Posts Tagged ‘16’
June 30, 2011
by tte-77
Artist rendition of Dawn spacecraft gathering spectral data from Vesta - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/McREL
On 16 July NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter the orbit of Vesta – on track for the first extended visit to the large asteroid. The mission expects to begin gathering science data in early August. Vesta resides in the main asteroid belt and is thought to be the source of a large number of meteorites that fall to Earth. Read our previous post on Vesta here.
“We look forward to exploring this unknown world during Dawn’s 1-year stay in Vesta’s orbit.” said Robert Mase from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California.
Traveling for nearly 4 years and covering 1.7 billion miles, Dawn is to date about 96,000 miles away from Vesta and when the asteroid captures Dawn into its orbit on 16 July there will be approximately 9,900 miles between them and they will be approximately 117 million miles away from Earth.
We’ve packed our year at Vesta full of science observations to help us unravel the mysteries of Vesta,” said Carol Raymond from JPL. Vesta is considered a protoplanet, or body that never quite became a full-fledged planet.
Source: Astronomy.com
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Posted in Asteroid, NASA, tte-77 | Tagged 16, 16 July, 2011, asteroid, asteroid belt, Astronomy, dawn, earth, enter, events, how, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, JPL, july, launch, meteor, meteorites, mission, NASA, orbit, planet, postaweek2011, protoplanet, science, see, Sky, skywatching, space, spacecraft, vesta, view, viewing, watching, where | Leave a Comment »
May 10, 2011
by yaska77
Technicians at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center will finish closing out Endeavour’s aft compartment and will retract the access arm to the external fuel tank today, as work continues to prepare for the start of the countdown on Friday.
Endeavour is now scheduled to launch Monday 16th May at 08:56 EDT (13:56 BST) on a 16-day mission to the International Space Station. The launch originally planned for 29th April was scrubbed when telemetry showed an electrical problem within the aft load control assembly in the Shuttle’s engine compartment.
Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz
Meanwhile at NASA’s Johnson Space Center, the STS-134 crew is preparing to return to Kennedy this Thursday. Pictured in the official crew portrait above (clockwise) are NASA astronauts Mark Kelly (bottom centre), Commander Gregory H. Johnson, Pilot Michael Fincke, and Mission Specialists Greg Chamitoff, Andrew Feustel and ESA’s Roberto Vittori.
The delay to this launch has also pushed back the expected lift-off of STS-135 (Atlantis) to early July, with an exact date still to be confirmed.
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Posted in yaska77 | Tagged 16, 2011, andrew feustel, atlantis, centre, crew list, date, Endeavour, ESA, greg chamitoff, gregory h. johnson, International, ISS, johnson, Kennedy, launch, mark kelly, may, michael fincke, names, NASA, new, penultimate, postaweek2011, roberto vittori, shuttle, space, Station, STS-134, STS-135, update | Leave a Comment »
April 9, 2011
By tte-77
(See the latest post about Dawns anticipated 16 July arrival at Vesta here)
Vesta an asteroid or not an asteroid - Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/PSI
Come July scientists will be turning their attention to the large asteroid Vesta which has an estimated 9% of the mass of the entire asteroid belt and is the second-biggest object in the belt after the dwarf planet Ceres.
In July of this year NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will enter Vesta’s orbit to view this survivor from the beginning of our solar system. The mission will map Vesta’s terrain, analyse its surface composition, and measure its gravity to determine its internal structure.
Launched from Cape Canaveral in September 2007 on the Delta II rocket, Dawn will orbit Vesta for one year then head over to Ceres for similar analysis. Ceres is the largest asteroid and has recently been reclassified as a dwarf planet.
Scientists are talking a lot about Vesta. For example, NASA issued a press release recently titled When is an Asteroid Not an Asteroid. Vesta is known to have layers like the Earth so crust, mantle and core.
Christopher Russell, Dawn’s principal investigator, based at UCLA – said in the same NASA release: This gritty little protoplanet has survived bombardment in the asteroid belt for over 4.5 billion years, making its surface possibly the oldest planetary surface in the solar system. Studying Vesta will enable us to write a much better history of the solar system’s turbulent youth.
In 2015, when Dawn has visited Ceres too the mission is complete and we will have a better understanding of the formation of our solar system.
Read more about the Dawn mission at Earthsky.org.
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Posted in Asteroid, NASA, tte-77 | Tagged 16, 16 July, 2011, arrival, asteroid, Astronomy, ceres, dawn, event, events, how, images, july, july 2011, NASA, postaweek2011, see, Sky, skywatching, vesta, view, viewing, watching, where | 2 Comments »
