Word: asteroidal
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Unbeknownst to Tucker at the time, the LONEOS program, a professional search effort at Lowell Observatory, had already sighted the comet, but the program mistook the comet for a common Main Belt asteroid...
...most daring deep-space missions NASA has ever planned is turning out to be one of the least publicized. The target is a large asteroid named 1992KD, which orbits the sun millions of miles from Earth. But that destination is almost incidental to the performance of the spacecraft that will make the trip. Though it looks little different from countless other unmanned probes NASA has launched, the ship will be navigated by an electronic brain that has been likened to HAL, the independent-minded computer in the film 2001, and will move through space under power of a system that...
...goes as planned, Deep Space 1, scheduled for launch later this month, will be the forerunner of a new generation of spacecraft. While flight planners hope the ship will make some interesting observations about the target asteroid, including its composition and the structure of its surface, DS1's prime assignment is to validate a host of new technologies NASA had always considered too risky to try on a high-profile mission. Says Marc Rayman of Jet Propulsion Laboratory, DS1's chief engineer: "We have an unproven propulsion system, powered by an unproven solar array, commanded by an unproven navigation system...
Just as innovative is DS1's navigation system. By scanning stars and asteroids, the spacecraft will know precisely where it is and will make its own maneuvers, perhaps even during its asteroid rendezvous. Programmed to fly six miles above the giant rock, DS1 will also have the option of swooping down to half that altitude...
TIME contributor Leon Jaroff has long been a star to his colleagues and readers. We're therefore pleased to announce that he is being officially recognized as a celestial object. On Aug. 8 the International Astronomical Union voted to change the name of the asteroid previously known as 1992WY4 to the 7829 Jaroff. Eleanor Helin, an astronomer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., who discovered the asteroid in 1992, recommended the name to honor Jaroff's "well-researched, insightful articles and essays on scientific subjects" and his efforts to "draw attention to the issue of NEOs [near earth...