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NEO interceptor mission concept, with kinetic impactor (left) and nuclear warhead options, each five-plus meters long. Not shown is a solar ablation option. The NASA MSFC proposal would have six such packages delivered by an Ares launch vehicle (seen in the background). See a report below. This image was composited at A/CC from images credited to Adams et al. at NASA MSFC.

Contents  on 8 August '07

• Minor-Object News -- five items
• Minor-Object Science -- two papers
• IAU Minor Planet Center
  • NEOCP Activity
  • New MPECs -- two MPECs
  • Observers -- fourteen observing facilities
• Impact Risk Monitoring -- nothing to report
• Chronology

Resources:

• Consolidated Risk Tables - CRT page
• Ephemerides for risk-rated objects
• Ephemerides for small asteroids

The latest news: framed access (best), RSS news feed (flags updates), or redirection - Note: A/CC has a main Web site and a backup site.

Navigation tips: Use the << and >> arrows on the menus for each regular section (Observers, Risks, etc.) to move to the previous and next day's news for that section. Use the Index menu item to access specific days this year through a calendar interface. And use the all-up news archive to access news from any time since A/CC began in early 2002. To keep track of what's new each day, watch the Chronology section.

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Minor-Object News  on 8 August '07

• Bits & pieces: The MPC Status Page reports that the Minor Planet Center will be off line tomorrow starting at 5:30am until perhaps 7am EDT (0930-1100 UTC) due to maintenance.
        David Dunham has posted a report about observations of the August 2nd 231 Vindobona stellar occultation, and has updated his list of coming mid-Atlantic occultation events, including by KBO 2002 PQ152 on August 19th, and, two days later in the Michigan/Ontario area, by 146 Lucina, which is suspected from a previous occultation to have a satellite.
        If you are a fan of meteor-wrongs, there is apparently another today from India -- "Meteorite falls in Jaipur house" at Sahara Samay. The word "sparkling" is always a bad sign when it comes to a description of a claimed meteorite. {permalink}
• Intercept concept: Last Friday we gave you a news link to a Flight International item about NASA's "'Armageddon' spacecraft." Further information came from Fox News in a report yesterday, "NASA Researchers Ponder Nuclear Asteroid Deflector," which included a link to a document (2.57Mb PDF) which was presented at the March 2007 Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C. This article reports that "Les Johnson, manager of interstellar propulsion research at the Marshall [Space Flight] Center [MSFC], took care to point out that the asteroid deflector is just an idea so far. 'There's no blueprints. There's no funding,' he said. 'At this stage, it's just one of the many possible uses for the Ares V vehicle.'"
        The PDF is a slide show on "Near Earth Object (NEO) Mitigation Options Using Exploration Technologies" using Ares I or Ares V launchers available after 2014 and 2020 respectively. It presents three "interceptor options" -- nuclear, kinetic, and solar ablation, but "Not suggesting these are the only viable options... Baseline architecture can potentially accommodate other mitigation options."
        Intercept would be preceded by an observation mission that would track weights it launched around the NEO to calculate mass and would use a lander to take seismic data from explosive charges to locate interior voids.
        The authors conclude that solar collectors "show promise" for deflecting objects up to one km. in diameter "if issues pertaining to long operation time can be overcome." The solar option is the only one given for small "rubble pile" asteroids, and for large icy objects the solar or nuclear options are shown in the author's "conjectural" decision tree. For near-solid small asteroids, they say that kinetic interceptors "may be effective ... but require 8-10 years warning time," while the nuclear option can deflect NEOs of 100-500-meter size "with 2 years or more time before impact," and larger objects with "5+ years warning." See some concept imagery above. {permalink}
• "Two Telescopes Combine to Probe Young 'Family' of Stars," CfA 8 Aug. - Quote: "The Gould's Belt Survey will study all prominent star-forming regions within about 1,600 light-years of Earth. Taken together, these regions comprise a ring of molecular clouds and associated young stars known as the Gould's Belt. Data from Spitzer will be combined with observations from the James Clerk Maxwell telescope and the Herschel Space Observatory to better characterize Gould's Belt, which was first described by astronomer Benjamin Gould in 1879." {permalink}
• "New Microscopes Aid Wesleyan Researchers," Wesleyan Connection 7 Aug. - Quote: "In the past six months, the [Advanced Instrumentation Center] has acquired a new, state-of-the art scanning electron microscope (SEM) for 3-D imaging, and a transmission electron microscope for 2-D sample images... Jim Greenwood, research assistant professor of earth and environmental science, has used it to examine mineral and element content in meteorites." {permalink}
• "Prairie Meteorite Search coming to city," Melfort Journal 8 Aug. - Quote: "The Prairie Meteorite Search will be in Melfort on August 13 and will also make stops in Wadena, and Humboldt." {permalink}

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Minor-Object Science  on 8 August '07

• "Evidence for dust accumulation just outside the orbit of Venus" by Leinert, Ch. with B. Moster, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 8 Aug. - Quote: "To contribute to the knowledge of dynamics of interplanetary dust we are searching for structures in the spatial distribution of interplanetary dust near the orbit of Venus. To this end we study the radial gradient of zodiacal light brightness, as observed by the zodiacal light photometer on board the Helios space probes on several orbits from 1975 to 1979... With respect to the general increase of zodiacal light brightness towards the Sun, the data show an excess brightness of a few percent for positions of the Helios space probe just outside the orbit of Venus. We consider this as evidence for a dust ring associated with the orbit of Venus, somewhat similar to that found earlier along the Earth's orbit." {permalink}
• "Cluster Formation in Contracting Molecular Clouds" by Huff, Eric with Steven Stahler, abstract & PDF at arXiv.org 8 Aug. - Quote: "We explore, through a simplified, semi-analytic model, the formation of dense clusters containing massive stars... We also offer an empirical prescription ... for low-mass star formation in our contracting cloud. Applying this prescription to the Orion Nebula Cluster, we are able to reproduce the accelerating star formation previously inferred from the distribution of member stars in the HR diagram. The cloud turns about 10 percent of its mass into low-mass stars before becoming dynamically unstable. Over a cloud free-fall time, this figure drops to 1 percent, consistent with the overall star formation efficiency of molecular clouds in the Galaxy." {permalink}

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NEOCP Activity  on 8 August '07

The MPC's NEO Confirmation Page is currently empty

The NEOCP is currently empty. There was one listing noted earlier today.

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New MPECs  on 8 August '07

Minor Planet Electronic Circulars

As of last check at 2356 UTC, there have been two MPECs issued today from the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts.

• MPEC 2007-P20 time-stamped "06:07 UT" - Daily Orbit Update - see below
• MPEC 2007-P21 time-stamped "16:31 UT" - 2007 PF2

MPEC 2007-P21 - "16:31 UT" - 2007 PF2

• K07P02F   2007 PF2 (small asteroid, Earth MOID=0.4 LD, H=24.6 ~41m) was discovered at 1344 UT 07 Aug. by the Siding Spring Survey (SSS), which observed it at Aug. 7.57-60p4, 7.78p2, and 8.55p3. The discovery was confirmed by Tiki Obs. (Aug. 8.40-41p2).

<< DOU on 8 Aug. '07 >>  MPEC 2007-P20 - "06:07 UT" - Daily Orbit Update

• K07N04S   2007 NS4 (arc=23 days, H=19.0 ~537m) from SSS (Aug. 7.57-59p4)
• K07L32R   2007 LR32 (arc=75 days, H=17.2 ~1.23 km) from Hamamatsu-Yuto Obs. (Aug. 6.54-59p14 & 7.70-72p8), Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 6.93-95p7), and Modra Obs. (Aug. 7.93-94p3)
• K07L08V   2007 LV8 (arc=55 days, H=20.2 ~309m) from Verona Obs. (Aug. 5.84-86p4)
• K07F01H   2007 FH1 (arc=143 days, H=20.5 ~269m) from Mt. John Obs. (Aug. 7.44-46p4)
• K07DA3T   2007 DT103 (arc=163 days, H=19.1 ~513m) from Modra Obs. (Aug. 7.01-02p4 & 8.01-03p6) and Hamamatsu-Yuto Obs. (Aug. 7.74-76p11)
• K07C15H   2007 CH15 (arc=181 days, H=21.5 ~170m) from Great Shefford Obs. (Aug. 8.00-01p3)
• K05G00G   2005 GG (arc=3 opp, H=16.0 ~2.14 km, q=0.694 AU) from SSS (Aug. 7.53-55p3)
• K03O14R   2003 OR14 (arc=4 opp, H=16.4 ~1.78 km) from Remanzacco Obs. (Aug. 4.99-00p3)
• K02U00N   2002 UN (Q=4.838 AU, arc=2 opp, H=17.2 ~1.23 km) from NEAT's USAF Haleakala telescope (2002 Oct. 31.46-47p2)
• K02N04N   2002 NN4 (arc=4 opp, H=19.9 ~355m) from Crni Vrh Obs. (Aug. 7.03-06p4)
• 89355   89355 2001 VS78 from SSS (Aug. 7.61-64p4)
• 87309   87309 2000 QP from Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 6.86-92p6)
• 86324   86324 1999 WA2 from Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 6.80-83p5), Drebach Obs. (Aug. 6.87-88p5), and Remanzacco Obs. (Aug. 6.89p3)
• 85275   85275 1994 LY from Drebach Obs. (Aug. 6.89-90p5) and Hamamatsu-Yuto Obs. (Aug. 7.44-47p13)
• 66959   66959 1999 XO35 from Boambee Obs. (Aug. 6.36-40p2, 6.48p1, 7.34-36p2 & 7.40p1)
• 24443   24443 2000 OG from Santa Mama Obs. (Aug. 6.82-84p4)
• 01943   1943 Anteros (1973 EC) from SSS (Aug. 7.39p3)
• 01685   1685 Toro (1948 OA) from SSS (Aug. 7.45-48p4)
• 00433   433 Eros (1898 DQ) from Montana Blanca Obs. (Aug. 5.96p1)

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Observers  on 8 August '07

Fourteen observing facilities appear in today's MPECs.

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Impact Risk Monitoring  on 8 August '07

At last check (NEODyS and JPL at 2356 UTC) there was no risk monitoring news to report yet today. See the CRT for activity in the last month.

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Chronology  on 8 August '07

Times are UTC for when the items were noted or added by Major News.