Slashdot Mirror
Probe to 'Look Inside' Asteroids
bigjnsa500 writes "A new space mission concept by the European Space Agency called Deep Interior was unveiled at a Paris conference earlier this week, according to the BBC. Apparently: 'It aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved.' NASA also has a similar concept called Deep Impact."
Cue the uranus jokes:
wait for it...
GO!
everyone who think the scientists that created this probe have not heard enough "ass-teroid probe jokes"
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
They are launching a probe INTO the astroid? Are they crazy? jeez, what people will do for the name of science.
-----
Found a bunch of quarters.
Project Lord of the Rings (2012, Probe to check out the rings of Saturn)
Project Pluto Nash (2009, A giant probe/bomb to send to the planetoid Pluto in hopes of melting the ice)
Project Mercury Rising (2015, Mission to send an autistic austronaut to Mercury to see if it really is as hot as they think)
Come on people, what other movie names can fit in well with future NASA missions?
That must be a fun job. I can just picture all the people trying to look serious standing around at mission control going pchearrrrbooommm.
When are they going to send a probe to Uranus?
And I mean that in every nice way possible. There's actually a reason to study some of the moons there.
Nasa has a similar mission - Deep Impact - which will blow a hole in the comet Tempel 1 and measure the effects.
I'm pretty sure the NASA mission's title - Deep Impact - is partly a homage to the movie of the same name. For all of its flaws, the movie's producers did consult with NASA and make a sincere effort to get the science right.
Armageddon - the Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck flick that was the other asteroid picture that summer - spent zillions on special effects, but botched the science so badly that astronomers were seen choking on their popcorn. As I recall the plot and acting were equally wretched - but the movie was a success at the box office. There's no accounting for taste.
And send a rag-tag deep core drilling team to do the job?
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
but the comms system didn't survive the impact.
I wonder if asteroid is a delecacy on other planets...
I don't knw what kind of radar these guys are planning to send. But GPR (ground penetrating radar) only goes a few meters. I seriously doubt that they are going to launch an AGEIS system. All this proves- manned space flight (while possibly silly) is terribly better at geology. Why? We got shovels sukka.
Why is it that the American name is cheesy and inaccurate and the European name is cheesy and repetitive and both names are chock-full of sexual innuendo? Can nobody find good names these days?
I vote for renaming the project to "Looking In Rocks", just for the sake of simplicity.
How many grad students can fit in a Space Shuttle cargo bay?
Maybe if you don't know what they are doing and why they are doing it, you should read on it instead of saying that because it doesn't immediately jump at you it's pointless.
For an interesting (and fairly simple) read, I suggest Carl Sagan's Pale Blue Dot. It covers many many things including why space exploration is important for us (for example, we found out about the ozone layer and what CFCs were doing by looking at Mars and about the Greenhouse effect by looking at Venus -- stuff that was totally unrelated at first).
Treehugger? Treehugger... Treehugger!
They will find hunks of rock and crap inside. If they are lucky they might find some other crap, but if its valuable crap it will most likely be left alone for years as it would be far too expensive to mine it.
EOF
In all likelihood, more like "give clues to how the planets didn't evolve. Answers tend to lead to more questions that way.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Just to clarefy - the mission that are talked about is an ESA mission.. y'know, those guys that ain't NASA, nor russkies or from Red China? Anyway, thats really beside the point here.
I judge from your comment, you seem to think that learning about space for the sake of knowledge is not worth it... well, the other option is to learn about space with an eye to make money out of it. It has quite often been proposed that it ought to be possible to mine astroids for raw materials to use in space (build spacestations, spaceships and whatnot in space) or on earth. In order to do this, we need a better understanding on how an astroid is put together - thus this mission.
As for the NASA mission briefly mentioned, thats a completly different mission; it seeks to learn more about comets and how they are made up. While less than ideal for mining, this is important also - not just for the pure science (a concept I think you may find hard to understand) but because we one day may need to alter the orbit / blow up a comet that are on a collisioncourse with earth. If we don't know how it is put together, we're in a worse situation to do just that.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
I think spending money on 'pointless things' is pretty much what NASA does. I don't really think that sending people to Mars or investigating Saturn's moons seems all that useful initially, but who knows when it might come in handy? If you want to be negative about it, you could say that NASA have done nothing but waste money in their entire history. After all, the US-Soviet Space Race was more or less an international pissing competition... but at least it kept that money from being directly spent on weapons.
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
because robots and computers don't get drunk or make passes at each other. And because the film-makers wanted less wooden actors, possibly.
great sig, by the way!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
The point is that it's raining soup out there in the asteroid belt, and people like you are down here bitching that buckets are too expensive to bother with.
Do a little research to find out the content of a typical asteroid, it's mass, and what that's equivalent to in Earthside ore production and refined metals.
When your jaw quits bouncing off the floor, start pushing for big, manned asteroid missions so we can finally quit raping garden Earth, and in the bargain there will be more than enough resources for everyone to start living like humans should!
3...2...1...
Mal the Elder
Actually, Deep Impact (NASA came up with the name before the movie, by the way) is quite different. Half of the Deep Impact spacecraft will actually ram into a comet (not an asteroid) in an attempt to churn up material from inside the comet. This is so the other half of the spacecraft, as well as telescopes on Earth, can see what is the composition, density, etc. of comets.
Have you guys noticed all of these agencies suddenly not just planning to make craft that can detonate an asteroid, but that are making one right now. Yea, like right now. I count 3 G7 governments and 1 UN so far over the world.
Can somebody tell us when this fat bitch is going to ram a hole through the earth? Just in case my 2012-2014 calculation is off?
Seriously folks. This isn't academic anymore. People that don't spend money on shit for space travel are building these ships to kill an asteroid. A complete exercise is fulitiy at our current tech level, which is making me wonder- what/when the fuck is it gonna hit us?
>>>>Anyone else noticed that a lot of recent space project proposals state the purpose is to learn more about how planets or even the entire solar system was formed? Is this just fashionable or a ploy to get funding?>>>>>
Knowledge of origins would help constrain the nature of solar systems about other stars. This would tell us how frequently planets inhabitable by humans occur, and planets where there might be intelligent life.
Ironically, were can only see "extreme planets" now with the limited sensitivity of earth-bound detectors. Of the 200-some discovered so far, only the grossly large (several times Jupiter) or super fast (weeks-long orbits) cause measurable doppler shifts their stars. The next generation(s) of space-based detectors will find more earth-like planets.
"Well, we've managed to get the probe on the asteroid. This 1.2billion dollar mining probe has worked flawlessly. After 6 months of drilling some 300meters into the surface of the asteroid we can finally report that the asteriod core is made up of the same rock that it's crust is made of. Thank you."
My understanding is that Euro-space just recently buried a probe into the asteriod 'Mars'. Aren't they still waiting to get data back from that one?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
...several smaller asteroids. And inside those? You guessed it: more, smaller, asteroids.
ascii art
The original BBC article was poorly written, but from it we learn something closer to the truth: "A proposal for the project, described here at the Committee on Space Research (Cospar) scientific assembly, was submitted to Nasa two weeks ago." It's a NASA mission, not an ESA mission.
NASA also has a similar concept called Deep Impact
Wrong. The article was comparing an ESA mission called Don Quijote to Deep Impact. Deep Interior and Deep Impact are very different. One will try to blast an enormous crater in an asteroid, and the other will passively scan an asteroid with radar.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
on that common-denominator-humor option: I'm glad to see that the Human Rights Commission is finally taking an interest in ... oh, nevermind.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
check this or pdf version out.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
bzzt.
No one with the money to afford putting together a manned asteroid mining mission has any interest in "everyone living like humans should"
Judging from the fact that they rejected the corrected story I submitted, the slashdot editors are more interested in covering their own behinds than they are in true and accurate news. I'd be far more impressed if somebody 'fessed up to not properly reading the article.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show