Latest Steven J. Ostro Stories
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory [ Watch The Video Early Radar Observations of Asteroid 2012 DA14 ] An initial sequence of radar images of asteroid 2012 DA14 was obtained on the night of Feb. 15/16, 2013, by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif. Each of the 72 frames required 320 seconds of data collection by the Goldstone radar. The observations were made as the asteroid was moving away from Earth. The asteroid's distance from...
The work of a University of Tennessee, Knoxville, professor has helped reveal a rare orbital shift and the density of an asteroid that will pass close to Earth. Josh Emery, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences, and the team of the NASA asteroid sample return mission called OSIRIS-REx have measured the weight and orbit of 1999 RQ36. They have found the asteroid has a low density and its orbit has drifted roughly 100 miles in the last twelve years. This deviation is...
Lee Rannals for RedOrbit.com A NASA scientist would be a shoe-in at any state or county fair if hosting the "guess your weight" game. Steve Chesley of JPL's Near-Earth Object Program Office has accurately determined the mass of an asteroid from millions of miles away. Chesley used data from the Goldstone Solar System Radar in the California desert, along with the orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, to make his findings. He said he first...
Near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 was "imaged" by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico on April 19. Data collected during Arecibo's observation of 2005 YU55 allowed the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to refine the space rock's orbit, allowing scientists to rule out any possibility of an Earth impact for the next 100 years.The space rock was about 2.3 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Earth at the time this image of the radar echo was...
Once considered just your average single asteroid, 2001 SN263 has now been revealed as the first near-Earth triple asteroid ever found. The asteroid -- with three bodies orbiting each other -- was discovered this week by astronomers using the radar telescope at the National Science Foundation's (NSF) Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico.Cornell and Arecibo astronomer Michael C. Nolan said he and his colleagues made the discovery when they obtained radar images Feb. 11. The group subsequently...
Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have obtained the first images of asteroid 2007 TU24 using high-resolution radar data. The data indicate the asteroid is somewhat asymmetrical in shape, with a diameter roughly 250 meters (800 feet) in size. Asteroid 2007 TU24 will pass within 1.4 lunar distances, or 538,000 kilometers (334,000 miles), of Earth on Jan. 29 at 12:33 a.m. Pacific time (3:33 a.m. Eastern time). "With these first radar observations...
For the very first time, astronomers have witnessed the speeding up of an asteroid's rotation, and have shown that it is due to a theoretical effect predicted but never seen before. The international team of scientists used an armada of telescopes to discover that the asteroid's rotation period currently decreases by 1 millisecond every year, as a consequence of the heating of the asteroid's surface by the Sun. Eventually it may spin faster than any known asteroid in the solar system and even...
They are the celestial equivalent of sonograms. But their hazy outlines and ghostly features do not document the in-vivo development of a future taxpayer. Instead, they chronicle the exo-planetary comings-and-goings of some of Earth's least known, most nomadic, and at times most impactful neighbors.They are radar echoes that are bounced off of asteroids. Scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and around the world rely on their ethereal images to tell some out-of-this-world tales of...
