Meteorites and the Early Solar System II


Book Description

They range in size from microscopic particles to masses of many tons. The geologic diversity of asteroids and other rocky bodies of the solar system are displayed in the enormous variety of textures and mineralogies observed in meteorites. The composition, chemistry, and mineralogy of primitive meteorites collectively provide evidence for a wide variety of chemical and physical processes. This book synthesizes our current understanding of the early solar system, summarizing information about processes that occurred before its formation. It will be valuable as a textbook for graduate education in planetary science and as a reference for meteoriticists and researchers in allied fields worldwide.




Asteroids II


Book Description

"Asteroids II will have some bearing on meteorite research, and will help to clarify our understanding of the many specimens held in both private and public collections throughout the world. I commend the book without reservation."--J.P. Lavielle Impact "This monograph will become indispensable for everybody engaged in the rapidly expanding asteroid research or interested in its current state."--Space Science Reviews "This is an excellent introduction to the subject, recommended for schools with astronomy programs."--Academic Library Review




Asteroids, Comets, Meteors 1993


Book Description

THE MEETING The IAU Symposium 160 ASTEROIDS COMETS METEORS 1999 has been held at Villa Carlotta in Belgirate, on the shore of Lago Maggiore (Italy), from June 14 to June 18, 1993. It has been organized by the Astronomical Observatory of Torino and by the Lunar and Planetary Institute of Houston. It has been a very large meeting, with 323 registered participants from 38 countries. The scientific program included 29 invited reviews, 106 oral communications, and 215 posters. The subjects covered included all the aspects of the studies of the minor bodies of the solar system, including asteroids, comets, meteors, meteorites, interplanetary dust, with special focus on the interrelationships between these. The meeting was structured as follows. 5 morning plenary sessions have been devoted to invited reviews on: (1) search programs (2) populations of small bodies (3) dynamics (4) physical observations and modelling (5) origin and evolution. Two afternoon plenary sessions have been devoted to space missions to small bodies and to interrelationships between the different populations. The afternoon parallel sessions have been devoted to: dynamics of comets; Toutatis, Ida, Gaspra; physical processes in cometary comae and tails; meteorites; the cosmogonic message from cometary nuclei; physics of asteroids; the interplanetary dust complex; comet nuclei; meteors; composition and material properties of comets; dynamics of asteroids.




Comets II


Book Description

The study of comets is a field that has seen tremendous advances in recent years, far surpassing the knowledge reflected in the original Comets volume published as part of the Space Science Series in 1982. This new volume, with more than seventy contributing authors, represents the first complete overview of comet science in more than a decade and contains the most extensive collection of knowledge yet assembled in the field. Comets II situates comet science in the global context of astrophysics for the first time by beginning with a series of chapters that describe the connection between stars and planets. It continues with a presentation of the formation and evolution of planetary systems, enabling the reader to clearly see the key role played in our own solar system by the icy planetesimals that were the seeds of the giant planets and transneptunian objects. The book presents the key results obtained during the 1990s, in particular those collected during the apparition of the exceptional comets C/Hyakutake and C/Hale-Bopp in 1996-1997. The latest results obtained from the in situ exploration of comets P/Borrelly and P/Wild 2 are also discussed in detail. Each topic of is designed to be accessible to students or young researchers looking for basic, yet detailed, complete and accurate, information on comet science. With its emphasis on the origin of theories and the future of research, Comets II will enable scientists to make connections across disciplinary boundaries and will set the stage for discovery and new understanding in the coming years.




Asteroids III


Book Description

Two hundred years after the first asteroid was discovered, asteroids can no longer be considered mere points of light in the sky. Spacecraft missions, advanced Earth-based observation techniques, and state-of-the-art numerical models are continually revealing the detailed shapes, structures, geological properties, and orbital characteristics of these smaller denizens of our solar system. This volume brings together the latest information obtained by spacecraft combined with astronomical observations and theoretical modeling, to present our best current understanding of asteroids and the clues they reveal for the origin an,d evolution of the solar system. This collective knowledge, prepared by a team of more than one hundred international authorities on asteroids, includes new insights into asteroid-meteorite connections, possible relationships with comets, and the hazards posed by asteroids colliding with Earth. The book's contents include reports on surveys based on remote observation and summaries of physical properties; results of in situ exploration; studies of dynamical, collisional, cosmochemical, and weathering evolutionary processes; and discussions of asteroid families and the relationships between asteroids and other solar system bodies. Two previous Space Science Series volumes have established standards for research into asteroids. Asteroids III carries that tradition forward in a book that will stand as the definitive source on its subject for the next decade.




Asteroids


Book Description

An overview of asteroid science, summarising the astronomical and geological characteristics of asteroids, for students and researchers.




Asteroids IV


Book Description

Over the past decade, asteroids have come to the forefront of planetary science. Scientists across broad disciplines are increasingly recognizing that understanding asteroids is essential to discerning the basic processes of planetary formation, including how their current distribution bespeaks our solar system’s cataclysmic past. For explorers, the nearest asteroids beckon as the most accessible milestones in interplanetary space, offering spaceflight destinations easier to reach than the lunar surface. For futurists, the prospects of asteroids as commercial resources tantalize as a twenty-first-century gold rush, albeit with far greater challenges than faced by nineteenth-century pioneers. For humanity, it is the realization that asteroids matter. It is not a question of if—but when—the next major impact will occur. While the disaster probabilities are thankfully small, fully cataloging and characterizing the potentially hazardous asteroid population remains unfinished business. Asteroids IV sets the latest scientific foundation upon which all these topics and more will be built upon for the future. Nearly 150 international authorities through more than 40 chapters convey the definitive state of the field by detailing our current astronomical, compositional, geological, and geophysical knowledge of asteroids, as well as their unique physical processes and interrelationships with comets and meteorites. Most importantly, this volume outlines the outstanding questions that will focus and drive researchers and students of all ages toward new advances in the coming decade and beyond.




The Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission


Book Description

Even before the present Administrator of NASA, Daniel Goldin, made the phrase 'better, faster, cheaper' the slogan of at least the Office of Space Science, that same office under the Associate Administrator of Lennard Fisk and its Division of Solar System Exploration under the direction of Wes Huntress had begun a series of planetary spacecraft whose developmental cost, phase CID in the parlance of the trade, was to be held to under $150M. In order to get the program underway rapidly they chose two missions without the open solicitation now the hallmark of the program. One of these two missions, JPL' s Mars Pathfinder, was to be a technology demonstration mission with little immediate science return that would enable later high priority science missions to Mars. Many of the science investigations that were included had significant foreign contributions to keep NASA's cost of the mission within the Discovery budget. The second of these missions and the first to be launched was the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous mission, or NEAR, awarded to Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory. This mission was quite different than Mars Pathfinder, being taken from the list of high priority objectives of the science community and emphasizing the science return and not the technology development of the mission. This mission was also to prove to be well under the $150M phase CID cap.




Asteroids


Book Description

With the bulk of asteroids floating in space between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, astronomers puzzle over where these rocks came from. Are they the remnants of a planet? Excess not used in the formation of the Solar System? Nothing more than random bits of debris? The location of the belt makes for a quasi-barrier separating the inner from the outer planets. Perhaps asteroids were meant to discourage human space exploration. NASA has sent missions to explore the asteroid belt and the rocks themselves, and those missions have yielded some interesting observations on the composition of the asteroids but no definitive answer as to their origin. Earth-based tools such as telescopes and satellites also contribute to asteroid research but cannot plumb the depths behind these varied chunks of flotsam. Presented in this book is a list of carefully chosen abstracts and citations of relevant literature about asteroids and the research into them. Prior to this listing, though, comes an overview of the nature of the asteroids and what we know now about them and what we hope to discover in the future. lifeless but mysterious rocks inhabiting the solar system. To conclude, easy access is provided through author, title, and subject indexes.







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