Asteroid expelled from early system
Loner found
PARIS, May 10, (Agencies): An asteroid ejected from our infant Solar System found refuge billions of kilometres away, beyond the orbit of Neptune, where it has now been spotted, astronomers said Wednesday.
The curious loner is the first carbon-rich asteroid ever observed in the far-flung region called the Kuiper belt, which is filled with frozen objects, a team reported in The Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Its composition suggests the asteroid must have been formed in the inner Solar System, likely in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, before migrating to its outer reaches, said the team.
This makes it “a relic of the primordial Solar System”, they added.
Theoretical models of our early Solar System describe a tempestuous time with gas giant planets on the rampage, ejecting small rocky bodies from its the system’s centre to far-flung orbits.
Such models suggest the Kuiper Belt should contain a small number of rocky bodies, perhaps also carbon-rich asteroids.
The new observation, using telescopes of the European Southern Observatory in Chile, provides “strong support for these theoretical models of our Solar System’s troubled youth,” said an ESO statement.
The asteroid was spotted partly because it reflects light differently than other objects in the Kuiper Belt, which are icy while asteroids are rocky.
“It looked enough of a weirdo for us to take a closer look,” said study lead author Tom Seccull of Queen’s University Belfast.
It is, nevertheless, very difficult to study.
The 300 km-wide (186 mile) space rock is four billion kilometres from Earth, and dark.
“It’s like observing a giant mountain of coal against the pitchblack canvas of the night sky,” said co-author Thomas Puzia of the Pontifical Catholic University of Chile.
Dubbed 2004 EW95, the asteroid is moving, and feint.
“We had to use a pretty advanced data processing technique to get as much out of the data as possible,” said Seccull.
Seccull
New Falcon 9 rocket:
An updated version of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket, tailored for eventual crewed missions into orbit, was set for its debut commercial launch on Thursday from Florida’s Cape Canaveral carrying a communications satellite for Bangladesh.
The newly minted Block-5 edition of the Falcon 9, equipped with about 100 upgrades for greater power, safety and reusability than its Block-4 predecessor, was scheduled for liftoff at 4:12 pm EDT from the Kennedy Space Center.
Its recoverable main-stage booster is designed to minimize refurbishment needed between flights, allowing more frequent launches at lower cost — a key to the business model for billionaire entrepreneur Elon Musk’s Space Exploration Technologies, as SpaceX is formally known.
Enhanced rocket reusability also is a core tenant of Musk’s broader objectives for normalizing space travel and ultimately sending humans to Mars.
The Block-5 is the first rocket from his California-based company to satisfy NASA’s standards for its Commercial Crew Program to carry agency astronauts to the International Space Station, which SpaceX seeks to accomplish by the end of 2018.
For the maiden flight of the new Falcon 9, SpaceX will be launching the Bangladeshi government’s first satellite, Bangabandhu-1, into Earth orbit.
“Block 5 is here. We’re all excited about that,” Hans Koenigsmann, a SpaceX vice president, said during a press conference last month. “We had a good test campaign in Texas. I believe it was faster than we ever had on new block upgrades.”
Among the Block-5 features new to the Falcon 9 series are a heat-resistant layer of shielding at the base of the rocket, reusable tail fins for cleaner return landings and a thrust nearly 10 percent stronger than that of the Block-4.
Block-5 marks the final version of the iconic Falcon 9 lineup before SpaceX introduces its super heavylift launch vehicle, dubbed the Big Falcon Rocket, or BFR, which will be designed to send manned missions to Mars.