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Asteroid Clips From NASA -- Updated

Posted by timothy on from the no-Falcon-eating-spaceworms-yet dept.

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.

2 of 70 comments (clear)

  1. Movie location in several formats by tesserae · · Score: 4
    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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    Politics is about making compromises. Religion isn't. --Michael Horton

  2. Re:Taking pictures of a rock... by Chairboy · · Score: 5

    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.