Friday, June 02, 2006
And while we are on the subject of big rocks...
Image Credit JAXA.Rememeber Hayabusa? The plucky little probe that landed on the asteroid Itokawa? Well, after a few mishaps, like losing the asteroid hopping robot, crashing into the asteroid and a potentially diasterous fuel leak, mission control has recovered control of the probe and is nursing it back to Earth, hoping to arrive in 2010, landing in the Australian dessert. The scientific results (to date) of this amazing mission have were published in special issue of Science Magazine today.
One of they key findings is that Itokawa is a rubble pile, and astoundingly porous structure with a porosity of about 40% (sand has a porosity of around 20%!). How it managed to form, and how it manages to survive continued impacts, is a bit of a mystery. Also, if Itokawa is represenative of smaller asteroids, deflecting Earth bound asteroids may be a lot harder than we thought, if they are a loosley bound mess of sand and boulders.
# posted by Ian Musgrave @ 10:55 pm 
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
Click to read about or order
