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

Today's issue status: done

• News briefs – Odessa crater & Hubble news
• Risk monitoring – JPL has removed 2004 KE17

Cover: The last of seven near-Earth object discoveries announced in the week ending Sunday, May 30th, was PHO 2004 KH17 (MPEC 2004-K76), seen here as caught in the final confirmation position reported by Robert Hutsebaut, who was working from his living room just before noon in Belgium, using the new 0.25m f/3.8 Epsilon Rent-a-scope remote-controlled telescope at New Mexico Skies. The eight 20-second exposures are stacked for motion “10.64"/min. toward 273.5°,” which causes the dimmer stars to appear eight times in tightly-spaced strings (brighter stars are big streaks).

Odessa craters:  The Odessa, Texas American has an article today about University of Arizona investigation of the age of the Odessa impact led by Vance Holliday. Part of an online exhibit about an earlier researcher, Glen Evans, at the Texas Memorial Museum at the University of Texas at Austin reports the age at 17,000 years, and other sources put it at less than 50,000 years, which is the approximate age of another iron-nickel meteor impact, the Barringer Crater 800 km. (500 miles) to the northwest

Hubble news:  NASA put out a news release yesterday, "NASA Considering Robotic Servicing Mission To Hubble," which notes that "the primary goal of a robotic mission is to install a deorbit module." News reports have appeared widely with optimistic headlines such as "O'Keefe: NASA to Pursue Robotic Mission to Save Hubble" at Space.com yesterday. SpaceRef.com notes that the NASA procurement info is available online. See May 3rd about robot projects and Index for more about the HST servicing issue.

Risk monitoring 2 June

The Wednesday Daily Orbit Update MPEC has observation of 2004 KE17 from Tenagra II Observatory in Arizona early yesterday UT. Today JPL removed its only impact solution for this object, which it puts at about 210 meters/yards wide. And NEODyS has lowered its low risk assessment considerably.