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| 1 Ceres is complex and shows signs of ongoing surface activity. Image credit: NASA. |
Chronology is essential to understanding history, yet in this blog I write posts about planned space missions more or less at random, with little regard for the order in which they occurred. Because of this, I occasionally feel moved to publish omnibus chronological posts like this one. So far, I've applied the chronological treatment to groups of posts on Space Stations, catastrophic failure during space missions, missions to Venus, and the Apollo-to-Shuttle Transition.
This post's topic is tied to Asteroid Day 2020. It establishes chronology for posts related to some of the Sun-orbiting small bodies of the Solar System: specifically, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). In this introductory essay, I'll start with the largest members of these four broad classes.
1 Ceres is an asteroid and a dwarf planet, much as 134340 Pluto is a KBO and a dwarf planet. Ceres, discovered on the first day of the 19th century, is the queen of the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, much as Pluto is the king of the Kuiper Belt, which begins just inside the orbit of Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto on 18 February 1930, at Lowell Observatory.
Ceres is the largest and most massive asteroid. Pluto remains the largest known KBO, though new discoveries could nudge it from the top spot. Pluto is not the most massive Solar System body known beyond Neptune; that honor presently belongs to 136199 Eris, another KBO and dwarf planet, which for a time was thought to be larger than Pluto.
Ceres was not immediately classified as an asteroid when it was discovered. It was widely considered to be a planet until the 1850s, by which time new data — the discovery of more than a dozen other bodies orbiting with it between Mars and Jupiter — had made clear to everyone that it should be classified as the first known example of a new class of small Solar System body. Ceres pro forma became the first asteroid.
In similar fashion, Pluto was widely considered to be a planet until the early 2000s. Beginning in 1992, space scientists discovered that Pluto has siblings. This confirmed the existence of the long-hypothesized Kuiper Belt. The parallel with Ceres was not lost on scientists. Pluto became pro forma the first KBO.
In science, classification is fundamentally about clear communication, which is essential for collaborative research. Classification is not treated as a frivolous matter by most scientists. Only after sufficient data has been obtained, exchanged, and debated is an initial classification changed.
Since the 1990s, scientific debate has taken place among space scientists via digital communication, enabling far more participation than in the past. The formal in-person poll that reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet on 24 August 2006 included only a small percentage of the tens of thousands of space scientists scattered around the world; the matter of Pluto's classification had, however, already been widely debated.
In fact, the vote marked the end of a 76-year-long scientific process. When first discovered, Pluto was assumed to have a mass about six times that of Earth. It had to be that massive to have enough gravitational pull to account for observed deviations in the orbit of Neptune, which is another story (you can read about it among the posts linked below). Pluto did not, however, show a disk, which implied that it was very dark, very dense, or both.
Pluto's orbit also crossed that of Neptune, which made it unique among the planets. Planet-crossing is common among small bodies such as asteroids, but who ever heard of an asteroid with six times the mass of Earth?
Discovery in 1978 of Charon, Pluto's largest moon, enabled scientists to calculate Pluto's mass accurately for the first time. It has just one-fifth of 1% of Earth's mass, or less than 20% of the mass of Earth's Moon. They then determined Pluto's diameter; it measures less than three times the diameter of Ceres, or about two-thirds the diameter of Earth's Moon. It is astonishing that Tombaugh was able to spot Pluto using the crude astronomical tools available in 1930.
This is as good a place as any to express my view that the term "dwarf planet" should be retired. It is not especially useful to scientists, does not enhance public understanding so is worse than useless for science education, and appears to be moribund. Though perhaps a dozen KBOs discovered since 2006 appear to qualify for the label, none have been added to the initial list of five (in addition to the three I have already mentioned, they include Haumea and Makemake).
Asteroid exploration has advanced rapidly since the 1990s, in part because missions bound for other worlds often can find one or more asteroids to visit along their flight path. Galileo, bound for Jupiter orbit, became the first spacecraft to fly past an asteroid, 951 Gaspra, on 29 October 1991. Two years later, it flew past 243 Ida, in the process imaging Dactyl, the first asteroid moon to be found.
Dedicated asteroid missions began in February 1999 with a bit of a flub; the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft suffered a computer glitch and missed its first opportunity to enter orbit about the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros. A year later, NEAR Shoemaker fired its engines to slow itself so that Eros could capture it, making it the first asteroid orbiter. On 12 February 2001, it ended its mission with a bonus rough landing on Eros — the first asteroid landing.
The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around 4 Vesta in July 2011, thus becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a Main Belt asteroid. It moved on to Ceres, achieving orbit around the largest asteroid in March 2015.
2015 was a hot year for small-body exploration. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft performed a Pluto fast flyby in July of that year, making it the first spacecraft to visit a KBO. New Horizons flew past a second, smaller KBO, 486958 Arrokoth, in January 2019. Arrokoth is the most distant Solar System body yet explored by a spacecraft.
Dedicated comet missions began in 1985-1986, when a four-spacecraft European-Japanese-Soviet "armada" explored 1P/Halley, the most famous comet. The spacecraft did not try to match orbits with Halley, which revolves around the Sun "backwards" relative to the planets; instead, they carried out fast flybys. In March 1986, Europe's Giotto spacecraft raced past Halley's dark nucleus at a relative velocity of 68 kilometers per second.
Europe's Rosetta spacecraft orbited 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from August 2014 to September 2016. It was the first comet orbiter. Rosetta's time-at-target bracketed the comet's closest approach to the Sun, enabling unprecedented close-up observations of activity triggered by solar heating. Rosetta released the Philae lander on 12 November 2015; though it did not land properly, Philae returned images and other data from the surface for about three days.
An exciting new frontier in small body exploration is now opening. In October 2017, the first asteroid known to have originated outside the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua, was discovered. We know that it originated elsewhere in the Milky Way because it is moving too quickly for the Sun's gravity to do more than bend its course before it returns to interstellar space. The first interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, was found in August 2019.
These new discoveries have inspired proposals for intercept missions. None has so far advanced to the point of serious consideration. Both bodies will, however, remain within range of expected human spaceflight technology for a few decades at least, and the list of known interstellar visitors seems likely to grow, providing new candidate star-roving small bodies for exploration.
The links below lead to posts related to small Solar System bodies dated from 1962 through 2005. In addition, three posts not firmly linked to specific years are included at the bottom of the list.
Pluto, Doorway to the Stars (1962)
To Mars by Way of Eros (1966)
Missions to Comet d'Arrest and Asteroid Eros in the 1970s (1966)
MIT Saves the World: Project Icarus (1967)
Things to Do During a Venus-Mars-Venus Piloted Flyby Mission (1967)
Think Big: A 1970 Flight Schedule for NASA's 1969 Integrated Program Plan
Multiple Asteroid Flyby Missions (1971)
Cometary Explorer (1973)
A 1974 Plan for the Slow Flyby of Comet Encke
Earth-Approaching Asteroids as Targets for Exploration (1978)
"A Vision of the Future": Military Uses of the Moon and Asteroids (1983)
Visions of Spaceflight, c. 2001 (1984)
Catching Some Comet Dust: Giotto II (1985)
New Horizons II (2004-2005)
The Challenge of the Planets, Part Two: High Energy
The Challenge of the Planets, Part Three: Gravity
Pluto: An Alternate History
This post's topic is tied to Asteroid Day 2020. It establishes chronology for posts related to some of the Sun-orbiting small bodies of the Solar System: specifically, asteroids, comets, dwarf planets, and Kuiper Belt Objects (KBOs). In this introductory essay, I'll start with the largest members of these four broad classes.
1 Ceres is an asteroid and a dwarf planet, much as 134340 Pluto is a KBO and a dwarf planet. Ceres, discovered on the first day of the 19th century, is the queen of the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter, much as Pluto is the king of the Kuiper Belt, which begins just inside the orbit of Neptune. Clyde Tombaugh discovered Pluto on 18 February 1930, at Lowell Observatory.
Ceres is the largest and most massive asteroid. Pluto remains the largest known KBO, though new discoveries could nudge it from the top spot. Pluto is not the most massive Solar System body known beyond Neptune; that honor presently belongs to 136199 Eris, another KBO and dwarf planet, which for a time was thought to be larger than Pluto.
Ceres was not immediately classified as an asteroid when it was discovered. It was widely considered to be a planet until the 1850s, by which time new data — the discovery of more than a dozen other bodies orbiting with it between Mars and Jupiter — had made clear to everyone that it should be classified as the first known example of a new class of small Solar System body. Ceres pro forma became the first asteroid.
In similar fashion, Pluto was widely considered to be a planet until the early 2000s. Beginning in 1992, space scientists discovered that Pluto has siblings. This confirmed the existence of the long-hypothesized Kuiper Belt. The parallel with Ceres was not lost on scientists. Pluto became pro forma the first KBO.
In science, classification is fundamentally about clear communication, which is essential for collaborative research. Classification is not treated as a frivolous matter by most scientists. Only after sufficient data has been obtained, exchanged, and debated is an initial classification changed.
Since the 1990s, scientific debate has taken place among space scientists via digital communication, enabling far more participation than in the past. The formal in-person poll that reclassified Pluto as a dwarf planet on 24 August 2006 included only a small percentage of the tens of thousands of space scientists scattered around the world; the matter of Pluto's classification had, however, already been widely debated.
In fact, the vote marked the end of a 76-year-long scientific process. When first discovered, Pluto was assumed to have a mass about six times that of Earth. It had to be that massive to have enough gravitational pull to account for observed deviations in the orbit of Neptune, which is another story (you can read about it among the posts linked below). Pluto did not, however, show a disk, which implied that it was very dark, very dense, or both.
Pluto's orbit also crossed that of Neptune, which made it unique among the planets. Planet-crossing is common among small bodies such as asteroids, but who ever heard of an asteroid with six times the mass of Earth?
Discovery in 1978 of Charon, Pluto's largest moon, enabled scientists to calculate Pluto's mass accurately for the first time. It has just one-fifth of 1% of Earth's mass, or less than 20% of the mass of Earth's Moon. They then determined Pluto's diameter; it measures less than three times the diameter of Ceres, or about two-thirds the diameter of Earth's Moon. It is astonishing that Tombaugh was able to spot Pluto using the crude astronomical tools available in 1930.
This is as good a place as any to express my view that the term "dwarf planet" should be retired. It is not especially useful to scientists, does not enhance public understanding so is worse than useless for science education, and appears to be moribund. Though perhaps a dozen KBOs discovered since 2006 appear to qualify for the label, none have been added to the initial list of five (in addition to the three I have already mentioned, they include Haumea and Makemake).
Asteroid exploration has advanced rapidly since the 1990s, in part because missions bound for other worlds often can find one or more asteroids to visit along their flight path. Galileo, bound for Jupiter orbit, became the first spacecraft to fly past an asteroid, 951 Gaspra, on 29 October 1991. Two years later, it flew past 243 Ida, in the process imaging Dactyl, the first asteroid moon to be found.
Dedicated asteroid missions began in February 1999 with a bit of a flub; the NEAR Shoemaker spacecraft suffered a computer glitch and missed its first opportunity to enter orbit about the near-Earth asteroid 433 Eros. A year later, NEAR Shoemaker fired its engines to slow itself so that Eros could capture it, making it the first asteroid orbiter. On 12 February 2001, it ended its mission with a bonus rough landing on Eros — the first asteroid landing.
The Dawn spacecraft entered orbit around 4 Vesta in July 2011, thus becoming the first spacecraft to orbit a Main Belt asteroid. It moved on to Ceres, achieving orbit around the largest asteroid in March 2015.
2015 was a hot year for small-body exploration. NASA's New Horizons spacecraft performed a Pluto fast flyby in July of that year, making it the first spacecraft to visit a KBO. New Horizons flew past a second, smaller KBO, 486958 Arrokoth, in January 2019. Arrokoth is the most distant Solar System body yet explored by a spacecraft.
Dedicated comet missions began in 1985-1986, when a four-spacecraft European-Japanese-Soviet "armada" explored 1P/Halley, the most famous comet. The spacecraft did not try to match orbits with Halley, which revolves around the Sun "backwards" relative to the planets; instead, they carried out fast flybys. In March 1986, Europe's Giotto spacecraft raced past Halley's dark nucleus at a relative velocity of 68 kilometers per second.
Europe's Rosetta spacecraft orbited 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko from August 2014 to September 2016. It was the first comet orbiter. Rosetta's time-at-target bracketed the comet's closest approach to the Sun, enabling unprecedented close-up observations of activity triggered by solar heating. Rosetta released the Philae lander on 12 November 2015; though it did not land properly, Philae returned images and other data from the surface for about three days.
An exciting new frontier in small body exploration is now opening. In October 2017, the first asteroid known to have originated outside the Solar System, 1I/'Oumuamua, was discovered. We know that it originated elsewhere in the Milky Way because it is moving too quickly for the Sun's gravity to do more than bend its course before it returns to interstellar space. The first interstellar comet, 2I/Borisov, was found in August 2019.
These new discoveries have inspired proposals for intercept missions. None has so far advanced to the point of serious consideration. Both bodies will, however, remain within range of expected human spaceflight technology for a few decades at least, and the list of known interstellar visitors seems likely to grow, providing new candidate star-roving small bodies for exploration.
The links below lead to posts related to small Solar System bodies dated from 1962 through 2005. In addition, three posts not firmly linked to specific years are included at the bottom of the list.
Pluto, Doorway to the Stars (1962)
To Mars by Way of Eros (1966)
Missions to Comet d'Arrest and Asteroid Eros in the 1970s (1966)
MIT Saves the World: Project Icarus (1967)
Things to Do During a Venus-Mars-Venus Piloted Flyby Mission (1967)
Think Big: A 1970 Flight Schedule for NASA's 1969 Integrated Program Plan
Multiple Asteroid Flyby Missions (1971)
Cometary Explorer (1973)
A 1974 Plan for the Slow Flyby of Comet Encke
Earth-Approaching Asteroids as Targets for Exploration (1978)
"A Vision of the Future": Military Uses of the Moon and Asteroids (1983)
Visions of Spaceflight, c. 2001 (1984)
Catching Some Comet Dust: Giotto II (1985)
New Horizons II (2004-2005)
The Challenge of the Planets, Part Two: High Energy
The Challenge of the Planets, Part Three: Gravity
Pluto: An Alternate History
Fascinating. Thanks for the chroni-roundup.
ReplyDeleteScott W.