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Japan Hakone Museum of The Little Prince B-612 Asteroid sculpture
Home Planet Asteroid B-612: The Little Prince's "tiny home planet...an asteroid the size of a house...'named' B-612...was likely derived as a progression of one of the planes Saint-Exupéry flew as an airmail pilot, which bore the serial number "A-612" ¹. Intriguingly, in a post by Ullmann on "the aéropostale...old port of port-Étienne", in a comment by Remy sharing a French Wikipedia article on "Nouadhibou" (city in Mauritania bordering Western Sahara), the article, after Google Translate into English, reads "Nouadhibou…Port-Étienne in colonial times...[in] History...was a stopover of Aéropostale [where] between the two world wars...Antoine de Saint-Exupéry...often relaxed…[&] wrote Terre des Hommes…[For its] Economy...The city is...renowned for being an exchange pole - even traffic - of meteorites in the Sahara", while the "météorites" link wiki page after translation further reads “99.4% of the analyzed meteorites come from fragments of asteroids [largely from the Asteroid Belt between Mars & Jupiter]". Perhaps these facts contributed inspirationally to the setting of the story of The Little Prince, landing in the Sahara, hailing from & visiting many an asteroid. "Permanent exhibits...In Hakone, Japan there is the Museum of The Little Prince featuring...sculptures such as the B-612 Asteroid" ¹. A "real asteroid was named after the fictional asteroid...discovered in 1993 [it] was named 46610 Bésixdouze, which is French for "B six twelve". The asteroid's number, 46610, becomes B612 in hexadecimal notation" ¹. Additionally, "An asteroid discovered in 1975 [was named] 2578 Saint-Exupéry...[&] a small asteroid moon...discovered [orbiting asteroid 45 Eugenia] in 1998 [in 2003 was named] Petit-Prince" ¹.
B612 Foundation: The "Foundation is named for the asteroid home of…The Little Prince" ²; it was "created to track Near-Earth objects that might pose a threat to Earth" ¹; & is "dedicated to planetary defense against asteroids and other near-Earth object (NEO) impacts…led mainly by scientists, former astronauts and engineers from the [Princeton] Institute for Advanced Study...Stanford University, NASA and the space industry…[it] has publicized the true rate of 'city-killer' type impacts of the same magnitude as the explosive 1908 Tunguska event, a rate…three to ten times greater than previously believed, or about every century on average…It also assisted the...United Nations establish the International Asteroid Warning Network…In 2012, the foundation announced it would design and build a privately financed asteroid-finding space observatory, the Sentinel Space Telescope, to be launched in 2017–2018 [to] help identify dangerous asteroids and other NEOs that pose a risk of collision with Earth" ².The next official meeting of the Foundation is scheduled to occur at Google Headquarters, hosted by Vint Cerf, "an American Internet pioneer…recognized as one of "the fathers of the Internet" [being the Internet Protocol] TCP/IP co-inventor" ³, as well as developer of the Interplanetary Internet ⁴, while now currently serving as "vice president and Chief Internet Evangelist for Google" ⁵.
Asteroid Explorer: VSJ Facebook site member's own asteroid explorer, retired Villa "Rocket Man" NASA's Dr. Marc S. Allen's wife, Dr. Lucy Ann A McFadden, Senior Scientist at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, "investigates the surface composition of the solar system's small bodies (asteroids, comets, and meteorites)...She is a Co-Investigator…on NASA's Dawn mission to the asteroid 4 Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres...McFadden was a member of the science team for the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous [NEAR] mission, which orbited the Earth-approaching asteroid named 433 Eros, and landed a spacecraft on the asteroid in 2001...her research activities full time [have included analysis of] returned data from Vesta...[&] Ceres" -- NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. In a recent update on discoveries at Ceres, at the bottom of this post the shared video description reads "Young Cryovolcano on Ceres...Analysis of images from NASA's Dawn mission reveals that dwarf planet Ceres hosts an unexpectedly young cryovolcano that formed with the past billion years" - in an impressive example of serendipity from Saint-Exupéry, "in the desert…the little prince recounts the story of his life…by describing life on his tiny home planet: in effect, an asteroid [whose] most prominent features are three minuscule volcanoes" ¹.
● Japan Museum of The Little Prince / B-612 Sculpture
The Little Prince Asteroids
● 46610 Bésixdouze: Wiki, NASA JPL
● 2578 Saint-Exupéry: Wiki, NASA JPL
● Petit-Prince: Wiki
● UN International Asteroid Warning Network: Wiki / Web
● Yesterday 9/7/16 "A Bus-Size Asteroid Just Gave Earth a Close Shave"
●● "Meteor impact - how big to mirror Hiroshima or Nagasaki?": Reads "[Q.] how big a meteor...would have to be to have an effect similar to a nuclear blast?...[A.] for-instance, if we aim for 15 kilotons of TNT, about Hiroshima bomb sized, playing with the Earth Impact Effects Calculator [versions old / new] This puny, slow meteor yields about 11 kilotons in an airburst [for] Your Inputs...Projectile Diameter: 10.00 m = 32.80 ft [roughly same as typical bus size 40'x 8']" -- Cosmoquest
● Vint Cerf: Interplanetary Internet TED Talk (video) / Wired Interview / Wiki / How Stuff Works
● NASA JPL CalTech Dawn Mission: Website / Vesta / Ceres
Asteroid Flyover/Landing
● "NASA's Journey Above Vesta"
● "Flight Over Dwarf Planet Ceres...Take a flight over dwarf planet Ceres in this video made with images from NASA's Dawn spacecraft"; Young Cryovolcano on Ceres
● NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission
● Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous [NEAR] landing
Upcoming Asteroid Missions
Today (9/8/16)
● "NASA Prepares to Launch First U.S. Asteroid Sample Return Mission"; OSIRIS-REx will travel to a near-Earth asteroid called Bennu and bring a small sample back to Earth for study. The mission is scheduled to launch Sept. 8, 2016 [at 7:05 p.m. EDT]":
Future
● " NASA…Asteroid Redirect Mission… a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and use it in an enhanced gravity tractor asteroid deflection demonstration"
● "First private asteroid mapping mission planned for the end of the decade"
● How to Succeed in the Asteroid Business Without Really Mining
Swiss Asteroid News
● "Decades on, hundreds of meteorite pieces found"
● "Sensational meteorite fragments unearthed in Bern field"
Articles
● "How Often do Meteorites Hit the Earth?"
● NASA'S Mission to Sample a Killer Asteroid Launches in September, Popular Science
Footnotes: ¹ The Little Prince Wiki; ² B612 Foundation Wiki; ³ Vint Cerf Wiki; ⁴ Interplanetary Internet Wiki; ⁵ Research at Google
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