First Asteroid Discovered At Uranus's Leading Trojan Point 90
LeadSongDog writes "Space.com is reporting on a 60km comet-like body in Lagrangian orbit around the Sun, locked to Uranus's leading Trojan Point. This means a distant, but fairly accessible supply of water-ice, hence: reaction mass, hydrogen and oxygen for robotic miners if we can just get them there with an energy source. 'The sun and Earth have two Trojan points, one leading ahead of Earth, known as the L-4 point of the system, and one trailing behind, its L-5 point. The sun and other planets have Lagrangian points also, with asteroids seen at those the sun shares with Jupiter, Neptune and Mars. Scientists thought the Trojan points of Uranus, the seventh planet from the sun, were too unstable to host asteroids."
Re:Oh boy (Score:4, Interesting)
Someone has to change that planet's name ASAP.
Neil deGrasse Tyson are you listening?
It doesn't take an astrophysicist. Caelus is the roman equivalent, and less prone to bevis and butthead tag lines.
Don't forget the Dwarf Planet Ceres. (Score:5, Interesting)
Ceres [wikipedia.org] is a dwarf planet that makes up about 1/3rd the mass of the asteroid belt. It's thought to be made of rock and ice as well. So, it would have RAW materials for both building and fueling... If you don't mind all the other rocks whizzing by. Closer proximity to the sun means it's faster to use solar to split H2O closer in.
Amazing to think of a future where fuel could be made at such sites (even out of water on the moon) and then distributed to other orbits about the solar system to fuel up on in transit. The biggest benefit of finding caches of resources like this is that they've got a much lower gravity tax...
Uranu's trojan asteroid would be sort of like a gas station in the middle of no-where: "Slow down, pilgrim. Sun's not so bright you hafta scurry about. Time moves a bit slower for us robotic refuelers out here in the land of the midday night. One wrong move and it's 2.6 billion clicks to the nearest part store."