Sean R. Lynch wrote:
Donald Qualls wrote:
David Weinshenker wrote:
From arocket... -dw
Paul Breed wrote:
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/
That's a very low velocity object with a small estimated diameter -- I
wonder if it isn't another "lost" upper stage that's been in an
almost-congruent orbit for a long time and just now getting
synchronized again enough to come close. The white paint on those
rocket stages makes them look much, much larger than they are if you
have an assumption they're almost black like a chondrite asteroid.
I've started running the orbit backwards. I've found a close encounter
on April 15, 1998 so far. I'll keep going.
One of the pages referred to earlier showed close encounters in 1973 and
1957 as well -- we weren't launching anything that could get into a
solar orbit in 1957, but IIRC upper stages from planetary missions of
the early 1970s weren't routinely tracked well enough to predict the
long term orbits in that time frame. The bad news is, the inclination
seems a little steep for a booster unless it was a Lunar mission -- and
not steep enough for the Solar Polar, which is too new in any case. Of
course, a close encounter in 1998 could have seriously perturbed the
orbit...
Say, wait -- Lunar mission, 1998 -- Clementine was a Lunar polar
orbiter. What happened to that booster??
It sounds as if we might find out by early April of 2029, if not before;
by then, the object should be close enough to start to show a disk, if
it is in fact 400 m in diameter. Meantime, I wonder if the Hubble WF/PC
would still resolve it? It can pick up features as small as 100 km at
the distance of Jupiter, but this must be more than an AU away now,
eight months after its last opposition. They might have to wait until
April to get a good image...
--
The challenge to the photographer is to command the medium, to use
whatever current equipment and technology furthers his creative
objectives, without sacrificing the ability to make his own decisions.
-- Ansel Adams
Donald Qualls, aka The Silent Observer http://silent1.home.netcom.com
Opinions expressed are my own -- take them for what they're worth
and don't expect them to be perfect.
_______________________________________________
ERPS-list mailing list
[email protected]
http://lists.erps.org/mailman/listinfo/erps-list
