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NASA Probe Orbiting Asteroid Vesta
astroengine writes "Mission managers of NASA's Dawn asteroid probe had a long Saturday, waiting for news from the asteroid belt. Eventually they got the news they were hoping for: Dawn had entered Vesta orbit. This is the first time in history that an object in the asteroid belt has been orbited by an artificial satellite. It's taken four years for the ion thruster-propelled spacecraft to reach the asteroid and there was some uncertainty as to whether the probe had been captured by the asteroid's gravity at all. But after a long period of waiting, mission managers received the signal after Dawn was able to orientate its antenna toward Earth."
What , Vesta is on steroids ???
Undetectable Steganography? Yep, there's an app fo
Wow, what loathsome editing by Discovery: they injected a video clip about a "Doomsday Asteroid" wiping out the earth into the middle of an article about Dawn visiting Vesta. The two are unrelated, but the juxtaposition somehow makes it sound like NASA is fulfilling some Hollywood fantasy about visiting the asteroid that will come smashing into Earth unless we send [current B-rate movie star] on the now-defunct Space Shuttle to nuke it.
I found this: "Orientate is more widely accepted in the U.K. than in the U.S.A., but it should be avoided in any formal or standard writing." Of course, correcting poor usage is WAY more important than orbiting an asteroid.
Sorry, but gray text on gray background is making my eyes bleed.
In only 14 years from now? I highly doubt it. Besides being a dumb idea, the US can't even put a man into earth orbit anymore. What makes anybody think they'll be sending anybody into deep space any time soon? Unless it's part of the war effort, it just ain't gonna happen
For justice, we must go to Don Corleone
To the science-abled fellas in here: How would conditions for astronauts/cosmonauts visiting this bodies be?
Can they walk up there or would they need some sort of exo-skeleton or something with more space for sponsors...?
There are so many cool things about this mission!
ION FREAKING ENGINES!
-- Counting backwards since 1984!
The possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately 3,720 to 1.
Support Right To Repair Legislation.
FTFA:
Dawn will remain in orbit around Vesta for a year, before gently boosting away to begin the trip to Ceres, the second half of its asteroid belt adventure.
That was actually my first thought: "Why is this visiting Vesta and not Ceres?" Ceres (might) have surface water and an atmosphere, so it makes more sense as a base. Its also larger (about 4 times the mass/size, although, surprisingly, it has nearly the same gravity, .027g to Vesta's .022g) and looks one hell of a lot more interesting. I mean, both are just big rocks in space, but Ceres is actually dwarf planet class and looks like it could serve as a quite effective base for more missions past the asteroid belt.
Of course, visiting both makes sense. Vesta may have also been a nice test run for gravitational capture, since it doesn't have an atmosphere and its smaller, but has similar gravity. Establishing a (manned) base in the asteroid belt seems like it could be an enormous step forward in space. The asteroids could potentially be mined, providing a financial incentive to visit, plus their low gravity makes them easy to escape after loading up on fuel/ore or for constructing spacecraft (anyone else think the idea of a spaceship factory in the asteroid belts is pretty cool?). All in all, this is a pretty cool (if pretty small) step forward in getting off this rock. I can see why Obama wants to send an astronaut to the belt by 2025, even if I know it'll probably take till 2040 or so.
"None can love freedom heartily, but good men; the rest love not freedom, but license." --John Milton
Come on. UAVs over Afghanistan, Earth are flown from Los Vegas, Nevada, Earth. Why would they send people to outer space instead of using a remotely piloted vehicle? Remotely piloted vehicles have a good track record in outer space.
I'm annoyed by the lack of images from the Dawn team. Compared to other NASA probes, they've really skimped on the public images. (Every week or so they've posted a single image from the low-res navigation imager. Not even a complete sequence of Vesta's surface (it rotates every 5 hours, so not exactly difficult.)) I hope that isn't going to set the standard for the entire mission.
(They have an excuse for the insertion burn, but not during coasting.)
Science is all about firing a drunk pig out of a cannon just to see what happens.
Now all we need to do is settle it.
I would not begrudge our soldiers in Afghanistan small comforts. But still I was taken aback by the news that Pentagon spends more on airconditioning barracks in Afghanistan than the entire NASA budget. If Pentagon bought some more efficient air conditioners without compromising comfort, may be we could fund a few more of these missions. Quite sad to see the congresscritters make grand statements about government waste and then ram their pet pork projects through defense appropriations.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I would not begrudge our soldiers in Afghanistan small comforts. But still I was taken aback by the news that Pentagon spends more on airconditioning barracks in Afghanistan than the entire NASA budget. If Pentagon bought some more efficient air conditioners without compromising comfort, may be we could fund a few more of these missions.
Sounds like it would be a heck of a lot more cost effective for NASA under DOD contract to launch a "solar umbrella" arrangement to cool Afghanistan. As a bonus we'd be able to use the required heavy lifter / orbital construction gear for other purposes. Finally we could sell advertising space on the solar umbrella.
As a side note, there are not many US barracks in the sandbox. They're air conditioning tents and trailers. I spent some time in the 90s baby sitting some computers in a US Army air conditioned trailer; We were very thankful the "computers required air conditioning", it was just a side effect that we got comfortable.
"Science flies us to the moon. Religion flies us into buildings." - Victor Stenger
What do you expect when the topic is a lame Micro$oft product like Vesta?
If it makes you feel any better, (it did for me) that number ($20 billion) for air conditioning in Afghanistan is highly debatable and was put forward by a guy who was a brigadier general but now is in the private sector, selling technologies branded as energy-efficient to the Defense Department. More from the source article (http://www.npr.org/2011/06/25/137414737/among-the-costs-of-war-20b-in-air-conditioning): "Now it's important to note that wrapped up in Anderson's $20 billion figure are all kind of other expenditures – for instance, the cost of building and maintaining roads in Afghanistan, securing those roads, managing the security operations for those roads. That all costs a lot of money and is part of the overall war effort in Afghanistan." And, "The Pentagon disputes the calculation made by Anderson about air conditioning costs. Defense Department spokesman Dave Lapan says that in fiscal year 2010, the Pentagon spent approximately $15 billion on energy for all military operations around the world. The Pentagon says when it comes to Afghanistan, it spent $1.5 billion from October 2010 to May 2011 on fuel. That fuel was used for heating and air conditioning systems, but also for aircraft, unmanned aerial systems, combat vehicles, computers and electricity inside military structures."
It oriented its antenna, it didn't orientate it. Someone needs to documentate the English language a little bit better.
Maybe you were taken aback because you were too stupid to actually think about what you were reading and realize it was a lie. I'm sure "I read it on the internet so it must be true" is a great standard to live by though.
Third orbit of an asteroid after Eros and Itokawa.
Science is a collaborative effort. Nearly every advance the parent cited can be traced back to development work done by people who were not born in the US. Von Braun, Tsiolkovsky, and Fermi come to mind immediately, along with Einstein, Turing, Goedel, Bohr, Pauling, Dirac, Mendeleev, and Roentgen. National pride is fine, but it rings kinda hollow when one is aware of just how connected all scientific advancement is. The idea that all of those achievements are somehow the sole purview of the US is absurd.
Thanks for the information. Oddly I feel better knowing that Pentagon is not wasting that much. Sorry to have fallen for some marketers' spiel.
sed -e 's/Chuck Norris/Rajnikant/g' joke > fact
I've seen analysis that the number is about right, and that most of the cost is getting diesel out there for the generators.
I'm sure they could spray the tents with foam or something though to make it much more efficient. Tinfoil on the outside...?
No sig today...
Oh if i had mod points!
the Chinese will be far more benevolent and altruistic than the running dog Yankees.
There is the good NASA (JPL) which run unmanned probes such as Dawn while there is the pointless NASA (Houston) that sends humans into space for stunts. Guess who gets the funding?
If we go to Ceres before meeting the Chozo, who's gonna use their power armor to defeat Ridley and the Mother Brain?
Use the laptop while sitting on the toilet, problem solved :-P
"When information is power, privacy is freedom" - Jah-Wren Ryel
Tinfoil? Really? Is it just me or does that sound like "TARGET HERE" XD
I'd like to orbit Princess Vespa.
Camouflaged tinfoil?