Space Rocks: Asteroid Named After Freddie Mercury As ESA Finds Lost Comet Lander
Thousands of mountain-sized rocks float through outer space, and occasionally, some come near to striking the Earth as they fly through our atmosphere in a fiery blaze of glory known as a shooting star.
One of these space rocks, Asteroid 17473 Freddiemercury, has officially been named after the lead singer of Queen by the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center at Harvard University in Boston.
The asteroid’s name was announced by Queen guitarist Brian May, who also holds a doctorate in astrophysics, during a celebration of what would have been Freddie Mercury’s 70th birthday party in Switzerland, according to the Daily Mail.
“For its first appearance in public, Asteroid Freddiemercury, happy birthday Freddie!”
“Freddie Mercury sang, ‘I’m a shooting star leaping through the sky,’ and now that is even more true than ever before. But even if you can’t see Freddie Mercury leaping through the sky, you can be sure he’s there, ‘floating around in ecstasy’, as he might sing, for millennia to come.”
Meanwhile, the European Space Agency (ESA) just spotted its missing Philae comet lander on another rock flying through space.
“With only a month left of the Rosetta mission, we are so happy to have finally imaged Philae, and to see it in such amazing detail.”
The Rosetta space probe launched its Philae lander in 2014, and the little spacecraft bounced twice as it attempted to land on the comet before it crashed to the surface where it lay wedged under a rock for two years with its legs sticking out uselessly.
The unlucky little spacecraft managed to send back images and data for three days before running out of battery power because it was unable to use its solar panels to recharge.
Although scientists at the ESA knew the comet lander’s general location, they had been unable to spot the little spacecraft until a few days ago, right before the end of Rosetta’s mission. Now, with the comet headed away from the sun and the Rosetta space probe running out of power, the ESA plans to send the probe crashing to the surface, mission manager Patrick Martin told Fox News.
“We were beginning to think that Philae would remain lost forever. It is incredible we have captured this at the final hour.”
Asteroids and comets zip by Earth every single day, and this week there are several space rocks expected to pass close by the planet, including one that’s over a mile long. While that mountain of a space rock could do serious damage to Earth if it hit the planet, NASA says that’s highly unlikely.
SpaceX’s biggest rival developing “space trucks” for an orbital economy #SpaceTrucking https://t.co/Pth9MZPj9k pic.twitter.com/zuanSsbXPM
— Jamie Gray (@jamiegray) August 27, 2016
These near-Earth asteroids have become the focus of some well-funded commercial interests, however, as at least one company plans to begin mining the nearby space rocks for valuable resources.
Deep Space Industries, an asteroid mining company, plans to launch the first-ever prospecting spacecraft on an interplanetary mission by 2020. They hope to extract water, in the form of ice, from passing asteroids and use that as fuel to power the prospecting spacecraft as it examines more space rocks for valuable resources.
Eventually, asteroid mining will become part of a new cislunar economy in low Earth orbit, where space travel companies will dock at the International Space Station and trade with each other for goods and resources.
[Image via iStock]
