Oct 5 1995
From The Space Library
Saturn's possible two new moons sighted by the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) on May 22 are thought instead to be orbiting clumps of icy rubble. Images from the August 10 "ring plane crossing" presented a new mystery. They seem to show at least three new objects, which are in different orbits than the two May objects. An explanation is that a shattered moonlet would be brighter and more visible, than when all of its mass was compressed into a single solid body. (NASA Releases 95-172; Science, Oct 20/95)
In 2004, the asteroid Toutatis will pass by Earth at a range of four times the distance between the Earth and the Moon. Unlike the rotations of hundreds of asteroids that have been studied with optical telescope, Toutatis was neither a simple rotation nor a fixed pole, according to two NASA-sponsored scientists. The asteroid is 2.9 miles by 1.5 miles by 1.2 miles. No known asteroid or comet will approach Earth as close as Toutatis until the year 2060. (NASA Release 95-171; Science, Oct 6/95)
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