Venus Has a Moon?

www.universetoday.com...

[atsimg]http://files.abovetopsecret.com/images/member/54dc9c737af0.png[/atsimg]

Quote from source:
Astronomers have been busy trying to determine the spin period and composition of Venus’ moon. December 8, 2010, results were announced by JPL/Caltech scientists, led by Michael Hicks.

“Wait a minute; back up”, I hear you ask. “Venus has a Moon?”
Of course it does. Well, kind of…
Let me explain.

It has the rather unfortunate name of 2002 VE68. That is because it was discovered on November 11, 2002 by LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. 2002 VE68 is an earth orbit-crossing asteroid that has been designated a Potential Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center. For obvious reasons, this makes it a very interesting subject of study for JPL scientists.

2002 VE68 used to be a run of the mill, potential impact threat, Near Earth Object. But approximately 7000 years ago it had a close encounter with Earth that kicked it into a new orbit. It now occupies a place in orbit around the Sun where at its closest it wanders inside the orbit of Mercury and at its furthest it reaches just outside the orbit of the Earth. It is now in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Venus.

How cool is that?

Now this sounds like a perfect place to land and then we can interact with the inner planets. A good place for an observatory.

Interesting that this was discovered as a NEO.

Any thoughts?

Pred...

What a perfect orbital platform for study of the inner planets!
perha[ps it couldbe hollowed out and used to study the sun too?
Any size measurments yet? mass?

Very nice find! Yes, perfect observatory. I wonder what the rotation around venus is...

Apparently the size is quite small to say the least.
According to the wiki (pedia not leaks) it ranges in size from 234 m - 518 m, not a very big target to try and land on. I suppose its possible though.

This is also important for understanding the history of the solar system as well as celestial mechanics. It would make a great base for further exploration towards the sun.
If Earth needed a project to unite mankind I would love a mission to Mars.

Being that small you would think it would be tough to land on, but feasible.

Sounds like it would be an interesting mission none the less. And anything that advances space exploration is good in my books.

Pred...

Pretty cool find, but as an observatory it would get pretty hot, with part of it's orbit insides of Mercury's orbit.

It's so small any attempted landing would alter it's orbit. =P

S&F - even though i disagree with its catagorisation as a satelite of venus

i will however inject a bit of speculation vulcan ?

now 2002 VE68 is too small to have been detected by 19th century optical telescopes

but its already been determined that its probally a binary object - and that there is a probability of other smal bodies in similar orbits

so - could vulcan have been the " parent " of 2002 VE68 , and other objects ?????????

i know conventiaonal wisdom states that Lescarbault was either in error , or fraudulent

but - what if ?

reply to post by predator0187

I think this is a great find. Although your Applet image looks to be upside down, or looking at the south poles. Take a look at the Orbital Applet Viewer that is linked on that site. Venus is now visible in the morning so it is ahead of Earth in our counter-clockwise motion around the Sun.

The "year" for VE68 is shorter than the Earth year, clocking in at a little under 225 days.
This is almost exactly the same as the "year" of the planet Venus...both VE68 and Venus are travelling around the Sun nearly in lock-step.

Because its orbit is centered on the Sun, VE68 is not a real satellite of Venus in the sense that the moon is a satellite of the Earth. However, since it appears to travel around Venus, it is called a quasi-satellite.

astro.utu

So this means that when we have a close approach with Venus this rock will also be near to Earth and the same would go for Venus/Mercury close approaches. Venus just had a close approach with Earth back in October 26th 2010. The next one is in just under 584 days from the last or on June 6th 2012.

It [2002 VE68] has a high eccentricity (~ 0.4) and inclination (~ 9°)

harvard.edu
To put this into perspective Venus has an extremely low orbital eccentricity of 0.0068 (meaning nearly circular) and an orbital inclination of 3.39°. Earth's eccentricity is at 0.0167 and Mercury is at 0.205 with an inclination at around 7.005°. 2002 VE68 also appears to have a rotational period of 13.5 hours.

It would be interesting to know if there was some interaction between these three planets 7000 years ago that caused such an orbit.

Originally posted by Slih_09
It's so small any attempted landing would alter it's orbit. =P

That really depends how we landed our craft on it. 500 meters is pretty big.

If we did it carefully we could do it. If not, we would get a great view of the sun before a crash.

Good for science either way.

Pred...

Holy Crap!...It's a good thing they saw that... that is totally going to hit us one day. Somebody nuke it asap.

reply to post by Devino


Thanks for all the info buddy!!

As for the picture I just copied it from the website, I had no idea it was upside down.

Pred...

Since it's small and obviously has no particular place to be... can we make a deathstar out of it?

Pleeeeeease?

Originally posted by predator0187
reply to post by Devino

 

Thanks for all the info buddy!!

As for the picture I just copied it from the website, I had no idea it was upside down.

Pred...

Yeah, I know. It just caught my attention and I thought I would point it out.