[meteorite-list] Does Asteroid Vesta Have a Moon?

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Thu, 7 Jul 2011 10:07:54 -0700 (PDT)
Message-ID: <201107071707.p67H7sel024246_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2011/06jul_vestamoon/

Does Asteroid Vesta Have a Moon?
NASA Science News
July 6, 2011

July 6, 2011: NASA's Dawn spacecraft is closing in on Vesta, and from
now until the ion-powered spacecraft goes into orbit in mid-July, every
picture of the giant asteroid will be the best one ever taken. What will
researchers do with this unprecedented clarity?

"For starters," says Dawn chief engineer Marc Rayman, "we're going to
look for an asteroid moon."

You might think of asteroids as isolated bodies tumbling alone through
space, but it's entirely possible for these old "loners" to have
companions. Indeed, 19-mile-wide Ida, 90-mile-wide Pulcova,
103-mile-wide Kalliope, and 135-mile-wide Eugenia each have a moon. And
175-mile-wide Sylvia has two moons. Measuring 330 miles across, Vesta is
much larger than these other examples, so a "Vesta moon" is entirely
possible.

Where do such moons come from?

Rayman suggests one source: "When another large body collides with an
asteroid, the resulting debris is sprayed into orbit around the asteroid
and can gradually collapse to form a moon."

Another possibility is "gravitational pinball": A moon formed elsewhere
in the asteroid belt might, through complicated gravitational
interactions with various bodies, end up captured by the gravity of one
of them.

Hubble and ground based telescopes have looked for Vesta moons before,
and seen nothing. Dawn is about to be in position for a closer look.
This Saturday, July 9th, just one week before Dawn goes into orbit
around Vesta, the moon hunt will commence. The cameras will begin
taking images of the space surrounding the asteroid, looking for
suspicious specks.

"If a moon is there, it will appear as a dot that moves around Vesta in
successive images as opposed to remaining fixed, like background stars,"
says Dawn Co-investigator Mark Sykes, who is also director of the
Planetary Science Institute. "We'll be able to use short exposures to
detect moons as small as 27 meters in diameter. If our longer exposures
aren't washed out by the glare of nearby Vesta, we'll be able to detect
moons only a few meters in diameter."

While you won't see "find a moon" among the mission's science goals, a
moon-sighting would be a nice feather in Dawn's cap. Not that it will
need more feathers. The probe is already primed to build global maps and
take detailed images of the asteroid's surface, reveal the fine points
of its topography, and catalog the minerals and elements present there.

Besides, Dawn will become a moon itself when it enters orbit around
Vesta. And the probe's motions as it circles will provide a lot of
information about the rocky relic.

Sykes explains: "We'll use the spacecraft's radio signal to measure its
motion around Vesta. This will give us a lot of detailed information
about the asteroid's gravitational field. We'll learn about Vesta's mass
and interior structure, including its core and potential mascons (lumpy
concentrations of mass)."

As you read this, the spacecraft is gently thrusting closer to its
target. And with the navigation images alone we're already watching a
never-before-seen world grow ever larger and clearer.

"The pictures are beginning to reveal the surface of this battered,
alien world," says Rayman. "They're more than enough to tantalize us.
We've been in flight for four years, we've been planning the mission for
a decade, and people have been looking at Vesta in the night sky for two
centuries. Now, finally, we're coming close up to it, and we'll be
getting an intimate view of this place."

This is not only the first time a spacecraft has visited this alien
world, it's also the first time a spacecraft has visited a massive body
we haven't approached previously. In the past, rocket ships have orbited
Earth, the moon, Mars, Venus, Jupiter, Saturn, and Mercury.

"In each case, flyby missions occurred first, providing a good estimate
of the target's gravity along with information on other aspects of its
physical environment, including whether any moons are present. This time
we're much less certain what we'll find."

At a recent press conference, NASA Planetary Science Deputy Director Jim
Adams told reporters that Dawn will "paint a face on a world seen only
as a 'fuzzy blob' up to now." What does Rayman think Vesta's face will
look like?

"Wrinkled, ancient, wizened, with a tremendous amount of character that
bears witness to some fascinating episodes in the solar system's history."

If a new moon is among the episodes, Rayman has a name in mind.

"How about 'Dawn'?"

Author: Dauna Coulter
Editor: Dr. Tony Phillips
Credit: Science at NASA

More Information

Dawn Journal <http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission/journal_06_23_11.asp> --
penned by Dawn's chief engineer Marc Rayman

Footnotes:

(1) In addition to having moons, asteroids can also be double: Binary
asteroids <http://apod.nasa.gov/apod/ap001101.html> sometimes form when
a spinning parent body splits. The body is spun up by a phenomenon
called YORP that occurs when the body absorbs photons from the sun and
reradiates them as heat: more
<http://www.news.cornell.edu/stories/March07/margot.yorp.html>.

(2) Dawn will perform dedicated observations in search of moons for
about 15 hours. However, if no moon is found at Vesta on July 9th, that
doesn't mean there isn't one. Rayman says: "If there is a moon, it might
show up by coincidence in other observations, but we have no other
observations dedicated in this mission to finding a moon. There is just
so much to learn about Vesta itself, that that is where we are focusing
our time."

(3) From NASA press release: When Vesta captures Dawn into its orbit on
July 16, there will be approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers)
between them. When orbit is achieved, they will be approximately 117
million miles (188 million kilometers) away from Earth. During the
initial reconnaissance orbit, at approximately 1,700 miles (2,700
kilometers), the spacecraft will get a broad overview of Vesta with
color pictures and data in different wavelengths of reflected light. The
spacecraft will move into a high-altitude mapping orbit, about 420 miles
(680 kilometers) above the surface to systematically map the parts of
Vesta's surface illuminated by the sun; collect stereo images to see
topographic highs and lows; acquire higher-resolution data to map rock
types at the surface; and learn more about Vesta's thermal properties.
Dawn then will move even closer, to a low-altitude mapping orbit
approximately 120 miles (200 kilometers) above the surface. The primary
science goals of this orbit are to detect the byproducts of cosmic rays
hitting the surface and help scientists determine the many kinds of
atoms there, and probe the protoplanet's internal structure. As Dawn
spirals away from Vesta, it will pause again at the high-altitude
mapping orbit. Because the sun's angle on the surface will have
progressed, scientists will be able to see previously hidden terrain
while obtaining different views of surface features.

Credits: Dawn's mission to Vesta and Ceres is managed by JPL for
NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of
the directorate's Discovery Program, managed by NASA's Marshall Space
Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn
mission science. Orbital Sciences Corp. of Dulles, Va., designed and
built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, the Max Planck
Institute for Solar System Research, the Italian Space Agency and the
Italian National Astrophysical Institute are part of the mission team.
JPL is managed for NASA by the California Institute of Technology in
Pasadena. For more information about Dawn, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/dawn and http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov
<http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/> . You can also follow Dawn on Twitter at:
http://www.twitter.com/NASA_Dawn .
Received on Thu 07 Jul 2011 01:07:54 PM PDT