Starship Asterisk*

Missing craters? duh, Didn't I just mention that in a thread?
Great image ,,,, finally. 8)

Norval

Upon close examination of the photo You can see many craters. In the bottom left there is a double cone which looks like two craters at the top. There also seems to be many other craters close to the same size.

Don

The other photos on the Japanese site show many more dust-filled craters. It would have been interesting to shoot something into the asteroid to create a new crater and watch how it forms, and then watch it fill in over time.

You would have to remind me of the Temple lack of info wouldn't you.

There are many possibilities on it's make up, but with out some far bigger apparatus to really play with an asteroid we are still in the dark about many things. I noted the smaller crater potentials also. The image with the blue circles on it seems to indicate such.

Norval

Even one small high-speed impact could have shook the structure enough to sent debris meters above the surface and slowly settling back to the surface, it erased most of the crater features. A slow collision of the two major spheres may have caused it also.

What if it has never been hit?

That would imply that it is very new and this is unlikely?

could be thats it very low gravity prevents collisions of adequate force to form major craters, and it has just been lucky not to be hit by anything (recently) with a high relative velocity.

the mechanics of dust and debris settling in an environment with gravity that low could be very different to earth, makes sense that with a smaller force towards the center of gravity there will be a smaller coefficient of friction between each of the grains/rocks/etc that make up the asteroid, and everything might just slide back into place?

What if it's never been hit?

That would imply that it is very new and this is unlikely?

,,, or that our solar system isn't quite the "natural" formation some thought it was.

To be where it is located, something big must have happened to it. For it to be all low speed impacts it would need to be in a very stable orbit along with other objects within that same stable orbit, it doesn't add up.

Here is a link to the Japanese website. Hard to read but great pictures and graphics.

http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/j/snews/2005/11 ... busa.shtml

Hayabusa attempted its first soft-landing on Itokawa for the purpose of touch down and sample collection on November 20-21, 2005.

This link is in english.
http://www.isas.jaxa.jp/e/snews/2005/11 ... busa.shtml

Way to go JAXA ! ! !

Norval

Damn good driving


dispite distance and DSN switching to Usuda Deep Space Center.

I like it.

You can see many hits that have been filled every time it passes an object with enough gravity to move it around.