ESA Selects Targets for Asteroid Deflection Test 284
Vandil X writes "The European Space Agency has announced that it has selected two candidate asteroid targets for a planned mission to impact an asteroid in an attempt to deflect the asteroid off course by a measurable amount. The mission, dubbed "Don Quijote," will send two spacecraft to their final choice asteroid. One craft will impact the asteroid while the other will observe the asteroid before and after the collision. The mission craft and target selection are expected to be finalized sometime in 2007."
Something wrong with p? (Score:1, Informative)
Re:Something wrong with p? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fighting windmills? (Score:4, Informative)
I wonder when they decided to change the spelling.
Re:revised standard Don Quixote (Score:4, Informative)
**wax on** It's not an F. What you see is the "long s". It's how they used to draw an S character since the days of Carolingian Minuscule, from which hand our "Times Roman" eventually derived. You'll note there was no crossbar on the letter in that form - the crossbar distinguished the "f" from the "long s". The form we take as "s" appeared only at the end of the word. Thus, "Congrefs" would have been pronounced "Congress". **wax off**
Re:Something wrong with p? SIMPLE (Score:5, Informative)
Uh, we know the first two p(momentum, vector) values(and that's if we know the mass of the asteroid, which isn't necessarily true), but not the second two. In my math classes, we learned that was 1 equation (vector valued) and two unknown vectors. I don't think anyone can solve that, and no, conservation of kinetic energy won't work because the internal energy changes big time in most non-particle scale collisions. In Mechanics, many of our college educated comrades learned of a way to resolve this textbook documented issue with the simple aide of a constant e, which details the elasticity of the interaction. Unfortunately, e is not easy to determine through theory, and is also just a model (and a bad one at that), and therefore an experiment is usually called for (and usually a lot of them). 'Nuff said.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Collision
Re:Fighting windmills? (Score:5, Informative)
Change from Old Spanish to Modern Spanish. X had the "heh" sound (as in Mexico), but has transitioned to a "sh" sound (as in Ixtacihuatl)/"gs" sound as in explorar. Words have changed to reflect the new usage, but names proper names are blurry, so you will see Mexico, Mejico; Xavier, Javier; Quijote, Quixote
Re:Something wrong with p? (Score:2, Informative)
Re:The grants game (Score:5, Informative)
By launching a projectile at an asteroid instead, we will know that any changes in the asteroid's trajectory were caused by our impactor because asteroids are inert and have otherwise very stable and predictable orbits.
Re:Crash? (Score:2, Informative)
I'd say the fact that I can't predict something's behaviour (accurately determine) makes it unpredictable, wouldn't you?
Re:What happens... (Score:3, Informative)
Oh yeah, sure. ESA and NASA keep this collision secret because:
Also, this is ESA. There isn't nearly as much useless secrecy in Europe than in the USA.
Comment removed (Score:2, Informative)
Re:Fighting windmills? (Score:2, Informative)
In modern Spanish, the gentleman's name is Don Quijote (the X was pronounced in the same way as J is pronounced now -- that's why Mexico, Texas and Oaxaca are pronounced as "Méjico", "Tejas" and "Oajaca" in Spanish).
And the reason for the naming is simple: one spacecraft (the Hidalgo -- Don Quijote himself) will ram the asteroid (a windmill) while the other one (Sancho) looks from afar.
Re:Fighting windmills? (Score:2, Informative)
Excuse me Sir. I think you are mistaking here.
It's a Spanish book [wikipedia.org] what you are referring to. The mission was conceived by spaniards [esa.int], and the main contractor is Spanish [deimos-space.com]. They have chosen to use the Spanish spelling: Don Quijote.