Asteroid collision and directions in space:

Thinking back to "Star Wars: The Empire Strikes Back", Han Solo famously had to maneuver the Millenium Falcon through a very thick asteroid patch (which engendered the immortal dialogue: C-3PO: "Sir, the possibility of successfully navigating an asteroid field is approximately three thousand seven hundred and twenty to one!" Han: "Never tell me the odds." ).

Well, the asteroid belt in this Solar System is not nearly that crowded, but there are plenty of planetesimals out there, and the heavy cratering that's seen on all of them what's been seen is evidence that they do get banged a few times.

So this image, which has been making the rounds (already got into the inestimable Daily Mail) shouldn't surprise us. It's apparently the debris tail from one asteroid what got smacked by another asteroid.



And it's also a testimonial to the amazing power of the Hubble; (standing by for the Pluto pictures) the Hubble is one of the best and most remarkable UNMANNED benefits of a robust U.S. space science program that combines robots with humans in low-Earth orbit. The change of direction taken by NASA, if it works out, could be healthy; what needs to be developed are the following:




1. a capability to take humans to the Lagrange (L5 points);
2. a capability to take space repairmen to geostationary orbit to repair or de-orbit defunct communications satellites;
3. a plan to deal with orbital debris and defunct LEO satellites that could either be repaired or need to be de-orbited (the latter could be dealt with by a remote deorbital booster, but grappling with a variety of satellite configurations is a problem; and
4. a capability to rendesvous with a near-Earth asteroid.

If we could do all that, we can successfully explore the planets with robots, and maybe eventually with the right powerful propulsion systems, then send people to Mars. But the robots are doing pretty good, except for the occasional sand trap problem.