Posted on 09/30/2005 8:19:40 PM PDT by blam
an oldie, and another one (':
NASA Restarts Canceled Asteroid Mission - DAWN
AP on Yahoo | 3/27/06 | Alicia Chang - ap
Posted on 03/27/2006 3:40:16 PM EST by NormsRevenge
http://www.freerepublic.com/focus/f-news/1604151/posts
Largest Asteroid May Be 'Mini Planet' With Water IceObservations of 1 Ceres, the largest known asteroid, have revealed that the object may be a "mini planet," and may contain large amountsof pure water ice beneath its surface. The observations by NASA's Hubble Space Telescope also show that Ceres shares characteristics of the rocky, terrestrial planets like Earth. Ceres' shape is almost round like Earth's, suggesting that theasteroid may have a "differentiated interior," with a rocky inner core and a thin, dusty outer crust... Ceres is approximately 580 miles (930 kilometers) across, about thesize of Texas. It resides with tens of thousands of other asteroids inthe main asteroid belt... Pluto, our solar system's smallest planet, is 14 times more massive than Ceres.
Science Daily
Sept 2005
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