The European Space Agency has a spacecraft heading to orbit a comet a number of years off. On their way, they are flying by an asteroid named Steins. I am interested in this asteroid because it is a type that has never been studied up close, and it will tell us something about the early Solar System. The spacecraft had only a few minutes to collect data as it flew by at 8.6 km/s, that is almost 20,000 m/hr.
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMNMYO4KKF_index_0.html contains their press report and first images.
We have established a consortium of scientists to study the meteorites that are most similar to Steins. We will study these meteorites, called aubrites, in the laboratory to look for similarities between the asteroid and the meteorite and thus expand our knowledge of the properties of the asteroid. If we can show links between asteroid Steins and the aubrites, which are iron-free meteorites that formed in highly reduced (hydrogen-rich) reservoirs, we can extend our knowledge of the E-type asteroids of which Steins is an example. I know this doesn't make much sense so I will continue to work on expressing myself......later. Take a look at the link above.
I found a preparatory short quicktime piece giving a bit of background on the flyby that
I might ask my students to comment on. Is it accurate? How might you modify it to make it scientifically more accurate both visually and by way of the commentary? see the quicktime movie.
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2 comments:
Hey mom. I saw the link. It does look like a diamond. If you were there it would be Lucy in the sky with diamonds. What does this image tell us? Is it purely topographical? Are there other images from spectrophotometers? What information would they give us...also how often are do we see flybys like this?
Good questions, Whit. We are trying to figure out what the image tells us. Not ready to say it succinctly yet. Give us/them a few more months.
Next asteroid flyby is in 2010.
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