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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – Hayabusa flyby, planetary defense & readings
• Risk monitoring – JPL has posted 2004 KB

Cover: For the third cover in a row we have 2004 JP1, which is this and last week's most observed small asteroid (estimated at roughly 115 meters/yards wide). It is seen here both as an animation and as a composite of 22 frames stacked to obtain a streak, captured by Pepe Manteca at Begues Observatory in Spain late on May 15th, when 2004 JP1 was nearing Earth, about 50.64 hours away from its closest approach of 3.04 lunar distances.

Hayabusa flyby:  As A/CC reported May 15th, the Japanese Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) MUSES-C "Hayabusa" spacecraft is flying past Earth today on a gravity-assist maneuver. ISAS posted a report today with multi-filter color photos of the Earth and Moon taken on 16-17 May JST.

Readings:  Many news outlets are carrying an AP wire story, such as at Space.com today, "NASA Lab Processes, Stores Meteorites," telling about the Antarctic meteorite collection at NASA Johnson Space Center. It says "The latest 1,358 . . . arrived at the lab last month, bringing the collection to an impressive total of about 14,000" specimens.

Space.com has a report today, "Asteroids Change Color with Age," telling about conclusions reported in a Nature 20 May article, "An age-colour relationship for main belt S-complex asteroids" by Robert Jedicke, David Nesvorny, et al. They conclude that asteroid surfaces become "more red with time" due to an unknown space weathering process. See also a

related preprint by Nesvorny, Jedicke, et al., "Evidence for Asteroid Space Weathering from the Sloan Digital Sky survey" (6.22Mb PDF).

Australian Broadcasting Corporation News in Science has an article today about cultural evidence for comet 1P/Halley sightings back to 240 BC, including a coin that "may represent the passage of Halley's comet in 87 BC."

Planetary defense:  Space.com has an article today, "Asteroid Eaters: Robots to Hunt Space Rocks, Protect Earth," about a proposal funded by NASA's Institute of Advanced Concepts to use "a swarm of nuclear-powered robots that could drill into an asteroid and hurl chunks of it into space with enough force to gradually push it into a non-Earth impacting course" (mass driving). With the first study finished, a decision is being awaited about funding "a second round of research that would focus, among other things, on the design of a technology-testing precursor mission to be carried out in the next decade." See the final 6.1Mb PDF report to NIAC and an A/CC report ("Planetary defense") for more links.

Risk monitoring 19 May

The Wednesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC has observation of 2004 KB from Great Shefford Observatory in England last night. Today NEODyS lowered its overall risk assessment and cut its count of impact solutions by 37, and today JPL posted this object with a somewhat similar assessment.

The Minor Planet Center Last Observation page is showing that 2004 HQ1 was caught with the Spacewatch 1.8m telescope in Arizona this morning.