Asteroid 3200 Phaethon resembles a comet in some ways, including a highly-eccentric orbit (e∼ 0.89) and a strong associated meteor shower (the Geminids). Yet this object has never been observed to exhibit any cometary activity, i.e., gas production. We observed 3200 Phaethon with the Caltech Submillimeter Observatory on two occasions, once while it was near its closest approach to Earth as it n...

A new 7-beam methanol multibeam receiver is being used to survey the Galaxy for newly forming massive stars, that are pinpointed by strong methanol maser emission at 6.668 GHz. The receiver, jointly constructed by Jodrell Bank Observatory (JBO) and the Australia Telescope National Facility (ATNF), was successfully commissioned at Parkes in January 2006. The Parkes-Jodrell survey of the Milky Wa...

Crystals of halite and sylvite within the Monahans (1998) H5 chondrite contain aqueous fluid inclusions. The fluids are dominantly sodium chloride-potassium chloride brines, but they also contain divalent cations such as iron, magnesium, or calcium. Two possible origins for the brines are indigenous fluids flowing within the asteroid and exogenous fluids delivered into the asteroid surface from...

Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) observations in 1983 revealed the existence of several solar system dust bands. These dust bands are believed to be debris produced by recent disruption events among main-belt asteroids, particularly because dust particles have short dynamical and collisional lifetimes. Using young asteroid families as tracers of recent disruptions in the main belt, we lin...

Hair cells detect sound and movement and transmit this information via specialized ribbon synapses. Here we report that asteroid, a gene identified in an ethylnitrosourea mutagenesis screen of zebrafish larvae for auditory/vestibular mutants, encodes vesicular glutamate transporter 3 (Vglut3). A splice site mutation in exon 2 of vglut3 results in a severe truncation of the predicted protein pro...

We modeled orbital surface-penetrating radar of an asteroid and comet using two-dimensional finite-difference wavefield migration, in order to assess key target properties and experiment parameters required to fully image internal structure. Migration places radar echoes in their correct positions in a complex subsurface and is a complementary tool to travel-time tomography. The target shape wa...

Current spacecraft need to launch with all of their required fuel for travel. This limits the system performance, payload capacity, and mission flexibility. One compelling alternative is to perform In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) by extracting fuel from small bodies in local space such as asteroids or small satellites. Compared to the Moon or Mars, the microgravity on an asteroid demands a ...

During the early history of the solar system, it is likely that the outer planets changed their distance from the sun, and hence, their influence on the asteroid belt evolved with time. The gravitational influence of Jupiter and Saturn on the orbital evolution of asteroids in the outer asteroid belt was calculated. The results show that the sweeping of mean motion resonances associated with pla...

he X-Ray/Gamma-Ray Spectrometer on the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft will remotely sense X-ray and gamma-ray emissions from the surface of near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros and look for characteristic “signatures” in those emissions to determine its elemental composition. During the planned 10 months of orbits about Eros beginning in early 1999, data returned from the instrument w...

There are thousands of asteroids in near-Earth space and millions in the Main Belt. They are diverse in physical properties and composition and are time capsules of the early solar system. This makes them strategic locations for planetary science, resource mining, planetary defense/security and as interplanetary depots and communication relays. Landing on a small asteroid and manipulating its s...