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."

Comments

Grammar nazi alert

[cvtan]

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.

Re:Grammar nazi alert

[rubycodez]

I married my Chinese wife and she went to orientate my apartment with a rice steamer, chopsticks, various curry powders, jade and bright red and gold wall hangings,

Re:Grammar nazi alert

[rubycodez]

Standardisation of grammar and spelling is only recently an attribute of English. Indeed, if one wishes to be clear and unambiguous, one should not use such an illogical language, such a language of overloaded words, as that confounded mishmash known as English.