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

Today's issue status: done, updated

• News briefs – meteor news, space-based surveillance, bits & pieces
• Risk monitoring – NEODyS & JPL have pulled 2004 MO7, Wednesday JPL pulled 2004 OT11

Cover: The Ulysses solar polar mission wasn't intended to observe comets, but it has encountered their long tails beginning with C/1996 B2 (Hyakutake) on 1 May 1996, as explained by the Hyakutake encounter pages at Imperial College, and as depicted in this art commissioned by the U.K. Particle Physics and Astronomy Research Council (PPARC) from space artist David Hardy. A European Space Agency news release on February 9th of this year reported that Ulysses had also crossed the extended tails of C/1991 T1 (McNaught-Hartley) and C/2000 S5 (SOHO) (the former in October 2000, see February 25th news). ESA has versions of the original image, which is ©Copyright David A. Hardy/PPARC. (Note: The actual antenna booms extend well beyond the frame here, which uses an early artwork version.)

Meteor news:  Space.com has another Perseid meteor shower preview today, ahead of next week's peak.

The Independent of South Africa noted yesterday that “across the country people have been reporting sightings of shooting stars,” which it attributes to the southern Delta Aquarid meteor shower.

Further to Tuesday's news about the great U.K. meteorite search, icNetwork has articles from yesterday about the search in Scotland, and from August 4th about Wales, saying searchers will be looking for more pieces in “Beddgelert, where a 734 gram meteorite crashed through the roof of the Prince Llewelyn Hotel in September, 1949.”

Space-based surveillance:  An article in the University of Westeron Ontario (UWO) August 3rd Western News telling about the 16-20 August Meteoroids 2004 conference in London, Ontario (“the first time a meteoroid conference like this has been held in Canada for 25 years”), includes a quote from Peter Brown that “There'll be presentations on the new Canadian micro satellite that's looking at asteroids.” Not yet it isn't, but the listed talks do include “The Near Earth Space Surveillance (NESS) Project of the NEOsat Microsatellite Mission will Discover Low Delta V Near-Earth Asteroids

by Observing at Low Solar Elongations,” by Alan Hildebrand and many others including Pete Worden, Paul Chodas, and Karri Muinonen. This is the first sign A/CC has seen in years that this proposal might still have some life. It was based on what has become the very successful Canadian MOST space telescope. (See MOST news and updates with NESS links, and reports from Astronomy.com July 8th and Sky & Telescope today about MOST's work.)

Bits & pieces:  The Christian Science Monitor has an August 4th article about space law and future property rights for the Moon, Mars, asteroids, etc. And the Space Resources Roundtable has circulated information by E-mail (not yet on the SRR Web site) about its 2004 meeting to be held 1-3 November at the Colorado School of Mines in Golden. October 1st is the deadline for abstracts on “developing and utilizing the resources of space, including the Moon, Mars and asteroids.” ^[ ] The MPC Discovery Circumstances pages were updated yesterday with five changes in credits but no new asteroid namings or numberings. ^[ ] A UPI wire story at SpaceDaily today reports “NASA's new cost figures for the shuttle represent a severe setback for any Hubble rescue plans.” ^[ ] Astrobiology Magazine has a nice piece from August 3rd about departing spacecraft looking back at the Earth-Moon system, as Rosetta did recently (August 3rd news).

Risk monitoring 6 August

The Friday Daily Orbit Update MPEC reports that David Tholen's team caught 2004 MO7 from Mauna Kea in Hawaii on July 21st. Today both NEODyS and JPL removed this object, which is estimated at about a half-mile wide.

This is only the fifth time that 2004 MO7 has been reported, and the first sighting since June 20th. It was posted to the JPL and NEODyS risk pages on 29-30 June (see June 30th news), and A/CC took it off its daily SRT and CRT tables after July 20th when no new observations had been reported for a month.

Update: David Tholen tells A/CC that the July 21st work was done with the University of Hawaii 2.24m telescope.

Wednesday the 4th:  The Wednesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC had observations of 2004 OT11 from the previous morning from Powell Observatory in Kansas, and Wednesday JPL removed its last impact solution for this kilometer-size object.