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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – Mars moons mission, meteor news & precovery news
• Risk monitoring
  – NEODyS has removed 2004 FU4 & 2004 FN18
  – JPL has removed 2004 FH, posted 2004 FE31
    & downgraded 2004 FU4 to TS-0 by JPL

Cover: While hunting supernovae, Juan Lacruz at La Canada Observatory in Spain caught Main Belt asteroid 28728 2000 GX121 with galaxy M86 on March 20th.

Mars moons:  The Royal Astronomical Society has a news release today, "A UK-led micro-mission to the moons of Mars?" It tells of a proposed ESA mission to orbit Phobos and Deimos and to land on one of them, and includes as one of its objectives to "Establish (or disprove) a link between the moons and known asteroid types," as it is believed the two are captured asteroids. The British National Space Centre (BNSC) has funded a study of the mission, proposed by QinetiQ and "code named" M-PADS (Mars Phobos and Deimos Survey). The news release links include a URL for video frames from the 1988 Phobos Mission at the Russian Planetary Data Image Processing Lab (IKI IPL), which also has a page with comet 1P/Halley images and nucleus and jet visualizations from the Vega Mission's March 1986 flyby.

Precovery news:  MPEC 2004-G07 today C. Brewer and J.D. Mendenhall with Giuseppi Forti had located 2003 YE45 in plate scans from Mt. Palomar from 12 September 1989 and 21 August 1993. Until now

observations hadn't been available earlier than the December 21st discovery. This PHO is estimated from its brightness to be a bit under 900 meters/yards wide, and was listed with impact solutions from December 23rd until New Year's Day. The update MPEC also repeats today's Daily Orbit Update MPEC in presenting the first new observations of 2004 YE45 since January 22nd, from March 30th at Mt. John Observatory in New Zealand and with the Siding Spring Survey 1.0m ANU telescope in Australia.

Meteor news:  The Australian Townsville Bulletin tells tomorrow that "Experts now believe the reported sightings of flaming fireballs falling through the sky on Wednesday night were [not just] one large fireball." A pilot reports one after 7pm and another after 8pm, and backs up an earlier account of an apparent "large, orange glow at the point of impact" from the first as seen from the air (see "Queensland event" news thread).

Another bright meteor Quicktime movie (413Kb, temporary link) has been posted from the Albuquerque, New Mexico Sandia All Sky Camera, from Wednesday night, the fifth since March 6th.

Risk monitoring 2 April

The Friday Daily Orbit Update MPEC (DOU), with two days of data, includes observations of three of the objects listed with impact solutions.

2004 FU4 is reported from early on March 24th from Tim Spahr using the Whipple Observatory 1.2m telescope in Arizona, from the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope in Arizona Wednesday morning, and yesterday from Tenagra II Observatory in Arizona and the Siding Spring Survey (SSS) 1.0m ANU telescope in Australia. Before midnight in Pasadena but early on the 2nd UTC, JPL updated its 2004 FU4 risk assessment using some of this data received ahead of the DOU, cutting its impact solutions from 13 in the years 2010-2095 down to just one in October 2085 — the solution that had been at Torino Scale 1 (TS-1, a routine alert calling for "special monitoring") and now rated at TS-0 ("no likely consequences"). This morning JPL slightly raised its ratings on that solution, and NEODyS removed its last solutions for 2004 FU4.

2004 FE31 is reported from Wednesday morning from Tenagra II and the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope,

and from Desert Moon Observatory in New Mexico, and from the SSS 1.0m ANU telescope yesterday. JPL posted FE31 overnight based on some of the data received ahead of the DOU. With all the DOU data, NEODyS and JPL have updated on 2004 FE31. NEODyS has cut its solution count from 41 to 25 and slightly raised its overall risk ratings. JPL has gone

risk monitoring continued >>

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from one to seven solutions and slightly raised its FE31 ratings, which are lower than those at NEODyS.

2004 FN18 is reported from Mt. John Observatory Tuesday in New Zealand, and from yesterday from Tenagra II and the SSS ANU 1.0m telescope. Only NEODyS had this object listed, and today removed all solutions.

Apparently without new observational data, JPL also revised its risk assessments overnight for the small objects 2004 FH and 2003 DW10, removing its last solution for 2004 FH and cutting its 2003 DW10 solution count from four to three, all very low rated.

The Minor Planet Center Last Observation page is showing that Powell Observatory in Kansas reported 2004 FY31 from this morning.