This year there will be multiple major encounters with extra-terrestrial bodies in our solar system. So I'll keep track of this thread as everything develops and necro it for purposes of not starting new threads, and to share it all right here in Off Topic.
Many here already keep pulse of all this in their daily interweb wanderings, so if you have thoughts and ideas or links or spacexxx of the Martian, Venusian, Titanese and Titanian (Know the difference! ;) ), Phobosian, Jovian, Saturnian, Uranian, Neptunian or 'roid/Cometish varieties, please feel welcome to post it all here.
(Note: Resize your photo as you must by typing width=XXX in the first [ img ] Insert pixel width, not an X. 650 is as high as you ever want to go, 600 makes people using phones to navigate even happier. This was what a Mod told me long ago and I do it. O0 High-res pictures are always awesome, and no one has anything against them, otherwise! So attach those if you have them, and save your friends with phones from some frustration. Sorry to the vet posters reading this, I know you all know. Back to space.)
This year started way early. NASA's Dawn spacecraft left Vesta about two years back where it had orbited for a year and one month after rendezvous and fairly lengthy travel time. It's now approaching Ceres at a whiz-banging 450 MPH. Which made me double take, since numbers associated with all of the extrasolar planetary science and whatnot that I delve into deals in scant few to no number that small, and that's what I've been used to seeing a lot of lately, quite frankly. However, Dawn will enter orbit at Ceres, the closes Dwarf Planet to
Terra the Earth on 6th March and will return some excellent findings about this rather mysterious body that was once listed as a planet, about 200 years ago.
The Planetary Society has a good article on it right here:
http://www.planetary.org/blogs/guest-blogs/marc-rayman/20141229-dawn-journal-history-of-ceres.htmlNASA's New Horizons Spacecraft rendezvous with Pluto in early July. Huzzah! How small does the sun look now?
Instruments begin reading 15th January. It's been nine years in the waiting, fingers crossed for no turbulence because service stations will not be out that way for a few more years yet.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-pluto-new-horizons-hibernation-nasa-20141205-story.htmlRosetta is still quite active. And poor little Philea is not dead yet!
Seems it's only resting in the shade until a closer approach to the sun may give the probe the solar energy it needs to function. The Rosetta spacecraft itself will continue to escort it along on this journey. On Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, mountains may yet melt away to a sizzling vapor. Or simply a new angle will be brought to focus for the light to shine on down. It could conceivably begin transmitting data at any time in the coming months. So it's certainly on the radar and it is being listened for.
http://www.latimes.com/science/sciencenow/la-sci-sn-rosetta-half-mile-cliffs-20141223-story.html This is Vesta, which is just kind of a decent-sized rock compared to Ceres.
And here's an attached hi-res of Vesta's southern polar region. Not for the little screens.