Asteroid Clips From NASA -- Updated

Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit, NASA's NEAR (Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous) Shoemaker has been zeroing in on the asteroid Eros for a little while, taking pictures as well as readings with six on-board instrument systems. Four movies of Eros (QuickTime only) are also available through CNN. From the CNN article: "The performance of the other instruments should improve as well as NEAR Shoemaker moves in closer to the 21-mile-long (34-km-long) rotating space rock. Later in the year, the spacecraft could move in even closer and briefly touch down to conclude its primary mission, scientists said." [Updated 1:30GMT by timothy] Oops -- make that 119 million miles, not 199. I'm always trying to help out NASA.

Comments

The irony

[roystgnr]

there is an even easier solution to the potential depletion of earth's resources: stop friggin using them

Wonderful. And for all the people (you're almost certainly one of them) whose survival depends on large quantities of air-conditioned, truck-delivered food grown from chemical fertilizers with factory-machined farming equipment, should they be euthanized or allowed to starve naturally?

And we're just talking human survival, here; man does not live by bread alone. Why not do us and mother earth a favor and turn off your computer first?

You slashdot people need to put down the lame Science Fiction crap and put you big heads together and look for smarter solutions Here on our planet.

Shouldn't this be part of a rant at some latte-sipping poetry reading or hippie protest group somewhere? Sending your technophobia across a world-girdling computer network is riskier; someone might notice your hypocrisy showing.

People are naive is they simply think that we are just going to move to another planet

No, not move, expand to another planet. We've got a nice one right here that's worth keeping.

And who said anything about planets? This is an asteroid discussion, remember? The sun releases more energy every millisecond than humanity has used throughout history, and most of it never goes anywhere near a planet.

when we burn this one out.

Apocalyptic environmentalism is so much safer than apocalyptic religion; there's so much less pressure to set a date for that rapidly approaching doom, so you don't get disappointed when said dates pass you by.

NEAR project

[Barbarian]

I'd like to see NASA devoting more time and money to real Science, like the NEAR probe, or the mars missions, instead of having committed most of it's budget to the space plane, err, I mean shuttle.

If it wasn't for the shuttle, the program of large rockets (i.e. Saturn V) probably wouldn't have been mothballed, and we'd perhaps have gone to Mars by now. And for those that point out that the Shuttle came around in the late 70's/early 80's -- there is a design around that uses the Saturn V bottom stage as a booster for a shuttle orbiter, so it was definitely on the minds of those responsible at the time of the Saturn series cancellation, since they considered using the Saturn booster for it.

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Re:NEAR project

[Chairboy]

The Saturn V was replaced (I use the term loosely) by the Shuttle because it was expected the Shuttle would lower launch costs significantly.

Unfortunately, due to incorrect assumptions at design time, the Shuttle now has costs very similar to the Saturn V, but boosts less cargo.

The Saturn V derivatives, such as the Saturn V-D could have carried 326,500 kg to orbit! And some of the Nova series boosters could have boosted over a million lbs into orbit in one shot!

Unfortunately, Congress decided to shut down the Saturn line. To avoid any conflict, they ordered the tooling and dies used the create these incredible vehicles destroyed and sold as scrap. Scrap metal!

Now, we have an expensive white elephant (in a distinctly non-elephant like Delta configuration) in the form of the space shuttle. It costs over $500 million to launch, and carries about half of what the original expected payload capacity was supposed to be. It requires extensive refitting between missions, too. The motors need to be pulled and rebuilt each time, and the re-usable solid boosters get so contaminated by salt water, they need to be extensive refurbished before re-use, and that gets rid of almost any benefit from re-usabillity.

The future is Rotary Rocket with their SSTO manned vehicle (small payload, smaller price) or the Energia w/ their succesful Proton heavy lift launcher and their new Fregat stages and Zenit.

I hope that one day nanotechnology realizes the potential we all think it has. If so, maybe hobbyists will use nanosites to construct a new generation of Saturn V boosters from reconstructed blueprints (a set still exists in the Library of Congress) and launch them from the beaches of America.

I hope I live to see that day, so I can see that huge booster my grandparents helped design lift off the pad like my parents and the rest of the generation before me did, and then, maybe, I'll know that our day in space is truly here.

s/design/concept

[Barbarian]

Err, that should have read:

I'd like to see NASA devoting more time and money to real Science, like the NEAR probe, or the mars missions, instead of having committed most of it's budget to the space plane, err, I mean shuttle.

If it wasn't for the shuttle, the program of large rockets (i.e. Saturn V) probably wouldn't have been mothballed, and we'd perhaps have gone to Mars by now. And for those that point out that the Shuttle came around in the late 70's/early 80's -- there is a concept drawing done at NASA around that uses the Saturn V bottom stage as a booster for a shuttle orbiter, so it was definitely on the minds of those responsible at the time of the Saturn series cancellation, since they considered using the Saturn booster for it at the time.
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Ooooppppppsss

[ch-chuck]

"Sulu, launch shuttlecraft with ambassador Vilhelmits to planet surface, mark 324.7923, range 199 million miles..."

"Aye Sir"

[smash, crash, ka-bleuie]

"Uh, make that 119 million miles"

"Are those nautical or English miles, sir?"

APOD pictures of Eros

[VenTatsu]

A search of the Astronomy Picture Of the Day site has a binch more images and a few .gif movies of flybys.
Hmm I think we need an APOD slashbox...

Couple of reasons

[/]

Asteroids brought all the early water to a fledgling planet called Earth. It's where we came from, dammit.

Their mineral content and low gravity make them ideal for mining expeditions -- no sense in wasting lots of fuel to get the stuff back.

The moon, after all, was just another lump of rock, albeit a little bigger. Half the fun is seeing NASA pull this one off. Trust me, it'll come in handy when they try to do some missions you'll actually appreciate, like to Mars or to Mars' moons, which are really just captured asteroids, after all.

I'm sure viewers at home can come up with lots more reasons.

Taking pictures of a rock...

[HydroCarbon10]

While progress and research into space is beneficial to the human race, I have to wonder what the purpose is of taking more pictures of asteroids. There already exist many pictures of asteroids, and I don't see what further study would yield. I'm just wondering if there aren't better ways to spend governement money on space. Even if there were valuable resources to be gotten from the asteroid, they would be far to expensive to remove. The article states nothing of how we can benefit from this study. While it is cool that we have the technology to do this, I just can't see the point. Wouldn't it be even more interesting if probes were sent to Europa in search of life? A Europa probe would expand our knowledge of our solar system and perhaps uncover clues to the development of life, the NEAR probe will send us pictures (which look much like the moon, big surpise there) of a dead rock hurtling through space. This certainly doesn't make NASA look like they are doing anything productive. Don't get me wrong, I love space and believe in space exploration, but aren't there better activites to engage in than this?

Re:Taking pictures of a rock...

[zog78]

There already exist many pictures of asteroids

um, where?

I could be wrong but unless there's been a sudden increase of spacecraft visiting asteroids, I think there are only about 3 asteroids that we have any close up pictures of.

Because there's so much space between them, we know almost nothing detailed about the asteroid belt except what other missions have scooped up in flyby's and with the exception of Galileo zooming past Ida and Gaspra, and (very recently) Cassini flying past 2685 Masursky. Neither of them were intended or to look specifically at the asteroid belt.

I'm not qualified to say what scientific benefit it could offer or if anyone should spend any money on it, but generally knowing more about what's in the asteroid belt could help a lot towards working out how the Solar System began. Theres only so much information you can get from a few fuzzy photographs.

A Europa probe would expand our knowledge of our solar system and perhaps uncover clues to the development of life

Plans for a couple of missions to Europa are underway.

Re:Taking pictures of a rock...

[mouseman]

Actually, we have a lot to learn about the asteroids. Since they are both small and far away, telescopes can't tell us all that much, and even their basic composition is not well understood.

Why should we care? Well, for one thing, they can tell us a lot about the origins of the solar system. The sun and all the planets are believed to have acreted from a vast cloud of gas and dust. The asteroids could not coalesce into a planet due to the gravitational effects of Jupiter, thus were halted at the planetesimal stage. They can give us insight into the early process of planet formation.

Also, one day one of these suckers could crash into our planet. If we want to have any hope of preventing that, we will need to understand something about their composition. For example, are they solid bodies or are they composed of small rocks held together by gravitational attraction? makes a big difference if we want to try to deflect one heading our way. There is an excellent article in the May issue of Scientific American (no link, since it doesn't seem to be in the online version) that makes a compelling argument for the rubble pile theory.

Re:Taking pictures of a rock...

[Chairboy]

First of all, all of our pictures of asteroids are from tens of thousands of miles away. The Eros expedition is the first close up inspection of an Asteroid, and it's a necessary next step in freeing ourselves from the danger of exceeding our resources on Earth.

Asteroid mining can be a reality. For a good book, read 'Mining the Sky'. It discusses the obstacles that need to be overcome, and also illustrates the immense effect asteroid mining can have on our world.

New advances in ultrasonic drilling is reducing the complexity of asteroid sampling devices, and vaccuum smelting processes are being actively pursued. These, plus the scientific observations afforded by the Shoemaker-NEAR spacecraft will make it possible to avoid paying $10,000+ a lb to carry the materials needed to build tomorrows space colonies and industrial space presence.

The types of missions people pay the most attention to are the warm and fuzzy ones like J. Glenn's return to space and the Mars Pathfinder. The missions that will provide the best return on our investment in the future are the Cassini's, the SOHOs, and the Shoemaker-NEAR. They may not be as flashy as a remote control car driving a few feet on Mars, but they provide the type of rock-hard scientific data that's needed to get us into space for keeps. ...and being in space for keeps means removing eggs from the basket, which helps our chances at survival.

Re:Preventing "deep impact"

[mouseman]

Well, in the latest literature it has been found that most asteroids above 200m don't rotate faster than a certain amount. The reason appears to be that anything larger than 200m is really just a giant pile of rubble. Rotation above this limit would cause the pile to fall apart.

Yes, that is one of several arguments given for (large) asteroids being rubble piles. The SciAm article also discusses simulation results that predict that large asteroids involved in collisions will tend to turn into rubble piles (fragments fall back together due to gravitational attraction), whereas smaller asteroids will fly apart due to weaker gravitational pull. Observed shapes and densities also tend to support this conjecture but, again, we really need a closer look to know for sure.

Gist of the matter, it would be very hard to shift the direction of an asteroid, let alone one that is only a giant ball of boulders.

Exactly right. Imagine kicking a bean bag chair. Doesn't go anywhere, does it? A rubble-pile asteroid would behave in the same way, absorbing much of the energy of your kick. That doesn't mean moving it is impossible, but it's much harder, and certainly something we should know about well in advance of any attempt to stop a killer asteroid.

Save us!

[Denor]

Okay, okay, nobody panic!
I know things don't look good. I know we're close to the point of no return. In but a few scant hours, we'll all be dead, or wish we were. But goddamit, we're going to die proudly! Come on, Slashdot! Let's show the rest of the world that we're truly superior people, and die with dignity.
Now is the time to forgive old wounds, to make amends for past wrongs. It's now that we come to terms with everything that life has dealt to us, and with humanity's final end!
Goodbye, Slashdot! Of all the people I could spend my last living moments with, I'm glad I spent it with all of you.


Wait, the article said that the asteroid was 62 miles from the sattelite ?

Oh.

Get your daily fix of asteroid goodness!

[shiwala]

For those of you who want to keep up with the mission, check out the NEAR Image of the Day. There's an update each day as well as an archive in case you missed a few days :-)

Incredible

[Grant Elliott]

I find it absoltely remarkable that NASA can make something 200 million miles away hit a target 21 mile wide that's rotating in a somewhat chaotic manner and traveling in an orbit that's influenced by pretty much every nearby object. I will be very impressed if they can actually land on this thing. These guys are really good. And you have to love recursive acronyms...

This is a HOAX!

[the_other_one]

The movies are clearly closeups of a rotating Planters peanut. This is no more real than those moon landings filmed in the desert

Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit...

[Zoyd]

Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit...

Whoa there, pardner! How could you know where I'm sitting?

Re:Roughly 199 million miles from where you sit...

[DrEldarion]

because we've been keeping track of you through the ads on the site... &ltevil grin&gt

-- Dr. Eldarion --
It's not what it is, it's something else.

Don't need NASA for this...

[FascDot Killed My Pr]

I can't down load movies of Eros all over the Internet...

(only funny to those who know Greek)
--
Have Exchange users? Want to run Linux? Can't afford OpenMail?

Movie location at NASA.gov

[Woil]

You'll find these movies over at http://near.jhuapl.edu/Images/.Anim.html on NASA's website. Several of them.

-Will

Instead of Robot Ships and Satellites

[BigTed]

Shouldn't NASA be spending it's time training up deep sea oil drillers in preparation for the big one.

I'm also seeing a decent soundtrack and a hot young starlet to keep us all interested - probably wouldn't hurt their funding either.

The article said...

[Formula_409]

they were going to attempt to land on Eros to complete the mission. Hmmm...
I wonder if they are going to try to blow it up, maybe that Armageddon movie got them NASA people thinking, hey, if something like that did happen, we really would have to send up some clueless oil workers.

Sorry, I forgot to take my medication today.

JPL description of NEAR mission

[zog78]

There's a JPL writeup/description of the NEAR mission here.

Movie location in several formats

[tesserae]

You can also find them at the official NEAR website, where they come in MPG, animiated GIF and both compressed and uncompressed QuickTime formats. Look in the Image of the Day Archive.

There are plenty of good stills and movies here.

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