At this moment, the NEAR-SHOEMAKER home page shows four pictures from
the landing. They are labeled with the altitudes in meters and the
equivalents are given in feet parenthetically. The NEAR team requests
that interested parties use the mirror sites if possible:
http://near-mirror.boulder.swri.edu/
http://near2.jhuapl.edu
http://near-mirror.jpl.nasa.gov
What is really exciting to me, at least, is that the landing was soft
and the satellite is still communicating! Some of the data I'm seeing
indicates that N-S went from an altitude of 1 km to 400 m in 12 minutes,
which of course works out to 50 m/min or less than 1 m/s. Now, that's
gentle!
Jim
Duncan Bath wrote:
>
> In the Peterborough Examiner (Canada) of Feb. 13, there is a newsitem
> "Spacecraft lands on asteroid". Accompanying the article, is a [NASA] photo
> "taken from 3,773 feet above the asteroid's surface." One wonders: was
> this 3,773 feet a [gratuitous] translation from 1,150 m or was this
> particular number of feet just a coincidence? Incidentally, 1,150 m is just
> over a kilometre.
>
> Did AP have anything to do with the use of obsolete units in its news
> story?
> Duncan
> DT Bath, 861 Kensington Dr., Peterborough ON K9J 6J8
> (705)743-4297
--
Metric Methods(SM) "Don't be late to metricate!"
James R. Frysinger, CAMS http://www.metricmethods.com/
10 Captiva Row e-mail: [EMAIL PROTECTED]
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