Two ESA Craft To Observe Asteroid 21 Lutetia

japan_dan writes "Two ESA spacecraft will observe 21 Lutetia during Rosetta's flyby on 10 July: Rosetta from 3,160 km and Herschel from 450 million km. Herschel's PACS and SPIRE spectrometers will view Lutetia in far infrared, while Rosetta will gather data in a variety of wavelengths. Since the observations will be coordinated during and at closest approach, scientists will later be able to correlate the data to produce a map of the thermal radiation emitted by Lutetia. There are a pair of animations modelling the expected temperature distribution over Lutetia at the link. The joint observations are part of a series of 8 sessions planned in the next couple of years by Herschel scientists to study objects that will be visited by spacecraft."

Comments

Asteroid as candidates for commodities

[Robotron23]

I spotted a post on Slashdot a couple of weeks ago which pointed out a couple of advantages of exploring the asteroid belt as a rich source of minerals and possible mining. On this strength of that brief but well worded comment I did some research myself and right now I'm currently reading the only book I could find that seemed accessible enough to a person with limited knowledge of space mining and the possibilities therein: (Mining the Sky by John S. Lewi). This as opposed to planets or moons which carry with them an atmosphere. Most of the prime candidates there possess thick atmospheres that carry a massive burden of cost for any robotic or manned mission to bring back much of anything for purposes of study or (looking further ahead) economic purposes.

Asteroids by definition lack atmosphere, being in layman's terms large rocks with a pretty huge size variance. Anyone who has read Greg Bear's Eon will be able to appreciate the magnitude of some of the bigger asteroids. With present-day technology, were the funding and the will present we could in two or three decades time extract dozens of kilos of material from an asteroid and, though risk would be a factor, ferry all of that back to Earth. That's hundreds of kilos of precious material if an initial group of say ten were launched. However speaking realistically giving the sheer amount of difficulty space has had in recent decades, plus other projects eating up chunks of NASA/ESA/Roscosmos/JAXA budget, we're looking at much lower amounts. That we have publicly funded projects as opposed to privately spearheaded initiatives in the present day doesn't help; space agencies do not seek to maximize monetary profit.

A small asteroid typically contains trillions of dollars in valuable metals. It doesn't take a genius to infer that investment in research leading to the mining of these bodies could make a profit. The return on capital employed (ROCE) would be unusually long...and that risk understandably puts off a lot of potential investment - it needs to be done on a fairly impressive scale, proven and reported by mass media for the ROCE ratio to improve. Valuable metals that have steady demand or even rising demand in some cases especially with China, India and Brazil developing as they are, could receive supplies from relatively cheap, unmanned drills. If prices of say...platinum and titanium keep rising and the private sector begins to take the helm from the clumsy, bungled pork-heavy governments I daresay asteroid mining would appear economically feasible to private enterprise in a generation.

Finally; the technology developed for mining asteroids would - just like lots of other space tech - have applications on Earth too. It'd be diverse to the point where we can't envision with accuracy all the technology could come of this kind of venture that would benefit humanity wholesale.

Re:Asteroid as candidates for commodities

[Robotron23]

That post was mine by the way (Robotron23) - for the second time either Slashdot 2.0 or myself has checked the Anonymous posting box.

To make this post worthwhile...we'd probably have to attach some sort of legislation when asteroid mining becomes feasible. Something along the lines of a scientific analysis, due to the massive wealth of historical information these bodies hold on the early history of our solar system. I once heard a theory that the asteroid belt was actually once a planet...but Jupiter's gravity pulled it into fragments. Evidence of such an event would be valuable in a scientific capacity.

It's pretty sad when topics like this come along and the discussion on Slashdot is so minimal; I grew up on Heinlein, Clarke, PKD, Foundation series and all those greats; topics like ESA's analysis of 21 Lutetia are prime news for nerds. Long after Apple or Microsoft or anything else we talk about so much are dead and gone...all these things will still be up there, as will all the mystery.

Worst summary ever?

[fotoguzzi]

From the summary I cannot determine the name of the asteroid or the two spaceships. I can guess, but then why would I need a summary?