This post was contributed by a community member. The views expressed here are the author's own.

Community Corner

JPL: Trojan Asteroid Orbits the Sun

A space news roundup this week includes an asteroid 50 million miles from earth, and a solar-powered mission to Jupiter's orbit.

Earth Not Orbiting Alone

On Wednesday, JPL reported that NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer –WISE – discovered the first known ‘Trojan’ asteroid orbiting the sun along with the Earth.

Relatively small in size, Trojan asteroids share a planet’s orbit by leading or following and therefore never colliding with the planet. Neptune, Mars, and Jupiter have Trojan asteroid partners, and scientists have long believed that Earth also trailed or escorted such space chunks.

Find out what's happening in La Cañada Flintridgewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

According to JPL, which manages and operates WISE for NASA, Earth’s Trojan asteroid is about 1,000 feet in diameter and “about 50 million miles from Earth.” It has a well-defined orbit that is expected to hold for at least the next 100 years. Scientists believe the asteroid will never come closer than 15 million miles to our home planet.   

Click over to NASA for animation showing the asteroid in action.

Find out what's happening in La Cañada Flintridgewith free, real-time updates from Patch.

To Jupiter And Beyond 

NASA’s solar-powered Juno spacecraft is expected to launch in August on a mission to orbit Jupiter. According to JPL, Juno “is expected to arrive at Jupiter in 2016, on a mission to investigate the gas giant’s origins, structure, atmosphere and magnetosphere."  Juno's cameras will provide color, close-up images of Jupiter including the "first detailed views of the planets’ poles."

Juno rolled to its launch pad and was placed on top of its rocket at Cape Canaveral, Fla., on Wednesday. If launched on schedule, Juno will reach Jupiter in July 2016.

To learn more about the Juno mission and connect with its blog and webcast, visit NASA’s Juno site.

Giant Asteroid Images to be Unveiled

JPL will host a press conference on August 1 to unveil images taken of giant asteroid Vesta collected by the spacecraft Dawn, which on July 15 completed an orbit of the asteroid. Dawn is the first spacecraft to orbit an asteroid located in the main asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. The images provided by Dawn will be used to aid scientists in understanding the earliest chapters in our solar system’s history. Dawn will continue to orbit Vesta for a year before heading off to the dwarf planter Ceres, arriving there in February 2015.

Watch the press conference live, August 1 at 9 a.m., by hooking up with NASA’s streaming video. To learn more about the Dawn spacecraft and its mission, visit NASA’s Dawn webpage.

Editor's note: An earlier version of this story noted the August 1 press conference as scheduled for 11 a.m. NASA/JPL has changed the press conference and live feed to 9 a.m. PDT.

We’ve removed the ability to reply as we work to make improvements. Learn more here

The views expressed in this post are the author's own. Want to post on Patch?