30/6/2011
Yet another three asteroids have hit mainstream news today,this is becoming a regular almost daily occurence now. You can see a pattern emerging of steady information is now being made common knowledge by the powers that control the media to normalize us to a future event in the same way they have with ufo,s.
This is the first story today from voice of americas website..
http://www.voanews.com/english/news/science-technology/Dawn-Speeds-Toward-Asteroid-Rendezvous-124506059.html
actual story
‘Dawn’ Spacecraft Speeds Toward Asteroid Rendezvous
A large NASA spacecraft named Dawn is barreling toward an orbital rendezvous next month with a huge space rock, and scientists are hoping the unprecedented encounter in the asteroid belt will shed new light on the history of the solar system.
Vesta is not just any asteroid. At a whopping 530 kilometers in diameter, Vesta is the second most massive object in the asteroid belt, a vast region between the planets Mars and Jupiter that’s filled with rocky debris of all sizes. Vesta is officially described as a “protoplanet” because it almost formed into a planet itself, like Mars or Earth.
And, next month, Vesta is getting a visitor – the Dawn spacecraft.
Robert Mase is the Dawn project manager at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California.
“After traveling for nearly four years, 1.7 billion miles [2.7 billion kilometers] and two laps around the Sun,” said Mase, “Dawn is finally on our final approach to Vesta.”
NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is expected to fall into orbit around Vesta on July 16th.
For navigation purposes, the spacecraft has sent back pictures of Vesta, and the images are far sharper than the ones from the earth-orbiting Hubble Space Telescope. Researchers are already expressing surprise at the asteroid’s extremely varied surface features, and the real science-gathering is not even expected to begin until August.
But how does a spacecraft get all the way from the Earth to the asteroid belt? Dawn relies partially on solar energy. The spacecraft has two solar panels, totaling about 16 meters in length. Tip-to-tip, Dawn’s wingspan is about 20 meters, which Mase says makes Dawn the largest interplanetary spacecraft NASA has ever launched. Plus, Dawn has three ion engines. That is a type of propulsion that might be familiar to science fiction fans, as an alien spacecraft used it in the 1960s American television series, Star Trek.
In that episode, Captain Kirk asked Mr. Spock to identify an alien spaceship that was approaching the starship Enterprise. Spock responded, “Configuration unidentified. Ion propulsion. High velocity, though of a unique technology.”
Ion engines are unique – and efficient – because they are powered by electrical fields, not chemical reactions.
NASA’s Mase says ion engines initially produce very low thrust, about equal to the weight of a single piece of paper in your hand.
“So this means we go from zero to 60 [miles per hour, the equivalent of 95 kilometers per hour] in about four days,” he explained. “But the ion engine can continue to thrust and accelerate, day after day, month after month, eventually achieving tremendous velocities over time.”
And Dawn has time.
The spacecraft will spend a year orbiting Vesta – the first prolonged visit to a main belt asteroid. It will map the mineral composition and features of Vesta’s surface, collect information about Vesta’s gravity field, and peer into a massive crater that likely exposes the asteroid’s interior.
Then Dawn will fire its engines again and climb away toward the dwarf planet Ceres, the largest object in the asteroid belt. It is expected to get there and drop into orbit in early 2015, and spend several months gathering data.
Mase says the Dawn mission is unusual because it is going to rendezvous with not one, but two, bodies in the solar system.
Researchers say the Vesta asteroid is no stranger to Earth. Chunks of the protoplanet have been knocked off during collisions with other space rocks, and scientists believe many of the meteorites that are found on Earth – perhaps one of out 20 – originated on Vesta.
This is the second story taken from upi.com
HANA, Hawaii, June 28 (UPI) — U.S. scientists say a newly discovered comet could provide an astronomical spectacle when it swings through the solar system in 2013.
The comet was detected by the asteroid-hunting Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii, which spotted the distant cosmic snowball in the overnight hours of June 5-6, SPACE.com reported.
Some astronomers have suggested it could become the celestial sight of the decade.
The comet’s closest approach to the sun, called its perihelion, will occur April 17, 2013, when it will be just 33.8 million miles from the sun and just 118 millions miles from Earth.
Scientists say orbital data suggests the object is a “new” comet in a parabolic orbit that has possibly never passed near the sun before.
However, astronomers caution that the orbital data is preliminary and cannot guarantee that comet C/2011 L4 will live up to expectations as a celestial light show.
Read more: http://www.upi.com/Science_News/2011/06/28/New-comet-could-put-on-2013-show/UPI-49071309299189/#ixzz1QkiJHrKM
This is the 3rd story taken from theaustralian.com
Aussie spots asteroid flyby Leigh Dayton From: The Australian June 30, 2011
AN amateur astronomer in Australia has captured some of the first images of an asteroid that narrowly missed Earth earlier this week. Not only did Peter Lake get images of asteroid 2011 MD, he did so using a rented 20-inch telescope in New Mexico, which he controlled by his iPhone from his home in Melbourne. Mr Lake rented his telescope time from Global Rent a Scope, a network of 14 research-grade instruments.
“It’s not every day that an asteroid misses by less than 3-5 Earth radii,” blogged Mr Lake, known in spacefan circles as AstroSwanny.
The radius of the Earth is roughly 6371km. The US space agency NASA estimated that the asteroid missed Earth by 12,230km on Tuesday morning.
While asteroid 2011 MD was the most recent flyby, it’s not the closest this year. NASA handed that record to asteroid 2011 CQ1, which came as close as 5500km. It was detected only 14 hours before it approached Earth.
Astronomers at NASA’s Near Earth Object Program, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, estimated an object the size of asteroid 2011 MD will pass close to Earth every six years on average.
A larger 400m asteroid, asteroid 2005 YU55, is expected to make a close return crossing on November 8, but it will be one of many objects tracked and recorded by JPL’s NEO program scientists this year. More than 75 space rocks are on the watch list between now and mid-October.
http://www.theaustralian.com.au/national-affairs/aussie-spots-asteroid-flyby/story-fn59niix-1226084472166
So as you can see they are conditioning us to the idea of comets asteroids and meteors, this can only be for one purpose the mainstream media only do story which their elitist editors who are controlled by the illuminati decide they should,keep your eyes and ears open for more asteroid stories which im sure will surface over the next few weeks!
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