Especially on a matter of such gravity.
The CNN article says some expect ice, water vapor, or even an ocean. An ocean on a 600 mile diameter planetoid?
I imagine the movie score would be a little different…
More like a layer under an ice crust, if I’m reading things properly.
This does not Bode well.
You [plotted](nasopharyngeal cancer) that pun.
If *you *can stretch, I can stretch.
Mid July, on my mom’s birthday, as it happens, is when New Horizons makes its closest flyby to Pluto, but I think NASA have said there would be decent photos.
I owe you a cerveza.
These puns are chapping my ass to 'roid rage intensity.
The Sea of Cerenity?
I guess I should Google the math, but it does seem possible for something that small to hold water.
The idea is it accretes as cometary ice during initial formation, and then melts under pressure below the thin crust. I’d imagine it unlikely to last in that such a small body would lose its heat quickly.
If it’s a lake, then it better be named after some Astronaut, not some Italian astronomer nobody outside IAU has heard off.
Just for understandings sake, 510 m/s is about Mach 1.5
Lake Armstrong.
Or as another comparison I think many in this thread will be familiar with, escape velocity for the Mun is 807 m/s, and for Minmus is 243 m/s.
And since we’re in MPSIMS, and I’ve been on an extended wiki-wander this morning, behold the Marquardt Space Sled. Sadly I can’t find any hard data about it.
Dawn has now established orbit around Ceres: NASA 'exhilarated' as Dawn orbits mini-planet Ceres
I absolutely love this quote from your link:
“Ceres reached out and tenderly took the newcomer from Earth into its permanent gravitational embrace.”
Love it.
I was thinking more of The Order of the Stick, those bright spots looks like the place The Monster in the Darkness is residing.
I can see it now, Neil Armstrong stepping out onto an ice lake. “One small step for a man, one…OOOOOOOPS!”