Well of Souls Forums

Yeah, 11 Jm's is getting close to the boundary between gas giants and brown dwarfs.
Another possibility of course is that this planet is a captured wanderer.

GeoModder wrote:Another possibility of course is that this planet is a captured wanderer.

If it were captured, it probably wouldn't still be glowing from the heat of formation.

True... unless it came from another nearby young star system. 13 million years sounds young enough in order to still float near the rest of its 'birth siblings'.

hi hi

If it didn't form in that orbit, I would say it is more likely that orbital interactions with other planets pushed it into the higher orbit. Little nudges can really build up over time, especially before everything has a chance to settle into a stable place.

Galactic ballet, in music
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=eF02Nhix ... E5&index=5
More in same youtube playlist. YMMMV

Found a little simulator of galactic proportions

www.youtube.com/watch?v=3bH4KleneFM

http://en.spaceengine.org/

As it passed in front of a star, the centaur asteroid Chariklo revealed that it has rings.

Should make a fine target for an Asteroid Mission.

GeoModder wrote:Should make a fine target for an Asteroid Mission.

I think they'd want one that's a little closer. This one is between Saturn and Uranus.

I know. Let's get us some really advanced propulsion...

hi hi

They could undoubtedly reach it with contemporary propulsion (Dawn has ~10km/s of delta v) but it would still take forever.

icekatze wrote:They could undoubtedly reach it with contemporary propulsion (Dawn has ~10km/s of delta v) but it would still take forever.

Welcome to our "space age".
Does it matter if it takes a decade, or even half a generation, to arrive? And I say "arrive" on purpose, because flyby missions are a bit of waste IMO. Those just return a snapshot of a continous changing situation.
The benefit of a mission to Chariklo is that a probe going there could have gravity assist from 3 outer planets if necessary and alignments fit (not likely, but I thought I should mention it) the flight trajectory. Or even four if a mission would be launched along Uranus with the purpose of breaking velocity instead of increasing it before continuing to Chariklo.

GeoModder wrote:

icekatze wrote:They could undoubtedly reach it with contemporary propulsion (Dawn has ~10km/s of delta v) but it would still take forever.

Welcome to our "space age".
Does it matter if it takes a decade, or even half a generation, to arrive? And I say "arrive" on purpose, because flyby missions are a bit of waste IMO. Those just return a snapshot of a continous changing situation.

It would probably take 10-20 years for a Dawn style spacecraft to achieve orbit around Chariklo. 20 years is a lot of time for something to go wrong with the spacecraft; the odds of being fully functional on arrival probably aren't great. It's also probably a challenge to secure funding from politicians who won't be in office (or might not even still be alive) when the thing arrives.

I am excited about New Horizons' flyby of Pluto in July of next year. It is a shame though that after 9.5 years of travel it will only be in the system for about a day. I'm concerned about responding to problems during the encounter when the lightspeed lag to Earth and back will be something like 10 hours.

I have to question the value of a Chariklo mission when it would be easier and I'd argue more productive to go after Saturn or Jupiter. Sure there is some novelty to it, but the mission would be better served elsewhere. Especially given the constraints on RTG fuel.

There's a bit more then novelty to it. It would give (at the moment) unique insight in ring formations of smaller bodies.
While I agree that probes orbiting the jovian planets return more data because the region is more 'crowded' with objects, Saturn and Jupiter each had their share of probes already. So Uranus or Neptune would likely return more new data then a Jupiter/Saturn orbital probe would.
And a mission to land on Europa doesn't really count, it would also be a one-target mission then.

Arrival time depends largely on fuel mass respective to total probe mass, so if politicians really want their name&fame attached to a deep space mission, they should simply set more money aside for it.
There are probes outthere which already outlived the funding politicians and still return data. And both Galileo and Huygens likely saw the retirement of some of their funders, so I don't think that should be a reason to bar a project.

Personally, I'm more excited about the Dawn probe arriving at Ceres next year.

Ceres might be a wetter and much more accessible Enceladus. Anyone know of a reason to send probes to Europa or Enceladus if Ceres turns out to have at least as much of an underground ocean as Enceladus and Europa?

Keter wrote:Ceres might be a wetter and much more accessible Enceladus. Anyone know of a reason to send probes to Europa or Enceladus if Ceres turns out to have at least as much of an underground ocean as Enceladus and Europa?

That's a big if, but we'll know soon.

I don't have much time these days so I don't think this has already been posted, most I assume would of picked this up already, but for those that haven't.

Saturn might be birthing a new moon...

I'll peg the the BBC article also.

Yeah, I read it today.
I think it's a stark opinion to say Saturn's rings can't produce a new 'moon' anymore.

NASA's Kepler Telescope Discovers First Earth-Size Planet in 'Habitable Zone'
Source