The Asteroid/Comet Connection's
daily news journal about
asteroids, comets, and meteors

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs
  – meteor news & Rosetta mated to launcher
• Risk monitoring

Cover: Ten years ago today, the first asteroid satellite was discovered by Ann Harch as she examined images then still coming in from the Galileo spacecraft from its flyby of Koronis family Main Belt asteroid 243 Ida [link|alt] on 28 August 1993. At center left is a false color image of Ida (52 km.=32 miles long) with its satellite, now named 243 (1) Dactyl. In this composite, they float above the highest resolution Ida surface image and below the inset best image of Dactyl (1.6 km.=1 mile wide), shown pixel-doubled from the archived original. Images courtesy of NASA/JPL.

Meteor news:  ABC Australia is reporting today about a bright "slow moving shooting star travelling west to east, low on the horizon" just after 6am (AEDT), seen by "many people across western New South Wales . . . from as far as Lightning Ridge, Gulgong, Oberon and Young."

Utah's Deseret News has an article today, "'Meteorite' scores a strike," and the Salt Lake Tribune (SLT) has one today, too, about a Salt Lake Astronomical Society (SLAS) project that last Friday lowly and slowly "lobbed a bowling ball out of the sky in the first of a series of experiments they hope will help them identify meteorite craters in the Utah desert." Participant Patrick Wiggins has a report with pictures.

This story began with an SLT article on January 8th last year that brought an unhappy response from the Bureau of Land Management, as reported by the paper two days later, and catching the attention of the Guardian of England on January 26th.

Rosetta:  The Rosetta Journal has an entry today, "Rosetta Mated with its Launcher." Here in the final assembly building at Kourou, you see the spacecraft atop the Ariane 5 launcher where it was placed yesterday and "secured by nearly 200 bolts." The off-center nose cone of a solid-rocket booster can be seen at lower right. See also an Arianespace Mission Update from yesterday with more photos.

Image
©Copyright ESA

Risk monitoring 17 Feb.

The Tuesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC reports observation of 2004 CK39 from yesterday morning by Powell Observatory in Kansas and last night by KLENOT in the Czech Republic. Today NEODyS and JPL threw out their first impact solutions and posted a few new ones with higher but still low overall risk ratings.