What Did They Just Discover on Vesta and Ceres? – Update

Here is the update and what they had to say about the next visit?

“The spacecraft has not been sterilised, so we aren’t allowed to touch down on the surface of Ceres,” says Russell. Strict planetary protection rules forbid us sending Earth microbes to other worlds. “Instead, we want to go the other way, away from Ceres, to visit yet another target.”

Given the small amount of xenon fuel remaining, the list of potential destinations is probably not too long, but Russell is keeping it a secret for now. “As long as the mission extension has not been approved by NASA, I’m not going to tell you which asteroid we plan to visit,” he says. “I hope a decision won’t take months.”

Some of the historical background on its discovery are cited in this wikipedia excerpt:

Ceres was the first asteroid discovered, by Giuseppe Piazzi at Palermo on 1 January 1801. It was originally considered a planet, but was reclassified as an asteroid in the 1850s when many other objects in similar orbits were discovered.

In January 2014, emissions of water vapor were detected from several regions of Ceres.[21] This was unexpected, because large bodies in the asteroid belt do not typically emit vapor, a hallmark of comets.

And what do you think of these strange anomalies they found?

We hope you enjoy the video.

And we also wouldn’t be surprised if they came out with more analysis in the next couple months on the unusual surface formations on Ceres!  Check back for updates.

thanks to NASA for the pic

thanks to newscientist.com for the great info



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45 Comments

  1. Daniel Goodwin said:

    If your not going to tell me on one page then don’t even bother sharing. You eat away at my data for more ad exposure when nobody even looks at the ads. Fyl

    Reply
  24. Matt Dimbylow said:

    “Strict planetary protection rules forbids us from sending earth microbes to other planets” how long has this protocol been in existence? Because it’s already too late for Mars and our moon and I’m not sure about Venus either ( did Russia sterilize its Venera missions?)

    Reply
  27. Trick Icarus said:

    I love to click next page to get dissapointed in having high hopes that your header accually meant what the bs article was about. I’m going to keep hoping you’ll stop being a fucking idiot, and your going to keep wasting my time. Put your fucking video and the whole article on one fucking page you fucking fairy. Douchbag fuckedface dried up stinky dicklicker.

    Reply

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