double-star system that wandered too close to the supermassive black hole
  • In the seven years since, 16 of these hypervelocity stars have been found
  • typical runaway planet would likely dash outward at 7 to 10 million mph (11.3 to 16.1 million kph), but given the right circumstances, a small fraction could have their speeds boosted to up to 30 million mph (48.3 million kph).
  • hypervelocity planets will escape the Milky Way and travel through interstellar space
  • a civilization on such a planet, they would have a very exciting journe
  • Once the planet exits from the local group of galaxies, it will be accelerated away by cosmic expansion. So, within 10 billion years, it would go from the center of the galaxy to all the way to the edge of the observable universe
  • planet that tightly orbits a runaway star will cross in front and cause its brightness to dim slightly in what astronomers call a "transit
  • To hitch a ride on a hypervelocity star, a planet would have to be locked in a tight orbit, which ups the odds of witnessing a transit to around 50 percent
  • first time someone is talking about searching for planets around hypervelocity stars
Mars Base

Swift Satellite Captures Asteroid 2005 YU55′s Tumbling Flyby - 0 views

www.universetoday.com/...roid-2005-yu55s-tumbling-flyby

scibyte21 YU55

shared by Mars Base on 11 Nov 11 - No Cached
  • The Swift Telescope – better known for its study of high-energy outbursts and cosmic explosions – was able to observe the flyby of 2005 YU55
  • Swift’s ultraviolet and X-ray capability gives scientists a unique perspective on comets and asteroids
  • This isn’t the first time Swift has made observations of passing comets and asteroids
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  • the spacecraft has observed ten asteroids, including Vesta
  • The challenge with 2005 YU55 was its rapid motion across the sky, which was much too fast for Swift to track
  • the team trained the spacecraft’s optics at two locations along the asteroid’s predicted path and let it streak through the field
  • The 27-minute-long image was effectively sliced into short 10-second-long exposures, which then were combined into a movie
  • The result is a movie of 2005 YU55 at ultraviolet wavelengths unobtainable from ground-based telescopes
  • this movie is a treasure trove of data that will help them better understand how this asteroid is put together, information that may help make predictions of its motion more secure for centuries to come
Mars Base

Telescope spies water plumes on dwarf planet Ceres - 0 views

phys.org/...spies-plumes-dwarf-planet.html

scibyte117 Asteroid Ceres

shared by Mars Base on 23 Jan 14 - No Cached
  • Scientists
  • have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.
  • Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly
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  • Ceres is classified as a dwarf planet, a solar system body bigger than an asteroid and smaller than a planet.
  • "This is the first time water vapor has been unequivocally detected on Ceres or any other object in the asteroid belt and provides proof that Ceres has an icy surface and an atmosphere,"
  • Michael Küppers of ESA in Spain
  • NASA's Dawn mission, which is on its way to Ceres now after spending more than a year orbiting the large asteroid Vesta
  • Dawn is scheduled to arrive at Ceres in the spring of 2015, where it will take the closest look ever at its surface.
  • will map the geology and chemistry of the surface in high resolution
  • International Astronomical Union, the governing organization responsible for naming planetary objects
  • Ceres was known as the largest asteroid in our solar system
  • reclassified Ceres as a dwarf planet because of its large size. It is roughly 590 miles (950 kilometers) in diameter
  • When it first was spotted in 1801, astronomers thought it was a planet orbiting between Mars and Jupiter
  • Scientists believe Ceres contains rock in its interior with a thick mantle of ice that, if melted, would amount to more fresh water than is present on all of Earth
  • The materials making up Ceres likely date from the first few million years of our solar system's existence and accumulated before the planets formed.
  • Until now, ice had been theorized to exist on Ceres but had not been detected conclusively
  • far-infrared vision to see, finally, a clear spectral signature of the water vapor. But
  • did not see water vapor every time it looked
  • spied water vapor four different times, on one occasion there was no signature.
  • what scientists think is happening
  • when Ceres swings through the part of its orbit that is closer to the sun, a portion of its icy surface becomes warm enough to cause water vapor to escape in plumes
  • a rate of about 6 kilograms (13 pounds) per second
  • When Ceres is in the colder part of its orbit, no water escapes
  • The strength of the signal also varied over hours, weeks and months
  • water vapor plumes rotating in and out of Herschel's views as the object spun on its axis
  • This enabled the scientists to localize the source of water to two darker spots on the surface of Ceres
  • previously seen by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based telescopes. The dark spots might be more likely to outgas because dark material warms faster than light material.
  • "The lines are becoming more and more blurred between comets and asteroids," said Seungwon Lee of JPL
  • Paul von Allmen, also of JPL. "We knew before about main belt asteroids that show comet-like activity, but this is the first detection of water vapor in an asteroid-like object."
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