Posted on 07/24/2020 6:38:37 PM PDT by BenLurkin
The views were captured by a program run by NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, which scans huge swaths of the sky for space rocks in order to gather enough observations for astronomers to map each object's path in case one may come a little too close for comfort.
The new animation of Tianwen-1 speeding away from Earth came from a facility at Mauna Loa on Hawaii Island that is one of a pair of Hawaiian observatories that make up the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS. The ATLAS observatories regularly identify new celestial objects, like the comet of the same name that dazzled skywatchers earlier this year before fizzling out.
But in this case, it was no celestial object that streaked across ATLAS's view. Instead, it was the second in a trio of highly anticipated spacecraft launching to Mars during this summer's three-week window of orbital alignment. China hopes that the Tianwen-1 mission's three robotic components send home a bonanza of science data about the Red Planet.
(Excerpt) Read more at space.com ...
“Tianwen-1 speeding away from Earth”
It will be back in 30 minutes.
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