[meteorite-list] Mars Odyssey THEMIS Images: August 24-28, 2015
MARS ODYSSEY THEMIS IMAGES August 24-28, 2015 o Candor Chasma (24 August 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150824a o Gusev Crater (25 August 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150825a o Ejecta Lobes (26 August 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150826a o Ravius Valles (27 August 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150827a o Galaxias Fossae (28 August 2015) http://themis.asu.edu/zoom-20150828a All of the THEMIS images are archive here: http://themis.asu.edu/latest.html NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory manages the 2001 Mars Odyssey mission for NASA's Office of Space Science, Washington, D.C. The Thermal Emission Imaging System (THEMIS) was developed by Arizona State University, Tempe, in co.oration with Raytheon Santa Barbara Remote Sensing. The THEMIS investigation is led by Dr. Philip Christensen at Arizona State University. Lockheed Martin Astronautics, Denver, is the prime contractor for the Odyssey project, and developed and built the orbiter. Mission operations are conducted jointly from Lockheed Martin and from JPL, a division of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. __ 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] University of Arizona Cameras Give Sight to NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission
http://www.asteroidmission.org/?post_type=latest-news&p=619 University of Arizona Cameras Give Sight to NASA's OSIRIS-REx Mission August 24, 2015 >From over two million kilometers away, a powerful camera on NASA's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft will "see" the tiny asteroid Bennu for the first time, helping to guide the spacecraft to its destination. Once there, its versatile focus mechanism will transform the camera from a telescope to a microscope, enabling it to examine tiny rocks while only hundreds of meters from the asteroid's surface. UA's completed camera suite, OCAMS, sits on a test bench that mimics its arrangement on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The three cameras that compose the instrument are the eyes of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. They will map the asteroid Bennu, help choose a sample site, and ensure that the sample is correctly stowed on the spacecraft. Credit: University of Arizona/Symeon Platts UA's completed camera suite, OCAMS, sits on a test bench that mimics its arrangement on the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The three cameras that compose the instrument are the eyes of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission. They will map the asteroid Bennu, help choose a sample site, and ensure that the sample is correctly stowed on the spacecraft. Credit: University of Arizona/Symeon Platts This camera, called PolyCam, is part of an innovative suite of three cameras designed and built by the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL). Together, these cameras will enable the OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return mission to map the asteroid Bennu, choose a sample site, and ensure that the sample is correctly stowed on the spacecraft. The University of Arizona delivered the OSIRIS-REx CAMera Suite (OCAMS) instrument to Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Littleton, Colorado, today for integration onto the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. "The OCAMS instrument's three cameras, PolyCam, MapCam and SamCam, will be our mission's eyes at Bennu," said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona. "OCAMS will provide the imagery we need to complete our mission while the spacecraft is at the asteroid." The largest of the three cameras, PolyCam, is small telescope that will acquire the first images of Bennu from two million kilometers distance and provide high resolution imaging of the sample site. MapCam will search for satellites and outgassing plumes around Bennu, map the asteroid in color, and provide images to construct topographic maps. SamCam will document the sample acquisition event and the collected sample. "The most important goal of these cameras is to maximize our ability to successfully return a sample," said OCAMS instrument scientist Bashar Rizk. "Our mission requires a lot of activities during one trip - navigation, mapping, reconnaissance, sample site selection, and sampling. While we are there, we need the ability to continuously see what is happening around the asteroid in order to make real-time decisions." The OSIRIS-REx mission is scheduled to launch in September 2016 to study Bennu, a near-Earth and potentially hazardous asteroid. After rendezvousing with Bennu in 2018, the spacecraft will survey the asteroid, obtain a sample, and return it to Earth. OSIRIS-REx is the first U.S. mission to sample an asteroid, and will return the largest sample from space since the Apollo lunar missions. Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules that may have seeded life on Earth. Bennu also has a relatively high probability of impacting the Earth late in the 22nd century. OSIRIS-REx's investigation will inform future efforts to develop a mission to mitigate an impact, should one be required. "This is another major step in preparing for our mission," said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. "With the delivery of OCAMS to the spacecraft contractor, we will have our full complement of cameras and spectrometers," While SamCam and MapCam were made exclusively by LPL, PolyCam's optics and structure were made through a joint program between LPL and the University of Arizona's College of Optical Sciences. PolyCam's unique focus mechanism is also the basis of LPL's first patent application. NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona, Tucson. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in
[meteorite-list] NASA's New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target (2014 MU69)
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-s-new-horizons-team-selects-potential-kuiper-belt-flyby-target
NASA's New Horizons Team Selects Potential Kuiper Belt Flyby Target
August 28, 2015
NASA has selected the potential next destination for the New Horizons
mission to visit after its historic July 14 flyby of the Pluto system.
The destination is a small Kuiper Belt object (KBO) known as 2014 MU69
that orbits nearly a billion miles beyond Pluto.
New Horizons flyby
This remote KBO was one of two identified as potential destinations and
the one recommended to NASA by the New Horizons team. Although NASA has
selected 2014 MU69 as the target, as part of its normal review process
the agency will conduct a detailed assessment before officially approving
the mission extension to conduct additional science.
"Even as the New Horizon's spacecraft speeds away from Pluto out into
the Kuiper Belt, and the data from the exciting encounter with this new
world is being streamed back to Earth, we are looking outward to the next
destination for this intrepid explorer," said John Grunsfeld, astronaut
and chief of the NASA Science Mission Directorate at the agency headquarters
in Washington. "While discussions whether to approve this extended mission
will take place in the larger context of the planetary science portfolio,
we expect it to be much less expensive than the prime mission while still
providing new and exciting science."
Like all NASA missions that have finished their main objective but seek
to do more exploration, the New Horizons team must write a proposal to
the agency to fund a KBO mission. That proposal - due in 2016 - will
be evaluated by an independent team of experts before NASA can decide
about the go-ahead.
Early target selection was important; the team needs to direct New Horizons
toward the object this year in order to perform any extended mission with
healthy fuel margins. New Horizons will perform a series of four maneuvers
in late October and early November to set its course toward 2014 MU69
- nicknamed "PT1" (for "Potential Target 1") - which it expects
to reach on January 1, 2019. Any delays from those dates would cost precious
fuel and add mission risk.
"2014 MU69 is a great choice because it is just the kind of ancient
KBO, formed where it orbits now, that the Decadal Survey desired us to
fly by," said New Horizons Principal Investigator Alan Stern, of the
Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) in Boulder, Colorado. "Moreover,
this KBO costs less fuel to reach [than other candidate targets], leaving
more fuel for the flyby, for ancillary science, and greater fuel reserves
to protect against the unforeseen."
New Horizons was originally designed to fly beyond the Pluto system and
explore additional Kuiper Belt objects. The spacecraft carries extra hydrazine
fuel for a KBO flyby; its communications system is designed to work from
far beyond Pluto; its power system is designed to operate for many more
years; and its scientific instruments were designed to operate in light
levels much lower than it will experience during the 2014 MU69 flyby.
The 2003 National Academy of Sciences' Planetary Decadal Survey ("New
Frontiers in the Solar System") strongly recommended that the first
mission to the Kuiper Belt include flybys of Pluto and small KBOs, in
order to sample the diversity of objects in that previously unexplored
region of the solar system. The identification of PT1, which is in a completely
different class of KBO than Pluto, potentially allows New Horizons to
satisfy those goals.
But finding a suitable KBO flyby target was no easy task. Starting a search
in 2011 using some of the largest ground-based telescopes on Earth, the
New Horizons team found several dozen KBOs, but none were reachable within
the fuel supply available aboard the spacecraft.
The powerful Hubble Space Telescope came to the rescue in summer 2014,
discovering five objects, since narrowed to two, within New Horizons'
flight path. Scientists estimate that PT1 is just under 30 miles (about
45 kilometers) across; that's more than 10 times larger and 1,000 times
more massive than typical comets, like the one the Rosetta mission is
now orbiting, but only about 0.5 to 1 percent of the size (and about 1/10,000th
the mass) of Pluto. As such, PT1 is thought to be like the building blocks
of Kuiper Belt planets such as Pluto.
New Horizons Path
Unlike asteroids, KBOs have been heated only slightly by the Sun, and
are thought to represent a well preserved, deep-freeze sample of what
the outer solar system was like following its birth 4.6 billion years
ago.
"There's so much that we can learn from close-up spacecraft observations
that we'll never learn from Earth, as the Pluto flyby demonstrated so
spectacularly," said New Horizons science team member John Spencer,
also of SwRI. "The detailed images and other data that New Horizons
could obtain from a KBO flyby will revolutionize o
[meteorite-list] Dawn Journal - August 21, 2015
http://dawnblog.jpl.nasa.gov/2015/08/21/dawn-journal-august-21/ Dawn Journal by Dr. Marc Rayman August 21, 2015 Dear Unhesidawntingly Enthusiastic Readers, An ambitious explorer from Earth is gaining the best views ever of dwarf planet Ceres. More than two centuries after its discovery, this erstwhile planet is now being mapped in great detail by Dawn. The spacecraft is engaged in some of the most intensive observations of its entire mission at Ceres, using its camera and other sensors to scrutinize the alien world with unprecedented clarity and completeness. At an average altitude of 915 miles (1,470 kilometers) and traveling at 400 mph (645 kilometers per hour), Dawn completes an orbit every 19 hours. The pioneer will be here for more than two months before descending to its final orbit. The complex spiral maneuver down from the second mapping orbit at 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers) went so well that Dawn arrived in this third mapping orbit on Aug. 13, which was slightly ahead of schedule. (Frequent progress of its descent, and reports on the ongoing work in the new orbit, are available here and on Twitter @NASA_Dawn.) It began this third mapping phase on schedule at 9:53:40 p.m. PDT on Aug. 17. Map of Ceres with named craters We had a detailed preview of the plans last year when Dawn was more than six thousand times farther from Ceres than it is today. (For reasons almost as old as Ceres itself, this phase is also known as the high altitude mapping orbit, or HAMO, although we have seen that it is the second lowest of the four mapping orbits.) Now let's review what will happen, including a change mission planners have made since then. The precious pictures and other data have just begun to arrive on Earth, and it is too soon to say anything about the latest findings, but stand by for stunning new discoveries. Actually, you could get pictures about as good as Dawn's are now with a telescope 217 times the diameter of Hubble Space Telescope. An alternative is to build your own interplanetary spaceship, travel through the depths of space to the only dwarf planet in the inner solar system, and look out the window. Or go to the Ceres image gallery. Dawn has already gained fabulous perspectives on this mysterious world from its first and second mapping orbits. Now at one third the altitude of the mapping campaign that completed in June, its view is three times as sharp. (Exploring the cosmos is so cool!) That also means each picture takes in a correspondingly smaller area, so more pictures are needed now to cover the entire vast and varied landscape. At this height, Dawn's camera sees a square about 88 miles (140 kilometers) on a side, less than one percent of the more than one million square miles (nearly 2.8 million square kilometers). The orbital parameters were chosen carefully so that as Ceres rotates on its axis every nine hours (one Cerean day), Dawn will be able to photograph nearly all of the surface in a dozen orbital loops. his image, taken by NASA's Dawn spacecraft, shows the brightest spots on dwarf planet Ceres from an altitude of 2,700 miles (4,400 kilometers). The image, with a resolution of 1,400 feet (410 meters) per pixel, was taken on June 24, 2015. When Dawn explored the giant protoplanet Vesta from comparable orbits (HAMO1 in 2011 and HAMO2 in 2012), it pointed its scientific instruments at the illuminated ground whenever it was on the dayside. Every time its orbit took it over the nightside, it turned to point its main antenna at Earth to radio its findings to NASA's Deep Space Network. As we explained last year, however, that is not the plan at Ceres, because of the failure of two of the ship's reaction wheels. (By electrically changing the speed at which these gyroscope-like devices rotate, Dawn can turn or stabilize itself in the zero-gravity conditions of spaceflight.) We discussed in January that the flight team has excogitated innovative methods to accomplish and even exceed the original mission objectives regardless of the condition of the wheels, even the two operable ones (which will not be used until the final mapping orbit). Dawn no longer relies on reaction wheels, although when it left Earth in 2007, they were deemed indispensable. The spacecraft's resilience (which is a direct result of the team's resourcefulness) is remarkable! One of the many ingredients in the recipe for turning the potentially devastating loss of the wheels into a solid plan for success has been to rotate the spacecraft less frequently. Therefore, sometimes Dawn will wait patiently for half an orbit (almost 9.5 hours) as it flies above ground cloaked in the deep darkness of night, its instruments pointed at terrain they cannot detect. Other times, it will keep its antenna fixed on Earth without even glancing at the sunlit scenery below, because it can capture the views on other revolutions. This strategy conserves hydrazine, the conv
[meteorite-list] Mars Rover Opportunity Update: Jul 21-30, 2015
OPPORTUNITY UPDATE: Beginning to Explore 'Marathon Valley', sols 4085-4093, July 21, 2015-July 30, 2015 Opportunity has entered 'Marathon Valley' on the west rim of Endeavour Crater and has begun the search for clay minerals. Previously, the project tested returning to using Flash memory for data storage. The Flash exhibited instability after a few sols, so the project returned Opportunity to operating in RAM-only mode on Sol 4085 (July 21, 2015). Over the next two sols a 360-degree Navigation Camera (Navcam) panorama was collected. On Sol 4088 (July 24, 2015), the rover resumed contact science with the collection of a Microscopic Imager (MI) mosaic of a surface target followed by the placement of the Alpha Particle X-ray Spectrometer (APXS) on the same for a multi-hour integration. Additional MI images were collected on the next sol to complete the mosaic. Atmospheric observations were also made as part of this multi-sol plan. On Sol 4091, (July 28, 2015), the Rock Abrasion Tool (RAT) was used to brush the surface target to prepare it for further investigation. This was followed by another MI mosaic and the placement of the APXS. On Sol 4093 (July 30, 2015), an offset MI mosaic was collected and the APXS placed on the offset target. Other than the Flash, Opportunity is in good health. As of Sol 4092 (July 29, 2015), the solar array energy production was 424 watt-hours with an atmospheric opacity (Tau) of 0.695 and a solar array dust factor of 0.611. Total odometry is 26.40 miles (42.48 kilometers), more than a marathon. __ 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- No Reserve Lunars and more
Hello all I have another auction run coming to an end in a few hours, great deals to be had on Lunar, CM2, irons http://www.ebay.com/sch/nakhladog/m.html Rob Wesel Nakhla Dog Meteorites www.nakhladogmeteorites.com www.facebook.com/Nakhla.Dog.Meteorites www.facebook.com/Rob.Wesel __ 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-Auctions Ending Today
I have some auctions ending today including a fresh howardite with flowlines, a complete 30g lunar, New Orleans, Shelburne, D'Orbigny, Juvinas, and others. Please have a look here: http://stores.ebay.com/Mile-High-Meteorites/ Thanks, Matt Morgan Mile High Meteorites __ 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: La Grange Contributed by: Anne Black http://www.tucsonmeteorites.com/mpodmain.asp?DD=08/30/2015 __ 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
