[meteorite-list] Dawn Holding in Second Mapping Orbit
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4649 Dawn Holding in Second Mapping Orbit Jet Propulsion Laboratory July 6, 2015 DAWN MISSION STATUS REPORT NASA's Dawn spacecraft is healthy and stable, after experiencing an anomaly in the system that controls its orientation. It is still in its second mapping orbit 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) above dwarf planet Ceres. On June 30, shortly after turning on its ion engine to begin the gradual spiral down to the next mapping orbit, its protective software detected the anomaly. Dawn responded as designed by stopping all activities (including thrusting), reconfiguring its systems to safe mode and transmitting a radio signal to request further instructions. On July 1 and 2, engineers made configuration changes needed to return the spacecraft to its normal operating mode. The spacecraft is out of safe mode, using the main antenna to communicate with Earth. Dawn will remain at its current orbital altitude until the operations team has completed an analysis of what occurred and has updated the flight plan. Because of the versatility of Dawn's ion propulsion system and the flexibility of the mission's plan for exploring Ceres, there is no special "window" for starting or completing the spiral to the third mapping orbit. The plans for the third and fourth mapping orbits can be shifted to new dates without significant changes in objectives or productivity. More information on the Dawn mission is online at: http://www.nasa.gov/dawn http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov Media Contact Elizabeth Landau NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-6425 elizabeth.lan...@jpl.nasa.gov 2015-229 __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Opportunity Rover's 7th Mars Winter to Include New Study Area
http://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news.php?feature=4651 Opportunity Rover's 7th Mars Winter to Include New Study Area Jet Propulsion Laboratory July 6, 2016 Fast Facts: * Scientists and engineers plan to use NASA's Mars rover Opportunity throughout the upcoming Martian winter to examine exposures of clay minerals. * First, the rover is studying a band of reddish material at the edge of "Spirit of St. Louis Crater." Operators of NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity plan to drive the rover into a valley this month where Opportunity will be active through the long-lived rover's seventh Martian winter, examining outcrops that contain clay minerals. Opportunity resumed driving on June 27 after about three weeks of reduced activity around Mars solar conjuntion, when the sun's position between Earth and Mars disrupts communication. The rover is operating in a mode that does not store any science data overnight. It transmits the data the same day they're collected. The rover is working about half a football field's length away from entering the western end of "Marathon Valley," a notch in the raised rim of Endeavour Crater, which is about 14 miles (22 kilometers) in diameter. Opportunity landed on Mars in 2004 and has been studying the rim of Endeavour since 2011. Engineers and scientists operating Opportunity have chosen Marathon Valley as the location for the solar-powered rover to spend several months, starting in August, to take advantage of a sun-facing slope loaded with potential science targets. Marathon Valley stretches about three football fields long, aligned generally east-west. Observations of the valley using the Compact Reconnaissance Imaging Spectrometer for Mars aboard NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have detected exposures of clay minerals holding evidence about ancient wet environmental conditions. Researchers plan to use Opportunity to investigate relationships among these clay-bearing deposits. The team plans to drive Opportunity this month to sites on the valley's northern side, where the slope faces south. Right now, it is early autumn in the southern hemisphere of Mars. The shortest day of the hemisphere's winter won't come until January. As the sun's daily track across the northern sky gets shorter, the north-facing slope on the southern side of the valley will offer the advantage of tilting the rover's solar panels toward the sun, to boost the amount of electrical energy production each day. First, though, the mission's initial activities for a few days after emerging from the solar conjunction period are to examine rocks in and near a band of reddish material at the northern edge of an elongated crater called "Spirit of St. Louis." During the driving moratorium, the rover used the alpha particle X-ray spectrometer on the end of its robotic arm to assess the chemical composition of a target in this red zone. The rover is operating in a mode that avoids use of the type of onboard memory -- non-volatile flash memory -- that can retain data even when power is turned off overnight. It is using random-access memory, which retains data while power is on. The rover operated productively in this mode for several months in 2014. A reformatting of the flash memory earlier this year temporarily slowed the frequency of flash-induced computer resets, but the reset occurrences increased again later in the spring. "Opportunity can continue to accomplish science goals in this mode," said Opportunity Project Manager John Callas, of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California. "Each day we transmit data that we collect that day." "Flash memory is a convenience but not a necessity for the rover," Callas said. "It's like a refrigerator that way. Without it, you couldn't save any leftovers. Any food you prepare that day you would have to either eat or throw out. Without using flash memory, Opportunty needs to send home the high-priority data the same day it collects it, and lose any lower-priority data that can't fit into the transmission." NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Project landed twin rovers Spirit and Opportunity on Mars in 2004 to begin missions planned to last three months. Both rovers far exceeded those plans. Spirit worked for six years, and Opportunity is still active. Findings about ancient wet environments on Mars have come from both rovers. The project is one element of NASA's ongoing and future Mars missions preparing for a human mission to the planet in the 2030s. JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology, manages the project for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. For more information about Opportunity, visit: http://www.nasa.gov/rovers http://marsrovers.jpl.nasa.gov Follow the project on Twitter and Facebook at: http://twitter.com/MarsRovers http://www.facebook.com/mars.rovers Media Contact Guy Webster Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. 818-354-6278 guy.webs...@
[meteorite-list] Latest Images of Pluto from New Horizons
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/latest-images-of-pluto-from-new-horizons Latest Images of Pluto from New Horizons Last Updated: July 6, 2015 Editor: Tricia Talbert [Images] These are the most recent high-resolution views of Pluto sent by NASA's New Horizons spacecraft, including one showing the four mysterious dark spots on Pluto that have captured the imagination of the world. The Long Range Reconnaissance Imager (LORRI) obtained these three images between July 1 and 3 of 2015, prior to the July 4 anomaly that sent New Horizons into safe mode. The left image shows, on the right side of the disk, a large bright area on the hemisphere of Pluto that will be seen in close-up by New Horizons on July 14. The three images together show the full extent of a continuous swath of dark terrain that wraps around much of Pluto's equatorial region. The western end of the swath (right image) breaks up into a series of striking dark regularly-spaced spots, each hundreds of miles in size, which were first detected in New Horizons images taken in late June. Intriguing details are beginning to emerge in the bright material north of the dark region, in particular a series of bright and dark patches that are conspicuous just below the center of the disk in the right image. In all three black-and-white views, the apparent jagged bottom edge of Pluto is the result of image processing. The inset shows Pluto's orientation, illustrating its north pole, equator, and central meridian running from pole to pole. The color version of the July 3 LORRI image was created by adding color data from the Ralph instrument gathered earlier in the mission. Credit: NASA/JHUAPL/SWRI __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling!
Shawn I agree with you to a very large extent. The number of "fakes" and "meteorwrongs" appearing online, and through public enquiries to the museum, does seem to be increasing. In the last couple of weeks I have seen, or dealt with about half a dozen of them. Whether or not this can be blamed on social media I don't know. Yes, it does spread awareness of meteorites and increases their visibility. If the result of that is someone contacting me at the museum with an enquiry, then I am more than happy to deal with that in a courteous, open, honest and professional way. My concern is that, having given a negative answer (and they almost without question are) to an enquiry about a possible meteorite, I (or any curator/collector) become the subject of a vicious trolling campaign and find that our professional (and sometime personal) reputation is brought into question for no other reason than we gave the "wrong" answer. Social media is a powerful tool. I would say that it is mostly benign, even trivial, in the overwhelming number of cases. But just occasionally things do get out of hand. Cheers Peter Davidson Senior Curator of Mineralogy Natural Sciences Department National Museums Collection Centre 242 West Granton Road Edinburgh EH5 1JA TEL: 0131 247 4283 E-mail: p.david...@nms.ac.uk -Original Message- From: Meteorite-list [mailto:meteorite-list-boun...@meteoritecentral.com] On Behalf Of Shawn Alan via Meteorite-list Sent: 05 July 2015 20:42 To: Meteorite Central Subject: [meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling! Hello Listers I have noticed an explosion of people insisting they have found a meteorite popping up everywhere on FB. And now ebay is having an influx of fakes being offered on there. Couple years ago it wasnt that often you would see fakes on there, but now its a common theme. I mean people think that its a common occurrence with finding a meteorite, and now they come infused with gold. What should we do? Today I saw 5 fake meteorites being sold on ebay within a couple minutes when I do my ebay search to see whats been posted recently to ebay, that's kinda scary and some of them have bids. I noticed that the more meteorite groups that keep popping up on FB the more people think they have a meteorite and insist its real. These social media groups are fragmenting the core group of meteorites collectors, sellers, and dealers. Couple years ago MC was buzzing, but now its quite on here. Also on FB people are lazy and just hit like LOL and say nothing cause they have to read the next post and like tha t. Don't get me wrong I dig FB but I think we need to rethink these social media outlets and start chatting more on MC. :) Shawn Alan IMCA 1633 ebay store http://www.ebay.com/sch/imca1633ny/m.html Website http://meteoritefalls.com __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list Meet the pioneers of photography at the National Museum of Scotland this summer. Photography: A Victorian Sensation, 19 June-22 November 2015. www.nms.ac.uk/photography National Museums Scotland, Scottish Charity, No. SC 011130 This communication is intended for the addressee(s) only. If you are not the addressee please inform the sender and delete the email from your system. The statements and opinions expressed in this message are those of the author and do not necessarily reflect those of National Museums Scotland. This message is subject to the Data Protection Act 1998 and Freedom of Information (Scotland) Act 2002. No liability is accepted for any harm that may be caused to your systems or data by this message. __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
Re: [meteorite-list] Social media might destroy meteorite collecting and selling
Hi Shawn and List, I agree there has been a resent spike in fake meteorites being offered on Ebay. I would say that the responsibility also falls onto the potential buyer not to jump on to good to be true deals or ataxites or Nandan's straight from China. We live in a tech savy world now and most people who surf the bay (which has many great and trustworthy sellers) look for user feed back ratings. If I was to see a seller on the bay with five feedback's and selling irons out of china then my bad if I get ripped off. This is not to take away from the criminal activity of the seller, rather I do not think there is much we can do. We have educate all people across as many social media platforms as possible. Have as many nets as needed Social media be a head ache, a little messy and disorganized. But out of this chaos there is an order of the ages - the IMCA education and the logo can only help I look at all of the FB groups as imitations of some kind of Meteoritic ecumenical movement So to keep my American Brethren happy in honor of their resent holiday E Pluribus Unum - Out of many social media groups one Cheers from OZ Ian IMCA 8013 __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Subject: Re: on ebay Gold and Copper Meteorite CAMPO
Hi All, If you look at the photo's carefully you will see the Gold is not part of the Campo nor is the copper, they are just laying in a lump where someone has tried to use an oxy acetylene torch to melt them on the surface! The other noticeable fault is that between the copper and gold there is obvious slag and not crusting. Welding for 45 years tells me this :) Cheers all Graham __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] AD - meteorites for sale (correct links)
Dear All, Sorry in y previous post, the links were cut. Please try these ones now. BENGUERIR: http://meteoriteshow.free.fr/meteoriteshow%20fra/pages%20navigation/pieces_en_vente-fra.htm (look at the bottom of the page) UNCLASSIFIED OCs: http://meteoriteshow.free.fr/meteoriteshow%20fra/pages%20navigation/pieces_en_vente_OCs-fra.htm CHERGACH: http://meteoriteshow.free.fr/meteoriteshow%20fra/pages%20navigation/pieces_en_vente_Chergach-fra.htm And do not hesitate to contact me! Kind regards. Frederic Beroud www.meteoriteshow.com IMCA #2491 __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
[meteorite-list] Meteorite Picture of the Day
Today's Meteorite Picture of the Day: Chelyabinsk Contributed by: Herbert Raab http://www.tucsonmeteorites.com/mpodmain.asp?DD=07/06/2015 __ Visit our Facebook page https://www.facebook.com/meteoritecentral and the Archives at http://www.meteorite-list-archives.com Meteorite-list mailing list Meteorite-list@meteoritecentral.com https://pairlist3.pair.net/mailman/listinfo/meteorite-list
