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It found the asteroid’s dimensions to be 535 × 294 × 209 metres (1,755 × 965 × 686 feet) and its density to be 1.9 grams per cubic cm Hayabusa collected only about 1,500 grains from Itokawa’s surface and in June 2010 those grains became the first asteroidal material brought to Earth Dawn discovered bright patches of salt on the surface of Ceres and the presence of a frozen ocean underneath the surface The Hayabusa2 spacecraft itself finally landed on Ryugu on February 22 It fired a small tantalum bullet into the surface creating a cloud of dust that was collected by a sample horn On April 5 the spacecraft shot a 2-kg (4-pound) copper projectile and made a crater that exposed subsurface material Hayabusa2 stayed at Ryugu until November 12 and then returned the sample capsule to Earth in the desert near Woomera and will arrive at the asteroid of the same name which is believed to be an iron protoplanetary core China has planned its first asteroid mission to launch in 2024 and visit the asteroid Kamo‘oalewa and bring a sample back to Earth DESTINY+ (Demonstration and Experiment of Space Technology for Interplanetary Voyage with Phaethon Flyby Dust Science) is planned to launch in 2024 and fly by Phaethon in 2028 Hayabusa2 is planned to fly by the asteroid 2001 CC21 in July 2026 and the asteroid 1998 KY26 which has a rotation period of 10.7 minutes leading the planetary system to become unstable again approximately 700 million years after the repopulation that occurred during the first million years and it ends within the first billion years where they eventually collide with a planet or escape from the asteroid belt entirely The three bodies are shown at the same scale and nearly the same lighting conditions Gaspra is about 17 kilometers (10 miles) long However their surfaces appear remarkably different possibly because of differences in composition but most likely because of very different impact histories The Phobos and Deimos images were obtained by the Viking Orbiter spacecraft in 1977; the Gaspra image is the best of a series obtained by the Galileo spacecraft on October 29 Galileo is scheduled to add the detailed view of another asteroid when it flies by Ida in August 1993 whose primary mission is the exploration of the Jupiter system in 1995-97 is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Map of Water Signatures at Europa's Manannán Crater Hubble Sees Recurring Plume Erupting From Europa Related TopicsQUIZZES. News. NASA’s Juno Mission Gets Under Jupiter’s and Io’s Surface News. NASA Orbiter Spots Curiosity Rover Making Tracks to Next Science Stop News. NASA’s EZIE Mission Captures ‘First Light’ News. NASA’s Curiosity Rover May Have Solved Mars’ Missing Carbonate Mystery News. NASA’s Perseverance Mars Rover Studies Trove of Rocks on Crater Rim Video. Meet the Mars Samples: Sapphire Canyon (Sample 25) News. NASA’s Juno Back to Normal Operations After Entering Safe Mode 30 years after our first visit to an asteroid the projects and perspectives around asteroids have flourished Our knowledge about them has extended massively – both in terms of risks and possibilities 2021 marked the 30th anniversary of the first encounter with an asteroid. It opened the path for an entirely new field of research and projects. Despite the impressive progress made, science and technology still are at the very beginning of what asteroids have to teach and provide. The perspectives are promising, not least including asteroid mining Discovered in 1916 by Russian astronomer Grigory Nikolayevich Neujmin the asteroid 951 Gaspra looks like any other S-Type asteroid among the hundreds of thousands of in our solar system its name will forever be associated with a pivotal moment of space exploration 951 Gaspra was the first asteroid to be visited by a spacecraft The target of the Galileo probe was Jupiter and its plethora of moons But the opportunity to fly by 951 Gaspra rose because its orbit and position in the asteroid belt aligned perfectly on the trajectory of the probe Galileo captured and sent to Earth 57 pictures, and the first close-ups ever. Thanks to these, researchers could lay down hypotheses on the formation of such celestial bodies as opposed to C-type constituted of carbon whereas X-type gathers a large variety of more rare asteroids Its measurements are 19 by 12 by 11 kilometers, but according to in-depth analysis of pictures, the asteroid appears to be suffering from erosion making it complicated to ensure its geological properties As highlighted by Helfenstein et al. the real strength of such a fly-by is to be able to observe what could not be seen from distance Close-ups reveal detailed views of the elevations and extended information about what such a small space body went through Confirming the value of close visits, Galileo pursued its way and visited 243 Ida, another stony asteroid of the Kuiper belts. Estimated to be ten times older 243 Ida also has the specificity of being orbited by Dactyl and they kept on affirming the reasons to visit little rocks floating in the void of space A great moment for science happens when achievements are reproduced It is one thing to send a man-made object crossing the path of an asteroid but repeating it with the same success is just as difficult and important It allows scientists to turn away from the hypothesis of one lucky attempt Only 10 years after the first encounter between the Galileo probe and 951 Gaspra, asteroid missions made a real jump. On February 12, 2001, NASA's NEAR Shoemaker probe not only orbited but became the first spacecraft to land on an asteroid NEAR Shoemaker first targeted 253 Mathilde, a 61-kilometer diameter asteroid. The probe reached it on June 27, 1997, and once again, it sent to Earth crucial data and about 500 images NEAR Shoemaker then pursued its route towards its primal goal The planned route included a fly-by Earth for a gravitational push The original idea was to join the asteroid's orbit on December 20 but eventually had to be called off after the first attempt the thrusters of the probe were fired a thousand times resulting in the probe switching to safe mode there were no contacts between mission control and the craft It required two weeks for the probe to meet the trajectory of Eros NEAR shifted trajectory and slowly began descending towards the surface Unfortunately, two weeks after contact on the ground, the spacecraft succumbed probably due to extremely cold temperatures and stopped transmitting data. But the real strength of NEAR Shoemaker lied elsewhere. Indeed, this program was a success thanks to its relatively low cost, about $224 million over 5 years on its mission It proved that programs with smaller robotic crafts (and therefore smaller costs) could be as successful as more spectacular missions It was the first of the Discovery Program series which remains one of NASA's primary focuses up to date you help in the creation and sharing of fact-based optimistic news all over the world Scientists have discovered amino acids and other important molecules for life in samples from the asteroid Bennu The analysis also shows traces of 11 minerals formed through saltwater suggesting that conditions for life may have existed throughout the solar system By subscribing, I confirm that I've read and agree to the Cookies & Privacy Policy. …Galileo flew past the asteroids Gaspra (October 29 thereby providing the first close-up views of such bodies; in the process it discovered a tiny satellite (Dactyl) orbiting Ida Galileo also furnished a unique perspective of the collision of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 with Jupiter as… Scientists from the Galileo project today released the world's first close-up image of an asteroid, taken October 29 by the Galileo spacecraft some 34 minutes before it flew past the asteroid Gaspra at a distance of 1,600 kilometers (1,000 miles). At that time the spacecraft and the asteroid were about 330 million kilometers (205 million miles) from the Sun, and 410 million kilometers (255 million miles) from Earth. The picture was taken through a green filter by the Galileo spacecraft's imaging system at a range of about 16,200 kilometers (10,000 miles) from Gaspra. It is one of about a dozen pictures Galileo took of the asteroid. The Galileo team expects to have the spacecraft transmit to Earth next year all the spacecraft's Gaspra observations, including one picture taken at even closer range, a group to be combined with this green-filter image to make a color picture, other images and other scientific data. The Galileo project, whose primary mission is to explore the Jupiter system in 1995-97, is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Mars. Solar System. Mars. Solar System. Mars. Perseverance Rover Witnesses One Martian Dust Devil Eating Another Mars. How NASA’s Perseverance Is Helping Prepare Astronauts for Mars Mars. NASA’s Curiosity Rover Detects Largest Organic Molecules Found on Mars Stars and Galaxies. NASA Launches Missions to Study Sun, Universe’s Beginning Solar System. NASA Turns Off 2 Voyager Science Instruments to Extend Mission Explore MoreQUIZZES. Image. Juno's JIRAM Captures Hots Spots on Io Image. Juno Sees Turbulence in Jupiter's Atmosphere Image. Curiosity on the Road to Boxwork Formations Image. Curiosity Looks Downslope From the Sulfate Unit Image. Image. Image. Curiosity Surveys the 'Ubajara' Sampling Site on Mars Image. Image. 2019 7:59 PM'Snapshot of the solar system highlighting the various <a href='http:NewsletterSign up for our email newsletter for the latest science newsSign Up Novelists have “It was a dark and stormy night.” For planetary scientists “We expect to be surprised.” The story of every new space mission seems to begin that way No matter how intensely researchers study some solar-system object no matter how they muster the best resources available on Earth they are inevitably caught off-guard when they get to study it up close for the first time And no matter how worn and familiar that cliche may sound Nature’s creativity surpasses human imagination the flight of the New Horizons probe past Ultima Thule tonight is something special the mission’s principle investigator and spiritual leader gone to a target we know less about.” It’s a type of object never seen up close before a small (30 kilometers wide) member of the Kuiper Belt it belongs to the so-called “cold classical” region of the Kuiper Belt meaning that it probably has remained largely unchanged for more than 4 billion years frozen in deep storage 6.5 billion kilometers from the Sun Will it look battered from ancient collisions Will it be covered with organic molecules from the early solar system There are only a handful of previous moments in space exploration that had comparable feelings of plunging into the unknown. One is the Galileo probe’s encounter with Gaspra in 1991 the first time a spacecraft visited an asteroid asteroids had been mere dots of light in even the grandest telescopes; the very term “asteroid” refers to their featureless Astronomers had many inferences about what asteroids must look like up close but all of our mental pictures were colored by science fiction and fantasy art Asteroid Gaspra seen by the Galileo spacecraft on October 29 Then science intruded. I remember seeing the first images of Gaspra and laughing The rough expectation was that it would look like a battered potato blanketed with dust for reasons that are still not fully understood Now we have seen 12 other asteroids (13 if you count Ceres as an asteroid rather than as a dwarf planet) OSIRIS-REx is currently exploring Bennu while Hayabusa2 is examining Ryugu These two little top-shaped asteroid are nothing at all like Gaspra The Gaspra flyby came 5 years after another journey into the unknown, when an international fleet set off to visit Halley’s Comet in 1986 during one of its legendary once-in-a-lifetime passes through the inner solar system and Europeans all zeroed in on Halley to get the first-ever close look at the nucleus of a comet (Cash-strapped NASA sadly did not participate in this historic moment.) Images of Halley’s Comet taken by Giotto during its encounter on March 13-14 Just before encounter, the European Space Agency’s Giotto probe was struck by a piece of dust weighing about one gram — large enough to knock the spacecraft off-kilter and nearly end the mission Flight controllers regained contact with the probe just in time and guided it to within 600 kilometers of the cold heart of Halley’s Comet Rather than being a “dirty snowball,” as astronomers expected Giotto revealed it to be more of an icy dirtball Halley’s spectacular tail begins as a series of irregular patchy geysers the twin Voyager probes began the greatest string of first-looks in all of space history the moons of Jupiter and Saturn were little known and the moons of Uranus and Neptune were completely terra incognita Then came the scientific surprises: the volcanoes of Io the bizarre cliffs and patchwork terrain of Uranus’s Miranda Voyager inspired whole volumes of new questions What was going on beneath the thick orange haze on Titan when the European Space Agency’s Huygens probe (send in conjunction with NASA’s Cassini mission to Saturn) landed on the surface to take a look It was the first view from the surface of a moon other than our own the first landing on an object in the outer solar system returned by the Huygens lander on January 14 The rocks on the surface are made of water ice but the liquid that flowed in them was cold methane and ethane which falls as rain and collects in lakes near Titan’s poles and surprise even the more prepared researchers We are venturing into the unknown in the best possible way: Our minds primed with knowledge yet open to new wonders every surprise treated as an invitation to grasp a bit more about our place in the vast order of the cosmos Register or Log In Want more?Keep reading for as low as $1.99 Subscribe Save up to 40% off the cover price when you subscribe to Discover magazine When is a space rock more than just a space rock Ceres 1 was already holding the title of the solar system's largest asteroid Now new observations show the space rock may be more worthy of the appellation "miniplanet." 7 NASA released photographs of Ceres that show the rock is a smooth ellipsoid with an average diameter of approximately 590 miles -- about the size of Texas senior research associate at Cornell University's Center for Radiophysics and Space Research an astronomer at the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder used the Hubble Space Telescope's Advanced Camera for Surveys to snap 267 images of Ceres on Dec during a nine-hour period -- one Ceres "day." Being ellipsoid and smooth is special for a rock It indicates that the body is heavy enough to possess gravity strong enough to suck its own surface smooth -- a process called "gravitational relaxing." Because the process typically requires a mass of many trillions of tons the average pebble is not going to be gravitationally relaxed; even most asteroids aren't By combining the new information on Ceres' roundness with previous independent measurements of its mass Thomas and his colleagues inferred that Ceres must have a "differentiated interior" similar to the terrestrial planets Although this possibility had been previously predicted "We used the best telescope available to apply a basic geophysical test of other people's predictions," Thomas said Based on their own models and observations Thomas and his colleagues believe Ceres contains a rocky silicate core and icy mantel covered by a crust of carbon-rich compounds and clays they predict that the icy mantel may contain more frozen water than all of the fresh water on Earth But Thomas says the possibility is "very remote," noting that even if the interior of Ceres were warm enough for some of the water to liquefy Ceres probably lacked a sufficient energy source for life to develop Ceres was discovered in 1801 by Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi and declared to be the "missing planet" predicted between Mars and Jupiter the title was revoked in 1802 when Ceres was found to be a member of the hundreds of thousands of other rocks and debris of the Asteroid Belt Since the discovery of 2003 UB313 -- which some have hailed as the tenth planet -- in July some astronomers (and many non-astronomers) have begun to question whether objects such as Ceres should also be enshrined as planets Thomas professes a lack of concern about Ceres' place in the solar system "There are plenty of other interesting things and processes in Ceres to contemplate rather than whether or not it should be called a planet," he said But for those who prefer a more definitive answer Thomas offers: "You can call Ceres a 'minor planet' or 'miniplanet' if you'd like but I would not call it a 'full-fledged planet.'" The other authors of the Nature paper are L.A Russell of the University of California-Los Angeles and M.V Funding for the project was provided by NASA through the Space Telescope Science Institute Thomas Oberst is a writing intern at the Cornell News Service Get Cornell news delivered right to your inbox Learn how our members and community are changing the worlds Our citizen-funded spacecraft successfully demonstrated solar sailing for CubeSats How artificial intelligence will shape the future of exploration Membership programs for explorers of all ages Accelerate progress in our three core enterprises — Explore Worlds or designate a core enterprise of your choice Empowering the world's citizens to advance space science and exploration Galileo was a spacecraft with a split personality The part of the spacecraft that held the fields and particles instruments spun constantly The part of the ship that held the cameras and other optical instruments could spin but when it needed to point to take photos and such So the spacecraft was kind of like a Pioneer stacked on a Voyager with a spun (Pioneer-like) section and a despun (Voyager-like) section The two were connected with a freely rotating joint Galileo wasn't really just two distinct spacecraft mated together; power and data had to be passed back and forth between the spun and despun sections all the time That happened through electrical connections between slip rings and brushes in the Spin Bearing Assembly And debris created by wear of the brushes caused transient electrical shorts between the slip rings The first problem was the "AC/DC bus imbalance." There were both AC and DC power systems passing power across the spin bearing assembly and the electrical shorts caused voltage fluctuations The rest of the Galileo Messengers contain reports on the voltages of the imbalance measurements Once this problem was finally well-understood more than a year later it was apparently considered only a minor annoyance especially in the context of everything else that happened to Galileo A transient short caused the spacecraft to think that the main computer in the despun section of the spacecraft had rebooted which means that it stopped operating according to the program it had been given and instead hunkered down and waited for further instruction from Earth These events were called "spurious Command Data Subsystem (CDS) power-on reset (POR) telemetry indications." These happened unpredictably more than 20 times throughout the cruise period Sometimes they happened at particularly bad times -- like twice in the month before the Ida flyby It was only shortly before Jupiter orbit insertion that they had finally developed software that could detect when these signals were spurious and prevent the spacecraft from safing So it wasn't until right after the Earth flyby that they discovered that it wouldn't The issue contains a detailed analysis of the nature of the problem it seemed impossible that they wouldn't find a fix While they publicly expressed confidence that the antenna problem would be solved they were already coming to terms with the fact that they'd need to replan the flyby of Gaspra -- which would be the first-ever spacecraft flyby of an asteroid -- to take place without the benefit of the high-gain antenna And there was a little good news: they were beginning to understand that the AC/DC bus imbalance and spurious power-on reset signal problems were related to slip-ring brush debris They still expressed a heartbreaking confidence that the antenna problem would besolved approximately 72 hours are required to transmit a full 800-line imaging frame....once the HGA is open 800-line image will be just one minute." Sigh They had downlinked the highest-res view of Gaspra (actually a two-image mosaic) but much more data still remained aboard the spacecraft awaiting transmission at a time when Galileo had approached closer to Earth I also feel that this is the point when the tone of the mission began to shift But the newsletters begin to feel more exuberant The sole purpose of our 3.2-year VEEGA trip -- over twice around the inner solar system and 10 months in the asteroid belt -- was to get Galileo onto a direct Earth-to-Jupiter trajectory Did we ever!" Unlike what felt like false bravado in earlier issues It helped that there was cool science on that second Earth flyby -- for example the first infrared imaging of north pole of Moon O'Neil went on: "Galileo's images of the Moon are similar in resolution to the pictures the Voyager spacecraft took of Jupiter's moons even a thousand times closer to Jupiter's moons than Voyager was This means that Galileo's images of the Jovian moons will have a resolution up to a thousand times better than that seen in these pictures of our Moon." They also confirmed a previous Galileo discovery south polar stratospheric clouds that affected the ozone hole; and they finally downlinked all the Gaspra data They didn't know yet that just weeks before orbit insertion they'd suffer a frightening anomaly on the reel-to-reel tape system that was an irreplaceable part of their strategy to accomplish the Jupiter mission without the high-gain antenna But that's a story I'll save for another day when I'll summarize the prime-mission Galileo Messengers Give today to have your gift matched up to $75,000 you join our mission to increase discoveries in our Solar System and beyond elevate the search for life outside our planet and decrease the risk of Earth being hit by an asteroid and exclusive opportunities to support space exploration The Planetary Society is a registered 501(c)(3) nonprofit organization An artist's depiction of Japan's Procyon mission A flurry of spacecraft have visited asteroids in recent decades to piece together the secrets of the solar system Gaspra(Image credit: NASA/JPL)Ida and Dactyl(Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)An artist's depiction of the Galileo spacecraft.(Image credit: NASA/JPL)NASA's Galileo spacecraft was the first to ever visit an asteroid and in fact flew by two space rocks from space shuttle Atlantis and arrived at Jupiter on Dec where Galileo spent eight years studying the largest planet in our solar system Humanity's first encounter with an asteroid occurred on Oct Galileo approached within 997 miles (1,604 kilometers) of Gaspra (an S-type or siliceous asteroid) and revealed that the space rock had mysterious flat areas that may be due to impacts They may also be scars from when Gaspra broke off from its parent asteroid (NEAR-Shoemaker was not designed for a landing so the successful touchdown provided bonus science.) Before going to Eros this spacecraft made a flyby of the asteroid Mathilde The image of Mathilde (left) and Eros shows the two asteroids at the same scale as NEAR-Shoemaker imaged them although Mathilde's brightness is exaggerated in this picture to make the asteroid easier to view The two space rocks were both photographed from a distance of about 1,116 miles (1,800 km) on June 27 and Eros is 21 miles (33 km) across at its greatest extent and has an orbital period of about 4.3 years The asteroid has a slow rotation rate (17.4 days) and is made up of carbon-rich rock NASA says the asteroid changed little since the solar system was formed 4.5 billion years ago meaning it consists mainly of stony materials and nickel iron It is a part of the Amor groups of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) NASA says that NEAs like Eros are probably dead comets or the leftovers of collisions of small bodies in the asteroid belt (The spacecraft also released an ESA probe called Huygens which landed on Titan and worked for a few hours there.) While the mission is famous for its discoveries at Saturn it also contributed to asteroid science by flying past asteroid Masursky in January 2000 Masursky is about 6.8 miles (11 km) in diameter and is classified as an S-type asteroid When Cassini flew by the asteroid from about 4 lunar distances (1 million miles the probe looked at the asteroid's composition and made an estimate of its diameter Braille(Image credit: NASA/JPL/USGS)An artist's depiction of Deep Space 1 flying past Braille.(Image credit: NASA/JPL)Deep Space 1 was originally intended to test out ion engines but the mission was extended to fly by the asteroid Braille and Comet Borrelly Its star tracker failed en route to Borrelly but engineers still managed to keep on the trajectory and flew by the comet successfully in September 2001 Asteroid Braille has a few interesting characteristics The object has an inclined orbit compared to the rest of the solar system meaning that it is tilted with respect to most of the other worlds It also belongs to a Mars orbit-crossing asteroid group Braille rotates once every 9.5 days and is about 1 to 2 km (0.62 to 1.2 miles) in diameter Deep Space 1 took pictures in visual and infrared wavelengths; it passed within just 14 miles (26 km) of Braille but because of a problem with the tracking system the pictures were taken from thousands of miles away before the most famous part of its mission Annefrank is an S-type asteroid that is roughly 2.8 miles (4.5 km) in diameter Pictures from Stardust showed several impact craters and also suggested that Annefrank may be a loosely linked set of two asteroids which was named after the famous diary author who was killed in the Holocaust other observatories have tried to narrow down the asteroid's rotation The Stardust mission is best known for flying by Comet Wild 2 in 2004 The samples returned to Earth in their own capsule in 2006 while Stardust was repurposed for a new mission called Stardust-NExT The spacecraft endured multiple malfunctions during the mission but managed to finish most of its major objectives The spacecraft's samples returned to Earth on June 13 but it took time for scientists to open its container and check for samples Hayabusa mission scientists confirmed in November 2010 that Hayabusa indeed picked up samples of Itokawa Itokawa is a potentially hazardous asteroid that periodically crosses Earth's orbit; that's one of the reasons this asteroid was chosen for close-up study It's about 1,150 feet (350 meters) in diameter and is classified as an S-type asteroid Images from the spacecraft showed few impact craters although a "rubble pile" appears on the surface and made two asteroid flybys before its last destination: Steins (September 2008) and Lutetia (July 2010) When Rosetta reached Steins the probe discovered that the object is a rare E-type (enstatite) asteroid meaning that it has iron-poor silicates on its surface The asteroid is roughly 4.1 miles (6.6 km) at its longest dimension and is likely part of a larger object that broke apart Rosetta spotted impact craters on Steins' surface and the space rock's measurements suggest that the interior consists of rubble The asteroid will likely disintegrate due to its delicate interior Lutetia is another crater-pocked asteroid Rosetta found that the asteroid is about 80 miles (130 km) at its longest dimension with characteristics of both C-type and M-type asteroids The European Space Agency described the asteroid as "most probably a primitive survivor from the violent birth of the solar system." Rosetta successfully reached Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko on Aug The probe released Philae a few weeks afterward; the lander bounced on the surface before settling in a shady spot Philae quickly ran down its batteries but still performed some science before losing power to investigate two large members of the asteroid belt: Ceres (a dwarf planet) and 4 Vesta (an asteroid) orbiting the asteroid between July 2011 and December 2012 Dawn's next and final destination was Ceres (NASA also considered sending Dawn to visit a third target but ultimately turned down the idea.) The mission ended in late 2018 when the probe's hydrazine fuel will run out While Dawn orbited Vesta it confirmed that the asteroid is the source of a major group of meteorites that reach Earth during a massive impact which is the brightest asteroid as seen from Earth is the second largest object in the asteroid belt after Ceres Dawn arrived at Ceres on March 6 spherical object that is classified as a dwarf planet which is small as solar system worlds go but large in terms of asteroids Ceres is actually the largest member of the asteroid belt It rotates around its axis once every nine hours Scientists have spotted water vapor appearing periodically above Ceres possibly from ice escaping from the dwarf planet's surface after impacts Japan's Procyon also known as Proximate Object Close flyby with Optical Navigation the probe was supposed to fly by asteroid 2000 DP107 but a problem with the ion-thruster system on Procyon forced the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency to abandon the mission mission personnel evaluated other destinations that the probe had fuel to reach and decided to fly past an object then known only as 2014 MU69 which had been discovered after the spacecraft launched New Horizons' flyby determined that this Kuiper Belt object, now officially called Arrokoth formed when two space rocks glide gently into each other Asteroid Ryugu is a potentially hazardous near-Earth object It has qualities of both a C-type asteroid and a G-type (rare carbonaceous) asteroid It takes about 16 months to orbit the sun and is named after a magical underwater palace from Japanese folk stories During its visit, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft deployed a series of smaller robots that touched down on the asteroid's surface to give scientists another perspective of the rocky world. It also shot Ryugu in order to create an artificial crater giving scientists a glimpse inside the asteroid And Hayabusa2 took samples both from Ryugu's surface and from the fresh crater to allow scientists on Earth to compare the locations After Hayabusa2 deployed its sample capsule through Earth's atmosphere in December 2020, the mission team decided to send the spacecraft to explore a second asteroid Hayabusa2 will arrive at a fast-spinning asteroid currently known only as 1998 KY26 in July 2031 it will fly past an asteroid dubbed 2001 CC21 in 2026 in a maneuver necessary to reach the spacecraft's final target but the team hopes to gather data along the way as well The spacecraft arrived at Bennu in August 2018 and spent nearly two years studying the asteroid from orbit the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft conducted the key maneuver of its mission capturing a sample of the rocky world to bring back to Earth The spacecraft left Bennu in May 2021 and is scheduled to deliver its cargo in September 2023 but the mission is dedicated to the Trojan asteroids that orbit the sun ahead of and behind Jupiter and no mission has ever studied them up close Within 12 years of its October 2021 launch Lucy will fly past seven different Trojans giving scientists a taste for the variety these objects come in Radar imagery of Didymos and Dimorphos.(Image credit: NASA)An artist's depiction of DART flying toward Dimorphos with Didymos in the background.(Image credit: NASA/Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory)NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be a new kind of asteroid mission for the agency Instead of focusing on detailed science observations DART is a planetary defense mission dedicated to giving scientists their first real-world data about how they might be able to deflect an asteroid headed for Earth DART will arrive at an asteroid called Didymos Scientists will watch from Earth to see how much the impact tweaks the moon's orbit around the larger asteroid a European Space Agency mission called Hera will head out to Didymos as well to study the asteroid and crater after the dust has settled An artist's depiction of Psyche the asteroid.(Image credit: Maxar/ASU/P. Rubin/NASA/JPL-Caltech)An artist's depiction of Psyche the spacecraft at Psyche the asteroid.(Image credit: SSL/Peter Rubin)In 2022, NASA will launch the Psyche mission to visit an asteroid also called Psyche The world is strangely metallic for an asteroid leaving scientists with a puzzle — and a hope that the body may turn out to be bare core of a planet that lost its rock The spacecraft will launch in 2022 and arrive at its target in 2026 Join our Space Forums to keep talking space on the latest missions, night sky and more! And if you have a news tip, correction or comment, let us know at: community@space.com. Elizabeth HowellFormer Staff Writer Spaceflight (July 2022-November 2024)Elizabeth Howell (she/her) was a staff writer in the spaceflight channel between 2022 and 2024 specializing in Canadian space news She was contributing writer for Space.com for 10 years from 2012 to 2024 Elizabeth's reporting includes multiple exclusives with the White House leading world coverage about a lost-and-found space tomato on the International Space Station witnessing five human spaceflight launches on two continents and participating in a simulated Mars mission 2022) is co-written with astronaut Dave Williams. James Webb Space Telescope captures thousands of galaxies in a cosmic 'feast' (image) Astronomers gaze into 'dark nebula' 60 times the size of the solar system (video) Forget Darth Vader and the Emperor: The Empire has never been scarier than in 'Andor' season 2 Introducing the all-new Astronomy.com Forum! Become a part of our Community! >> Visit Now Evidence indicates that these ancient asteroids are relatively unchanged since they formed some 4.55 billion years ago and are older than the oldest meteorites ever found on Earth say Sunshine and colleagues from the City University of New York Their findings will be published in this week’s edition of Science Express “We have identified asteroids that are not represented in our meteorite collection and which date from the earliest periods of the solar system,” says Sunshine a senior research scientist in the University of Maryland’s department of astronomy “These asteroids are prime candidates for future space missions that could collect and return samples to Earth providing a more detailed understanding of the solar system’s first few millions of years.” there was just a disk-shaped cloud of hot gas When gasses on the edge of the early nebula began to cool the first materials to condense into solid particles were rich in the elements calcium and aluminum Eventually the different types of solid particles clumped together to form the common building blocks of comets Astronomers have thought that at least some of the solar system’s oldest asteroids should be more enriched in calcium and aluminum Meteorites found on Earth do contain small amounts of these earliest condensing materials can be as large as a centimeter in diameter long have used the age of CAIs to define the age of the Solar System “The fall of the Allende meteorite in 1969 initiated a revolution in the study of the early solar system,” says Tim McCoy curator of the national meteorite collection at the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History “It was at that time scientists first recognized that the remarkable white inclusions&#8212later called calcium aluminum-rich inclusions&#8212which were found in this meteorite matched many of the properties expected of early solar system condensates “I find it amazing that it took us nearly 40 years to collect spectra of these [CAI-rich] objects and that those spectra would now initiate another revolution pointing us to the asteroids that record this earliest stage in the history of our Solar System,” says McCoy used the SpeX instrument at the NASA Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii to look at the surface of asteroids for evidence of the presence of such early bits of high-temperature rock they looked for spectral fingerprints indicative of the presence of CAIs Because different minerals have different reflective properties or color of light reflected from a surface reveals information about its composition enabling telescopic compositional analysis Sunshine and colleagues quantitatively compare the spectral signatures of asteroid surfaces and CAIs in meteorites from the Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History collection “Several CAI-rich asteroids have been identified that contain 2-3 times more CAI material than any known meteorite,” Sunshine says “Thus it appears ancient asteroids have indeed survived updates and special offers via email from Astronomy.com Astronomy leads the astronomy hobby as the most popular magazine of its kind in the world Count me in Why Sign In? Subscribers can access their digital magazine issues, and registered users can participate in our Community forums and galleries. an early-twentieth-century decorative castle in Gaspra is one of Crimea’s most popular tourist attractions 2010.Arthur Bondar / VII Mentor ProgramSave this storySave this storySave this storySave this storyOne year ago today after twenty-three years as an autonomous region within Ukraine Crimea voted in a referendum to leave and join Russia Russian elections aren’t known for their fairness and the official reports of eighty-three-per-cent turnout with ninety-seven per cent voting to join Russia it’s clear that many Crimeans truly wanted to become Russian hoping to be rescued from the uncertainty of post-Maidan Ukraine and to exit a nation in which they’d never really felt at home who documented life on the peninsula between 2010 and 2014 says that Crimeans have “celebrated grandly” this past year Today’s anniversary of the referendum is being marked with a military parade in Simferopol But only certain kinds of festivities are permitted in Russian Crimea A recent celebration of the birthday of Taras Shevchenko the nineteenth-century poet who is considered the prophet of the Ukrainian nation ended with the arrest of several participants who were sentenced to ten days of manual labor for displaying the Ukrainian flag authorities banned the Tatars’ annual commemoration of their deportation from Crimea in 1944; Tatar leaders have been banned from the peninsula Many Crimeans hope that joining Russia will mean prosperity and safety but there’s also rampant inflation and a loss of access to banks and credit cards Ukraine stopped running trains from the mainland State employees have gone months without wages and property and businesses are being confiscated by local authorities Crimea was one of the Soviet Union’s most popular vacation destinations; Bondar says that he thought of the peninsula “as some kind of paradise.” Young Pioneers went to Crimean summer camps and the sick went to Crimean sanatoriums Many political leaders spent their summers there Gorbachev was put under house arrest at his Crimean dacha in Foros many Crimeans made most of their annual income in the summer the Crimean seaside was so packed with bathers that you could hardly see the stones on the beach and the dusty roads were lined with women in summer dresses holding signs advertising apartments for rent many new arrivals to Crimea were not vacationers but people escaping the violence in eastern Ukraine There’s been talk of making Crimea into a casino zone or a giant military base or some combination of the two but Russia’s economic crisis and Western sanctions have put plans for a “Russian Las Vegas,” at least many Crimeans felt that they’d finally managed to return to the Soviet Union but soon learned that Russia is a very different place He named his Crimean photo series “Vanishing Island.” “For me it is a land that’s vanishing from the sight of Ukrainian citizens,” he says See more of _Arthur Bondar’s photos from Crimea on the photo department’s Instagram feed._ some 10 minutes before closest approach on October 29 The Sun is shining from the right; phase angle is 50 degrees is the highest for the Gaspra encounter and is about three times better than that in the view released in November 1991 Additional images of Gaspra remain stored on Galileo's tape recorder Gaspra is an irregular body with dimensions about 19 x 12 x 11 kilometers (12 x 7.5 x 7 miles) The portion illuminated in this view is about 18 kilometers (11 miles) from lower left to upper right The north pole is located at upper left; Gaspra rotates counterclockwise every 7 hours The large concavity on the lower right limb is about 6 kilometers (3.7 miles) across A striking feature of Gaspra's surface is the abundance of small craters 100-500 meters (330-1650 feet) in diameter are visible here The number of such small craters compared to larger ones is much greater for Gaspra than for previously studied bodies of comparable size such as the satellites of Mars Gaspra's very irregular shape suggests that the asteroid was derived from a larger body by nearly catastrophic collisions Consistent with such a history is the prominence of groove-like linear features 100-300 meters wide and tens of meters deep are in two crossing groups with slightly different morphology one group wider and more pitted than the other Grooves had previously been seen only on Mars's moon Phobos Gaspra also shows a variety of enigmatic curved depressions and ridges in the terminator region at left is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Mission. News. News. News. The first of these minor planets to have been visited by spacecraft was the first comet that was recognized to be a periodic one: Halley's comet A flotilla of spacecraft was launched to visit Halley when it last visited the inner solar system in 1986 and Giotto returned photos of Halley's nucleus finding it to be good-sized for a comet at 16 by 8 kilometers across but incredibly dark and also extremely low-density (if you're curious the density was 0.1 grams per cubic centimeter) One thing I always wonder when I look at such photos is: how big are they all of the minor planets pictured above at the same resolution it's just a nearly invisible 2-by-1-pixel speck Asteroids above and left; comet nuclei below shows Gaspra growing progressively larger in the field of view of Galileo's solid-state imaging camera as the spacecraft approached the asteroid Gaspra is roughly 17 kilometers (10 miles) long The earliest view (upper left) was taken 5 3/4 hours before closest approach when the spacecraft was 164,000 kilometers (102,000 miles) from Gaspra the last (lower right) at a range of 16,000 kilometers (10,000 miles) so these images capture almost one full rotation of the asteroid Gaspra spins counterclockwise; its north pole is to the upper left and the "nose" which points upward in the first image Several craters are visible on the newly seen sides of Gaspra but none approaches the scale of the asteroid's radius Gaspra lacks the large craters common on the surfaces of many planetary satellites consistent with Gaspra's comparatively recent origin from the collisional breakup of a larger body NASA's Galileo spacecraft will encounter its second asteroid, called Ida, Saturday, August 28, on its way to Jupiter. Galileo made the world's first asteroid encounter -- with Gaspra --in October 1991. At 9:52 a.m. Pacific Daylight Time (UTC minus 7 hours) Saturday, Galileo will pass within 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) of Ida at a relative speed of about 12.4 kilometers per second (28,000 miles per hour). Radio signals confirming encounter will reach controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory 30 minutes later. Galileo's camera and other scientific instruments will record observations beginning several hours before until several minutes after closest approach. Because the spacecraft must use its low-gain antenna for all communications, the pictures and other data will be played back slowly in September and next 1994. "However," said Project Manager William J. O'Neil, "we will have a data set as good as Gaspra -- or better." Ida is a stony body, irregular in shape and about 31 kilometers (20 miles) long. It is larger than Gaspra and orbits farther from the Sun. Ida is believed to belong to the same asteroid type as Gaspra, though younger and of slightly different composition. Galileo will reach the planet Jupiter in December 1995. Its mission is to study Jupiter, its satellites and magnetosphere, using an atmospheric probe and an orbiter scheduled for a 10-orbit, 23-month survey. JPL manages the project for NASA's Office of Space Science. about 3-1/2 minutes before the spacecraft made its closest approach to the asteroid Galileo flew about 2,400 kilometers (1,500 miles) from Ida at a relative velocity of 12.4 km/sec (28,000 mph) Asteroid and spacecraft were 441 million kilometers (274 million miles) from the Sun Ida is the second asteroid ever encountered by a spacecraft It appears to be about 52 kilometers (32 miles) in length the first asteroid observed by Galileo in October 1991 Ida is an irregularly shaped asteroid placed by scientists in the S class (believed to be like stony or stony iron meteorites) presumed fragments left from the breakup of a precursor asteroid in a catastrophic collision including many degraded craters larger than any seen on Gaspra The extensive cratering seems to dispel theories about Ida's surface being geologically youthful This view also seems to rule out the idea that Ida is a double body The south pole is believed to be in the darkside near the middle of the asteroid The camera's clear filter was used to produce this extremely sharp picture Spatial resolution is 31 to 38 meters (roughly 100 feet) per pixel A 30-frame mosaic was taken to assure capturing Ida; its position was somewhat uncertain before the Galileo encounter Galileo shuttered and recorded a total of 150 images in order to capture Ida 21 different times during a five hour period (about one rotation of the asteroid) Color filters were used at many of these times to allow reconstruction of color images Playback to Earth of the remaining images is planned for April through June 1994 is managed for NASA's Office of Space Science by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory Please enable JS and disable any ad blocker News. Study Finds Earth’s Small Asteroid Visitor Likely Chunk of Moon Rock News. NASA Researchers Discover More Dark Comets Mission. News. Work Is Under Way on NASA’s Next-Generation Asteroid Hunter Video. Farewell to NEOWISE: NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope News. NASA Mission Concludes After Years of Successful Asteroid Detections Video. NEOWISE: Legacy of NASA’s Asteroid-Hunting Telescope News. NASA’s Planetary Radar Tracks Two Large Asteroid Close Approaches News. NASA Asteroid Experts Create Hypothetical Impact Scenario for Exercise By Kimm Groshong Asteroid 951 Gaspra was the first to be examined close up by the Galileo spacecraft on 29 October 1991 – it is just 19 kilometres long Observations by astronomers tracking near-Earth asteroids have raised a new object to the top of the Earth-threat list The asteroid could strike the Earth in 2102 manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena told New Scientist: “The most likely situation is that additional observations will bring it back down to a zero.” He adds: “We’re more likely to be hit between now and then by an object that we don’t know about.” new observations allowed researchers to more accurately calculate the orbit of the asteroid which was originally detected by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology’s LINEAR project Since the improvement did not rule out a potential collision with the Earth on 4 May 2102 they increased the asteroid’s rating to level 2 on the Torino Scale The Torino Scale is akin to a Richter scale for asteroid impacts The vast majority of the 4000 or so near-Earth objects (NEOs) detected so far have been assigned to level zero on the Torino scale meaning they have “no likely consequences” suggests a possible impact that “merits careful monitoring” the risk continues to rise along the scale – levels 2 The highest level ever reached by an asteroid was level 4 by Apophis (2004 MN4) in December 2004 but subsequent calculations downgraded that concern to a level 1 So VD17 currently claims the top spot on NASA’s online list of potential asteroid impacts Despite the rarity of the yellow designation Yeomans says “Torino 2 is not very alarming.” He notes that the scale does not take account of how soon an impact may occur he says the asteroid has a 1 in 1600 chance of striking the Earth in 2102 and a 1 in 500,000 chance of hitting two years later But further observations will soon refine the orbit calculation for VD17 – and hopefully ease minds Andrea Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa He also notes that VD17 is dim and distant and is not projected to pass close by the Earth before 2102 “You will need fairly powerful telescopes to see it before it arrives,” he told New Scientist NASA has had a US Congressional mandate to locate 90% of all NEOs of 1 kilometre or larger by 2008 Yeomans says that 830 out of a predicted 1100 have been found so far In the NASA Authorization Act of 2005 Congress directed the space agency to study and report back on the best way to cost-effectively locate 90% of all asteroids down to a diameter of just 140 metres Yeomans says there are likely to be about 100,000 such NEOs Yeomans and Bill Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder were both members of a team that reported in 2003 that a survey to locate such small asteroids would be cost-effective considering the damage an impact could cause Bottke says the group found that to find 90% of the remaining hazard would cost roughly $300 million 2004 VD17 is estimated to have a diameter of about 580 metres An asteroid of that size would produce an impact crater about 10 kilometres wide and an earthquake of magnitude 7.4 if it struck land Comets and Asteroids – Learn more about the threat to human civilisation in our special report. Explore the latest news, articles and features The Galileo spacecraft captured this view of asteroid 951 Gaspra in 1991 It was the first time a spacecraft made a close flyby of an asteroid.Photo courtesy of NASAPlayListenSpace rocksGo Deeper.CloseCreate an account or log in to save stories We have added it to a list of your favorite stories That's not her official title, but it's the simplest explanation for her work with Caltech/IPAC. It also happens to be why her new book is titled "Asteroid Hunters." Even though it's not a career that frequently shows up on aptitude tests the work is significant for several reasons Asteroids are leftover building blocks of our solar system that have undergone relatively few chemical changes Learning more about the paths of asteroids and their compositions can help us better understand how planets formed billions of years ago Surveying asteroids is an important part of basic space exploration but protecting the planet is probably the most vital reason for this research MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all If scientists can find all of the near-Earth asteroids and track their orbits we have the technology to prevent them from colliding into Earth "It's a preventable natural disaster," Nugent said Why not take the time to find these things now?" scientists at NASA have found over 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids that are 1 kilometer across or larger and they are currently working toward finding asteroids that are roughly 140 meters across says that roughly 30 percent of those asteroids have been found Learning the orbits of asteroids today can buy lead time for the future There are some asteroids where we can predict their path up to 80 years and others where we can know their orbit for 800 years In a time of increasing divisions in the country and around the globe there's something about asteroids that Nugent says is universally true: "We should really find the asteroids before they find us." Use the audio player above to hear the full conversation It seemed like sensational news to me. I’m not sure why it hasn’t become more of a high-profile issue in literary circles. I found it to be—in the words of Mary McCarthy’s awestruck review of Nabokov’s Pale Fire—“A bolt from the blue.” this is a revelation about the mind of Lev Nikolaevitch Tolstoy Conventionally credited with being the greatest illuminator of the human experience in literature The same one who—and fewer readers are aware of this—late in his life turned into a sex-hating crank who (seriously) argued that the extinction of the human species would be a small price to pay for the immediate cessation of all sexual intercourse And fewer still are aware of Tolstoy’s devastating “consolatory” response when it was pointed out to him that cessation of all sex would mean the rapid extinction of the human species He replied with what might be the single worst attempt at “consolation” in all of literature science tells us the sun will eventually cool and all life on Earth will die off anyway But there’s actually a bright side to near-term extinction he said: It will mean the human race will be spared billions of years of shame billions of years of further degradation in what he charmingly called the “pigsty” of sex It’s a deceptively innocent title for the heartwarming story of a madman wife-murderer who delivers an interminable monologue on an interminable night-train journey across the Russian steppes Who horrifies his captive audience—the passengers in his compartment—with a denunciation of men Who thereby—in his mind—justifies the bloody murder said the Moscow-to-Petersburg Acela corridor chattering class of the time his protagonist was a wife-murderer who’d been freed on judgment that he’d been driven to kill by justified defense of his “honor.” But Tolstoy himself was not justifying the murderer’s rationale for his act Jay Parini’s historically based novel about the last days of Tolstoy’s bitter marriage—just to see how emotionally murderous that marriage was in the decade before he died in 1910.) took his tale of a wife-murderer personally especially since it seemed to her it was inspired by the “issues” in her own marriage The Kreutzer narrator—a Tolstoy-like landowner—fantasized an adulterous tryst between his wife and the violinist she played duets with And then when he comes home one night and unexpectedly finds the two dining together he imagines the worst and stabs her to death It was fair to say Sofiya was humiliated and incensed when the novella was published and her marriage to The Great Man became suspect (And yet such was her devotion she made a special plea to the Czar to allow its publication after Orthodox Church objections banned it In an unusual moment in the annals of censorship the church objected not so much to a surplus of sex in Kreutzer but rather to its denunciation of even church-sanctified marital sex as legitimized depravity.) For a long time, it had been thought Sofiya kept her dismay to her private diary. But now—and this is the revelation I first saw reported in the New York Times last summer—it turns out she wrote an entire novella of her own that has languished unpublished and untranslated in the depths of the archives of the Tolstoy Museum in Moscow for more than a century And what a novel it is! Just published for the first time in English in a translation by the scholar Michael R. Katz, it appears in a Yale University Press edition that includes not only Tolstoy’s original Kreutzer, not only Sofiya’s “answer novel,” not only a response document from Tolstoy’s son and from his daughter, but much more. The volume is called The Kreutzer Sonata Variations It has not been established whether Sofiya ever wanted the 90-page novella published or was content to let it remain a silent reproof in her possessions evidence of how she felt about her husband’s depiction of their marriage in Kreutzer can be found in her list of possible titles for her novella: Ultimately she chose a somewhat graceless alternate: Whose Fault 125 years after Kreutzer’s 1889 publication It will take years to assimilate all the variations in Katz’s volume but I want to focus on the single most impressive thing I found on my first reading: Sofiya Tolstoy can write I’m still puzzled by the Times story’s somewhat cavalier unwillingness to consider her novella’s literary merit and even more by the subhead’s sexist characterization of her work as nothing but “a scorned wife’s rebuttal.” In fact At times one could almost say she’s … Tolstoyan she shows her husband up for the demented fool he became Sofiya pulls off a remarkable structural feat in mirroring Kreutzer’s wife-murder plot from the point of view of the murdered wife And she does it with prose that (in English at least) comes across as graceful she counters her husband’s rage against sex and love with what is A portrait of love from a woman’s point of view unlike any you can find (or I have found) in Tolstoy Wait, you say. What about Anna Karenina I hope you’re not referring to the thin-blooded gluten-free-wheat-field love raptures of Levin and Kitty what about Anna Karenina and Count Vronsky because Tolstoy didn’t know the difference didn’t understand the spectrum of feelings “love” can mean for a woman he quickly fell out of any love he might have had for Anna once he had his conquest under his belt Indeed I was prompted to look again at the question of love and sex in Anna K by a conversation with the writer and Russian studies scholar Elif Batuman, whose brilliant and delightful book The Possessed recounts her travels with Tolstoyans and investigates the mystery of his marriage and death She had a rather sardonic view of the single sex scene in the novel: that there really isn’t one Anna and Vronsky enter a room for their first assignation Next scene has Vronsky getting dressed again while staring down at the prone and shivering body of Anna “as if he were a hunter gazing at a slain deer,” as Batuman puts it Vronsky’s only real love—almost sexual in nature—is for his horse reread the scene where he rides her to death in a steeplechase for its almost scandalous description of the way the horse and rider merge into each other’s rhythmic movements in which she flings herself in front of the train Sofiya accomplishes something different in her novel Countess Tolstoy counterpoises her husband’s mad denunciation of sex with a skillfully evoked account of the evolution of love from the sexual to the familial to the fantasized adulterous in all its contradictory complexities and unresolvable mysteries In the novella Sofiya gives us a touching portrait of a tender hopeful young girl at first finding herself falling under the spell of an older man but he does seem to pen boring polemics she can’t really respect He’s very similar to the crank Sofiya’s husband became in his dotage—and almost identical in his opinions to the wife-murderer in Kreutzer They are the opinions of an ignorant male presuming to be sophisticated about sex (Fortunately we no longer have these types around these days.) sermonizing to us in Kreutzer about his hydraulic steam-engine gasket theory of male sexuality builds up and must seek “relief.” (“Relief”—his charming word for his attentions to his wife Her relief only comes when he falls asleep.) Unsurprisingly as its wife-murderer-to-be Pozdnyshev looks on women as nothing but an instrument for man’s pressure-gasket release of steam Kreutzer offers no sense of the interiority of women And it sees sexual passion—the sexual pressure cooker—as a terrible evil against which men must struggle to avoid shame and degradation even when the passion concerns one’s lawfully wedded wife Anna’s narrative in Sofiya’s novel offers us something else entirely “she feels a wave of passion such as she had never experienced run through her body.” And yet for a considerable time after marriage but there is an awareness in the character Sofiya draws of the complex entwinement of love and sex utilitarian nature of her husband’s attention Even after his momentary pressure gasket relief but actually becomes angry and hostile at the way he has degraded himself has been out of the country because of illness respectful admiration” of Anna allows him to “completely yet imperceptibly enter” her “familial and personal life,” without—at first—arousing “the Prince’s vicious feelings of jealousy.” that Sofiya begins to evoke the intangible boundary between platonic and romantic love The love her heroine starts to experience is nothing like the hectic headlong Eros of that other Anna (It seems likely Sofiya has not chosen the name Anna accidentally What Sofiya succeeds in doing in her novel is to counterpoise to her husband’s inability to conjure love I like Flannery O’Connor’s line in this context: “Everything that rises must converge.” The beauty of Sofiya’s novel is in its moments of convergence or near-convergence when unity between Anna and Bekhmetev seems imminent There are recurrent suspenseful moments of near-adulterous physical passion—love as a suspense story the moment of near-to-total convergence between Anna and Bekhmetev is one of those rare instances in literature in which conversation can transcend words and merge spirits It is the scene in which Anna and Bekhmetev exchange thoughts on the nature of infinity not as mathematicians but as souls possessed by the same transcendent dream of limitlessness He discovers she’s been reading “a classic author Lamartine.” She says she’s taking great pleasure in the work and he asks if he can read aloud to her The passage from Lamartine’s French is about night: how “night is the mysterious book of meditations for lovers and poets At this moment they both realize the implications They both “possess the key” to the infinite They both know how to read and translate the Book of Night He then says something dramatic that invokes the infinite something about its wonder and terror: “And the relationship of night to the infinite (It’s fascinating when you think of all the—let’s face it—windy, half-baked philosophy of life, death, and history Lev Tolstoy inflicts on us, to the point, in War and Peace of obscuring the intensity of human feeling he can achieve and does achieve when he stops his incessant lecturing And fascinating that his wife is able to offer a glimpse of the transcendence his grand formulations rarely deliver.) almost immediately after this infini moment Anna’s husband senses something and begins his death spiral into murderous jealousy He senses something but he has no idea what it could be and can only think that his possession is in jeopardy with hatred of the woman he wished to possess alone She notes with revulsion now his lust for her: “Along with this hatred grew his passion and as a result of which his anger grew even stronger.” It is here on this very page that Sofiya gives away the game but leaving no doubt of the dynamic going on in her own matrimonial prison: “He didn’t know her he had never made the effort to understand the sort of woman she really was her passionate temperament (he was so happy when he had finally managed to awaken it).” “He knew her shoulders.” In Tolstoy’s world of glittering soirees it is metonymy for a woman’s naked availability Her shoulders inflame Anna’s husband because he knows they will inflame other men Filtering that through the realization that she is subject to carnal desires too (her “passionate temperament”) makes for an explosive mix in the man’s increasingly deranged mind Anna is spending glorious summer days painting with Bekhmetev by the riverside and at last Bekhmetev hesitantly discloses that he has more than reading to her in mind His acknowledgement of her desirability is cloaked: “You know that if anyone falls in love with a woman like you it’s dangerous; it’s impossible to stop halfway on the road to love; it consumes you entirely.” Not merely an observation about “other men,” but a dramatic declaration that his own feelings have leaped from platonic spiritual bonds to passionate love And we’re told “he turns pale and gasps for breath.” His health seems to teeter on the brink of a breakdown in a highly charged moment of implicit Eros It’s a question implicit in what Bekhmetev asks: What sort of substance is this surviving love only by a spiritual connection” can love endure a spiritual connection exclusively?” You have to feel a bit sorry for the poor guy “I don’t know whether exclusively or not,” she says which admits the possibility their physical closeness could become closer suggesting in the subtext the undertow of the words and silences between them There is an erotic charge to what they leave unsaid Countess Tolstoy’s description of love rings true to the array the spectrum of embodiments from physical to metaphysical human love can take “his glance … glowed inside her.” Another euphemism I won’t pursue the details to their horrifying conclusion Ultimately nothing physical is consummated; she’s too honorable He murders her by hurling a heavy paperweight that strikes her forehead Sofiya lives on in this astonishingly skillful novella The final exclamation point to Lev Tolstoy’s career The Kreutzer Sonata Variations: Lev Tolstoy’s Novella and Counterstories by Sofiya Tolstaya and Lev Lvovich Toystoy by Michael R. Katz (editor, translator). Yale University Press. CloseCreate an account or log in to save stories. CloseThanks for liking this story! We have added it to a list of your favorite stories. MPR News helps you turn down the noise and build shared understanding. Turn up your support for this public resource and keep trusted journalism accessible to all. The rocky surface of the asteroid Ryugu (JAXA)September 25 tumbled out of a spacecraft and landed on the surface of another world The robots are part of a Japanese mission to visit an asteroid Japan launched the Hayabusa2 spacecraft bound for Ryugu a small asteroid that measures slightly more than half a mile and orbits near Earth The spacecraft caught up with Ryugu in June after a three-year chase coming within several hundred feet of its rocky surface The two Japanese robots have captured Ryugu in incredible detail The images reveal a richly textured surface with rocks of all sizes jutting out into the darkness of space: Ryugu doesn’t look like a hazy space rock floating hundreds of millions of miles away like a rocky outcrop you might stumble across while hiking on Earth reads: “The slightly elongated smudge in this image is the asteroid.” An interstellar tourist barrels through the solar system. Telescope technology has vastly improved in the more than 200 years since asteroids were first discovered, but today, only the most powerful telescopes can resolve distinct features on the surface of the objects The best way to photograph an asteroid is to visit In 1991, the Galileo spacecraft buzzed past the asteroid Gaspra on its way to Jupiter. NASA engineers used data from the spacecraft to stitch together an image of the asteroid, which The New York Times described as “the first close-up photograph ever made of a rocky asteroid hurtling through the solar system.” This was the photo: JPL / NASAGalileo was about 10,000 miles from the asteroid when its camera pointed toward Gaspra The Times referred to the composite photo as “a sharp portrait” of an asteroid The Hayabusa2 mission will produce many more close-up images in the coming weeks which wouldn’t be efficient in Ryugu’s low-gravity environment the bots are designed to push themselves around and will quite literally bounce around the surface As the mission provides us with more close-up views of Ryugu it will also deliver an unprecedented look at the solar system’s ancient past Scientists believe that asteroids like Ryugu are remnants of the system’s creation about 4.5 billion years ago The rocks have remained mostly unchanged since then which means they still contain the materials—a mix of rock and organic compounds—that coalesced to form the planets The Hayabusa2 spacecraft will soon attempt to excavate some of that history The probe will fire a projectile at Ryugu to create a crater and expose long-buried material and then dip its instruments inside to collect some samples before heading back to Earth Our views of an asteroid are bound to become sharper still The Galileo spacecraft, scheduled to go into orbit around Jupiter in December 1995, is within 2 million miles and four days of the second of three planetary gravity assists designed to get it there. At this gravity-assist flyby of Earth, as at Venus in February 1990, Galileo is making use of the opportunity to conduct limited scientific observations of the planet. Following a successful trim maneuver November 28, 1990, it is precisely on course for the December 8 Earth gravity assist. Galileo will have a closest-approach altitude of about 590 miles and gain approximately 11,500 mph of heliocentric speed from the gravity assist. This enlarges its orbit so that it reaches the asteroid belt and returns to Earth in 2 years for the final gravity assist, which in turn will add another 8,300 mph of speed and pump the orbit up to reach Jupiter in December 1995. Health and performance of the spacecraft continue to be excellent. The data acquired at Venus during the February gravity assist there were successfully played back November 19-21, 1990, after some 9 months in storage, and processing and analysis began. The observations include 81 images of the clouds; two infrared maps of lower-level clouds some 3033 miles above surface and 6-10 miles below the visible cloudtops; and other atmospheric and plasma measurements. Preliminary analysis indicates new information concerning the atmospheric circulation of Venus. The new lower-level cloud maps, showing the night side, indicated strong equatorial convection, while temperate-zone clouds showed East-West elongation by winds estimated at 150 mph. Scientific observations of the Earth will not be constrained by tape-recorder capacity. Between 1,000 and 2,000 images, and correspondingly expanded observations by other instruments, are planned. Following the first Earth gravity assist, the first close flyby of an asteroid is planned for October 29, 1991, with the asteroid Gaspra. The Galileo Project is managed and operated for NASA's Office of Space Science and Applications by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The atmospheric probe is provided by NASA Ames Research Center. The scientific activities are being carried out by more than 100 scientists from 6 nations. NASA's Galileo spacecraft will pass within 600 miles of Earth at 12:35 p.m. PST Saturday, December 8, 1990, as it continues to work its way out to Jupiter. During this flyby, Galileo will pick up some of the energy necessary to reach the giant planet in 1995. It will increase its speed in solar orbit by about 11,600 mph. One more Earth gravity assist, in 1992, will pump up the flight path the rest of the way to Jupiter, for a 1995 encounter. An earlier gravity assist, at the planet Venus in February 1990, set the conditions for today's Earth flyby. After the Venus flyby, six trajectory-correction maneuvers, designed and programmed by Galileo's flight team and executed on command by the spacecraft over the last 8 months, put Galileo on the precise flight path for the required gravity assist. Although the fifth maneuver was accurate within 1 percent, a very small sixth adjustment was made November 28 to remove remaining errors and save propellant after the Earth flyby. The sole objective of the Earth and Venus flybys is to add energy to Galileo's orbit so it may reach Jupiter. As a bonus, however, the Project's scientists will Use these encounters to test the spacecraft's systems and sensors andadd to science's knowledge of these planets. As Galileo approaches the dark side of Earth, it will be measuring the Earth's magnetic field and the surrounding solar plasma flows. It will also image and map the crescent Moon, which swells to half-moon as Galileo approaches. The first Earth images are scheduled about an hour after closest approach. They will continue, at various intervals, for about a week. Galileo will leave Earth's magnetosphere about two hours after closest approach. The various instruments will continue to be active for some days. Galileo will encounter the main-belt asteroid Gaspra in late October 1991 for a first and very brief scientific close-up of such a body. It will return to Earth's vicinity December 8, 1992 for a second, precisely engineered gravity assist. A first look at preliminary analyses of the EarthMoon science observations will be presented in a press conference scheduled for 10 a.m. PST Wednesday, December 19, 1990, at JPL, and via NASA SELECT, Satcom F2R, Transponder 13, C-Band. You are not permitted to download, save or email this image. Visit image gallery to purchase the image is a former president of the Canterbury Astronomical Society and helped establish a New Zealand network of cameras that help NASA map meteor showers The asteroid numbered 32150 has been named Crumpton in his honour Asteroids are sometimes called minor planets They are left over from the formation of the solar system 4.6 billion years ago They range in size from less than 1km to more than 1000km which is between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter Wife Tricia Crumpton said her husband would have been surprised at the news of the asteroid naming formally announced by the International Astronomical Union “He just quietly got on with his astronomy The thing I think that was a bit sad is he wasn’t here to appreciate it.” While serving at a parish in Spreydon he had built his own observatory out of paper mache on a wooden frame behind the manse where they had moved about 30 years ago due to the area’s stunning night skies he built another observatory in his backyard with a slide-off roof Ian was crucial in establishing and operating the Cameras for All-sky Meteor Surveillance (CAMS) New Zealand for the NASA Ames Research Centre Automated video surveillance of the night sky is sent from the cameras The data is used to derive the geometrical orbit of each recorded meteor in the Solar System Canterbury University astronomer Jack Baggaley explained 32150 was the number of the asteroid that has now been named Crumpton “Asteroids are numbered 1 to about 50,000 roughly in order of their discovery The first named Ceres was discovered in the year 1801.” NASA has identified three asteroids that will closely approach Earth today The biggest of the three is about as long as the wingspan of a Boeing 747 airplane Details about the space rocks were recorded by NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) the space agency’s main department when it comes to monitoring asteroids that are on near-collision paths with the planet The first asteroid, called 2019 KA3 will make its approach on June 6 at 3:25 am ST It is about 15 meters long and is currently flying at a speed of 8,600 miles per hour the asteroid will be about 0.01013 astronomical units from Earth which is about 941,600 miles -- one of closest to the Earth's surface in the past months 2019 KA3 is expected to return to Earth’s vicinity this year on Oct it will fly farther away from Earth at around 12 million miles from the planet’s surface The second asteroid that will be visiting Earth’s neighborhood is 2019 JX2 the asteroid will fly by Earth on June 6 at 8:05 am ST it will be at around 0.03526 astronomical units away or 3.3 million miles Out of the three asteroids, 2019 JX2 is the biggest one. According to CNEOS’ data, the asteroid has a maximum diameter of 69 meters. The asteroid was first observed making its approach to Earth on May 6 The third asteroid will arrive later this evening at around 8:07 pm ST. Called 2014 MF18 the asteroid has a maximum diameter of 38 meters it will have a projected speed of around 6,600 miles per hour It will zip past Earth from a distance of 0.02248 astronomical units or roughly 2.1 million miles According to NASA and CNEOS’ projections 2014 MF18 will fly closest to Earth on Nov the asteroid will only be about 0.00219 astronomical units or 203,600 miles away from Earth This means the asteroid will be closer to Earth than the Moon which is located around 239,000 miles away