Want to See an Asteroid Up Close?
This space stuff is cool huh?
Too bad the government doesn’t think so any more. I think the privatization of the space program will turn out to be much better anyway. You can get a lot more done without all that red tape.
Did you know a asteroid just past us pretty close on mother’s day?
Read about that here: Earth, Asteroid 2012 JU Come Within 119,000 Miles Of Each Other
from gizmag.com
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft unlocks secrets of giant asteroid
After becoming the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in July 2011, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has spent the last 10 months orbiting said object – the giant asteroid Vesta. During that period it has captured more than 20,000 images of Vesta and a multitude of data from different wavelengths of radiation. What it reveals is an asteroid that in many ways shares more in common with a small planet or Earth’s moon than it does with another asteroid.
With a mean diameter of around 326 miles (525 km), Vesta is one of the largest asteroids in the Solar System and the second most massive after Ceres. Formed in a similar way to the terrestrial planets and Earth’s moon, Vesta boasts a geologic complexity that scientists attribute to a process that separated it into a crust, mantle and iron core with a radius of around 68 miles (110 km) some 4.56 billion years ago.
read more here
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