Blog Archive

Hunting Asteroids from a Field in Kansas

Posted by Bruce Betts on 2012/06/15 06:33 CDT

TPS Shoemaker NEO Grant Winner Gary Hug hunts near Earth objects from his back yard in Kansas. NPR's Morning Edition picked up on this fascinating story.

Chang'e 1 or 2 Moon orbiter artist's concept

Update on yesterday's post about Chang'E 2 going to Toutatis

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/15 11:29 CDT | 3 comments

I have a couple of updates on my post from yesterday: confirmation that Chang'E 2 is indeed gone from L2, and more specifics on encounter dates with Toutatis.

Chang'E 2 has departed Earth's neighborhood for.....asteroid Toutatis!?

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/14 07:53 CDT | 1 comments

According to a Chinese spaceflight forum, Chang'E program chief scientist Ouyang Ziyuan recently announced that Chang'E 2 has departed the Sun-Earth L2 point and is now en route to asteroid 4179 Toutatis!

Steins, a jewel in the asteroid belt

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/06/13 09:00 CDT | 1 comments

A notice of some new names for features on asteroid 2867 Steins inspired me to dig up the data set from the September 5, 2008 Rosetta flyby and explore it to see what it contained.

Cheat sheets for Vesta's craters and Dawn's Vesta timeline

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/19 01:38 CDT

I made myself a cheat sheet to many of Vesta's distinctive-looking craters, and also wrote down a list of the major dates in the timeline of Dawn's exploration of Vesta.

Pretty Pictures: Amazing Asteroid Lutetia

Posted by Emily Lakdawalla on 2012/04/10 02:00 CDT

A long-awaited data set is finally public (well, long-awaited by me, at least). The Rosetta team has now published their data from the July 10, 2010 flyby of asteroid (21) Lutetia. This data set is absolutely stunning, and my friends in the amateur image processing community wasted no time in creating art out of it.