MarcoPolo-R is a sample return mission to a primitive Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) selected in February 2011 for the Assessment Study Phase at ESA in the framework of ESAfs Cosmic Vision 2 program. MarcoPolo-R is a European-led mission with a proposed NASA contribution. MarcoPolo-R takes advantage of three industrial studies completed as part of the previous Marco Polo mission (see ESA/SRE (2009)3). The aim of the new Assessment Study is to reduce the cost of the mission while maintaining its high science level, on the basis of advanced studies and technologies, as well as optimization of the mission. MarcoPolo-R will rendezvous with a unique kind of target, a primitive binary NEA, scientifically characterize it at multiple scales, and return a unique pristine sample to Earth unaltered by the atmospheric entry process or terrestrial weathering. The baseline target of MarcoPolo-R is the primitive binary NEA (175706) 1996 FG3, which offers a very efficient operational and technical mission profile. A binary target also provides enhanced science return: the choice of this target will allow new investigations to be performed more easily compared to a single object, and also enables investigations of the fascinating geology and geophysics of asteroids that are impossible to obtain from a single object. Precise measurements of the mutual orbit and rotation state of both components can be used to probe higher-level harmonics of the gravitational potential, and therefore the internal structure. A unique opportunity is offered to study the dynamical evolution driven by the YORP/Yarkovsky thermal effects. Possible migration of regolith on the primary from poles to equator allows the increasing maturity of asteroidal regolith with time to be expressed as a latitude-dependent trend, with the most-weathered material at the equator matching what is seen in the secondary. MarcoPolo-R will allow us to study the most primitive materials available to investigate early solar system formation processes. Moreover, MarcoPolo-R will provide a sample from a known target with known geological context. Direct investigation of both the regolith and fresh interior fragments is also impossible by any means other than sample return. The main goal of the MarcoPolo-R mission is to return unaltered NEA material for detailed analysis in ground-based laboratories. The limited sampling provided by meteorites does not offer the most primitive material available in near-Earth space. More primitive material, having experienced less alteration on the asteroid, will be more friable and would not survive atmospheric entry in any discernible amount. Only in the laboratory can instruments with the necessary precision and sensitivity be applied to individual components of the complex mixture of materials that forms an asteroid regolith, to determine their precise chemical and isotopic composition. Such measurements are vital for revealing the evidence of stellar, interstellar medium, pre-solar nebula and parent body processes that are retained in primitive asteroidal material, unaltered by atmospheric entry or terrestrial contamination. It is no surprise therefore that sample return missions are considered a priority by a number of the leading space agencies.

Zhongguo guidai tianxiang jilu zongji pressed in 1988 containes ancient Chinese astronomical records including that of meteor, meteorite fall and comet until 1911 from the Standard Histories and local gazetteers existed in China. On the other hand, many local gazetteers lost in China at present have been collected in university and public libraries in Japan. Especially the library of Chinese section in the Research Institute for Humanistic Studies in Kyoto University and the Oriental Library in Tokyo have big collection. This presentation will give a few dozens supplemential ancient records with that big book from local gazetteers in above mentioned libraries.

Following the progress of Chinese deep space exploration step, since 2006 we started a Mars mission, Yinghuo-1, by join in the Phobos-Grunt mission of Russia. A satellite bus platform and onboard payloads as well as an innovative open-loop radio tracking system have been developed by mission team. Also, together with Russian and German colleagues, we developed a kind of in-beam tracking method for measuring the rotation and nutation of Phobos, and developed the 1st Phobos global gravity field for the mission. We are promoting the Chinese new mission for Mars exploration. Although the joint YH-1 & Phobos-Grunt mission failed, the new techniques and knowledge developed by mission teams may benifit the future missions. In fact, the open-loop technique have been applied into lunar and other planetary missions, and the method in developing Phobos global gravity field will be used in the study of Rosetta mission and future Chinese mission for small body.

Optical flashes on the surface of Jupiter were observed by amateur astronomers in June and August 2010. It is thought that these phenomena were bright meteors caused by the collision of small celestial bodies of a few to 10-m, and that they seemed to be more frequent than expected. If the frequency and the scale of these phenomena are investigated, the size distribution down to size of a few m can be decided at around the giant planet region. If the systematic observation is achieved, it will be a unique attempt to use the giant planets as a natural detector of small bodies.

Though there are many forklore concerning meteorite falls, a few genuine meteorites have been identified. One of them, the Nogata meteorite is related to the oldest recorded meteorite fall (A.D. 861) (Shima et al., 1983).

The ALADDIN (Arrayed Large-Area Dust Detectors in INterplanetary space) made of 0.54 m2 PVDF sensors was deployed on the anti-Sun face of the thin polyimide sail membrane of the deep space solar sail spacecraft gIKAROS (Interplanetary Kitecraft Accelerated by the Radiation Of the Sun)h. It has measured micrometeoroid flux between the Earthfs orbit and Venusf orbit (i.e., 1.0 ~ 0.7 AU of heliocentric distance) for 1.5 revolutions from June 2010 until October 2011. The ALADDIN dust detector is arrayed by 8 channels of 9-20 micron-thick PVDF sensors, which are capable of detecting hypervelocity impacts of micrometeoroids at > ~ 10−12g, according to ground calibration impact experiments. The sensors filter electronic, thermal and vibration noises and can record time, peak hold value above its threshold, and relaxation duration of each impact signal. In total, its cruising measurements counted more than 3000 dust impacts after screening noise signals. The ALADDIN flux in the 2010-2011 epoch was compared with fluxes at similar mass range of micrometeoroids and in similar heliocentric distances measured by Helios in 1970fs and Galileo in 1990fs, both of which were composed of much less number of impact data. Then, it suggested enhancement of dust flux in the trailing edge of circumsolar orbits of the Earth and Venus, which are consistent with previous reports of larger dust grain enhancements observed by infrared telescopes. This also implies that the temporal flux enhancement of large micrometeoroids in the blob may have caused a cascading effect to produce smaller dust by collisions with sporadic meteoroids. Also it is apparent that the micrometeoroid flux increases by approximately one order of magnitude from 1 AU to 0.7 AU during the 2010-2011 epoch. The temporal variance of the Helios flux data in 1976-80 in the same region of 1 AU may be associated with difference of averaged solar activities during both epochs. Since the solar activity in the years 2010-2011 was around the minimum of the solar cycle, smaller micrometeoroids, which are more affected by solar radiation pressure than larger ones, may have survived longer than those in the Helios epoch, which covered from the minimum to the maximum of the solar cycle in late 1970fs.

The results of search for meteor showers associated with the asteroids crossing the Earthfs orbit and moving on comet-like orbits are given. It was shown that among 2872 asteroids discovered till 1.01.2005 and belonging to the Apollo and Amor groups, 130 asteroids have associated meteor showers and, therefore, are the extinct cometary nuclei.

We report observations of new outburst of Centaur (60558) 174P/Echeclus, using Suprime-Cam of Subaru tele-scope. The outburst was detected by Jager on May 30, 2011 (Jaeger et al., 2011). We made several follow-up observations for this outburst with 1m telescope at Mt. Lemon Optical Astronomy Observatory located in US and 60cm telescope at Sobaeksan Optical Astronomy Observatory in Korea. The very first presence of coma around (60558) 2000 EC98 has been detected by Choi and Weissman (2006) on 2005 December 30.50 UT with the Palomar 5m telescope. Soon after, the object was given the periodic comet designa-tion 174P/Echeclus. We will present the characterstics and discuss the reason of this recursive outburst.

In 2007-2011 searches were conducted for mineralogical and geochemical studies of the soil in the region of fall down of a bright fireball EN171101 “Turyi Remety“ matter in Perechyn district of Transcarpathian. In the assumed location of the fall of a meteorite material for analysis was taken from the bottom of streams of Transcarpathian Mountains. In this matter we have been found numerous small magnetic spheres (microspherul) and fused segments, which have enough large sizes - up to 5 mm in diameter, which probably are fragments of the Turyi Remety meteoroid. One of the known signs of fireballs are sand-sized magnetic balls (by diameter 0.1-1.0 mm), which are often found in the magnetic concentrate fraction. This small balls, together with fragments of fused iotsit (FeO) are formed during the ablation of the meteoroid, and their sizes decreases during the motion of the meteoroid in the Earths atmosphere. From the east to the west, the radius of the balls in the study area decreased from an average of 0.7-0.5 mm to 0.1-0.3 mm. The sizes of such balls, as glowing molten particles of the meteoroid, are in good agreement with calculations based on the energy loss of the Turyi Remety meteoroid. This confirms the cosmic origin of these found small balls. Pre-calculated physical parameters of the Turyi Remety meteoroid are the velocity, mass, kinetic energy, the resistance force during ablation, the average fireball particle radius along trajectory path of a meteoroid fragments depending from the mass and size. Rapid mass loss of the meteoroid in more than 10 times, stronger, shorter ablation and damping fireball at the high altitude say about instability and the participation of the meteoroid gas in ablation. Perhaps the presence of ice, and other fireball gases in the meteoroid composition shows that its composition was close to comet one or to a chondrite with ice (gas hydrates). Especially likely gaseous hydrates of heavy gases such as CO2, H2S, hydrocarbons (propane, butane, etc.).

Today has been known for a considerable number of cases, the explosion of large meteoroids in Earth's atmosphere. This is confirmed by the data of registrations of fireballs by devices and the results of measurements in the atmosphere of bright light flashes by photodiodes Corporation “Sandia Laboratories", which were installed on geostationary satellites of the United States, and also by data of measurements of acoustic-gravitational waves from the thermal explosions of meteoroids [ReVelle D.O. Historical detection of atmospheric impacts by large bolides using acoustic-gravity waves, Near-Earth Objects, Ed. Remo J. Annals of the New York Academy of Sciences 882, 284-302, 1997]. The work [Brown P., Spalding R.E., ReVelle D.O. et al. The flux of small near-Earth objects colliding with the Earth, Nature 420, 314-316, 2002.] shows the results of processing the observations of flashes of large meteoroids in Earth's atmosphere, obtained with the help of geostationary satellites of the United States. Over 8.5 years (from February 1994 to September 2002) 300 such events were registered. On July 6, 2002 r over the Mediterranean Sea a bright fireball was registered. The energy of the meteoroid explosion that caused the phenomenon of the car, was 26 kilotons of TNT [Brown et al., 2002]. We believe that this energy refers to the height of the full bracking of the meteoroid. At a speed of 20.3 km/s adopted by the authors, body mass at this height is 5 × 108 g, and when entering the Earth's atmosphere, it was about 7 × 108 g. Based on the obtained values of the mass, we conclude that the exploded meteoroid, causing a phenomenon of the fireball was a fragment of the comet nucleus. In processing the density of the body were taken 1 g/cm3 and the initial velocity (~30 km/s).

In 1-D heat conductivity model, the YORP acceleration is proved to be independent of the asteroid's heat properties. Considering small structures on the surface of an asteroid breaks 1-D model. A new force appears, pulling the asteroid's surface parallel to itself. Its effect on the asteroid's rotation is called tangential YORP, or TYORP.

Possibility of disintegration of proto-comet nucleus of sungraser comets in three zones of Solar System predicted by one of authors is considered. Testing of parameters of 118 split comets confirms the basic idea. Results of the statistical analysis of comet outbursts gave us additional argument in favor of this assumption. Almost twenty years have passed since, as a result of the search for host phases of isotopically unusual noble gases, the first discovery in 1987 of surviving pre-solar minerals (diamond and silicon carbide) in primitive meteorites. These were followed by others (graphite, refractory oxides, silicon nitride, and finally silicates) in the years since. Pre-solar grains occur in even higher abundance than in meteorites in interplanetary dust particles (IDPs). The result is a kind of ‘new astronomy’ based on the study of pre-solar condensates with all the methods available in modern analytical laboratories.

We present analysis of the photometric data of the distant comet 29P/Schwassmann-Wachmann-1, obtained at the 6-m BTA telescope (SAO RAS, Russia) and at the 2-meter telescope Zeiss-2000 (ICAMER, KB). The comet shows significant jets activity at large heliocentric distances, beyond the zone of water ice sublimation. Various digital filters were applied to increase the contrast of the jets and separate them. The rotation period of the nucleus was derived using cross-correlation method. The value of the rotation period is 12.1 ± 1.2 days for observations made in 2008 and 11.7 ± 1.5 days for observations made in 2009.

The purpose of meteor observations in INASAN is the study of meteor showers, as the elements of the migrant substance of the Solar System, and estimation of risk of hazardous collisions of spacecrafts with the particles of streams. Therefore we need to analyze the meteor events with brightness of up to 8 m, which stay in meteoroid streams for a long time and can be a hazardous for the spacecraft. The results of our single station TV observations of autumn meteor showers for the period from 2006 to 2008 are presented. The high-sensitive hybrid camera (the system with coupled of the Image Intensifier) FAVOR with limiting magnitude for meteors about 9m. . .10m in the field of view 20 × 18 was used for observations. In 2006-2008 from October to November more than 3 thousand of meteors were detected, 65% from them have the brightness from 6m to 9m. The identification with autumn meteor showers (Orionids, Taurids, Draconids, Leonids) was carried out. In order to estimate the density of the influx of meteor matter to the Earth for these meteor showers the Index of meteor activity (IMA) was calculated. The IMA distribution for the period 2006 - 2008 is given. The distributions of autumn meteor showers (the meteors with brightness of up to 8 m) by stellar magnitude from 2006 to 2008 are also presented.

Results of double-station TV meteor observations which were carried out during autumnal equinox in 2001 and 2003 are used for the confirmation of existing meteor showers and for a search for probable new micro-showers. Seven existing September showers were confirmed, two of them by meteors from both years. Fourteen new groups were proposed to be considered as new meteor micro-showers. Taking into account similar kinematical parameters two of them can be supposed to be a part of already existing showers.

The Dawn spacecraft orbited Asteroid (4) Vesta for a year, and returned disk-resolved images and spectra covering visible and near-infrared wavelengths at scales as high as 20 m/pix. The visible geometric albedo of Vesta is ~ 0.36. The disk-integrated phase function of Vesta in the visible wavelengths derived from Dawn approach data, previous ground-based observations, and Rosetta OSIRIS observations is consistent with an IAU H-G phase law with H=3.2 mag and G=0.28. Hapke's modeling yields a disk-averaged single-scattering albedo of 0.50, an asymmetry factor of -0.25, and a roughness parameter of ~20 deg at 700 nm wavelength. Vesta's surface displays the largest albedo variations observed so far on asteroids, ranging from ~0.10 to ~0.76 in geometric albedo in the visible wavelengths. The phase function of Vesta displays obvious systematic variations with respect to wavelength, with steeper slopes within the 1- and 2-micron pyroxene bands, consistent with previous ground-based observations and laboratory measurement of HED meteorites showing deeper bands at higher phase angles. The relatively high albedo of Vesta suggests significant contribution of multiple scattering. The non-linear effect of multiple scattering and the possible systematic variations of phase function with albedo across the surface of Vesta may invalidate the traditional algorithm of applying photometric correction on airless planetary surfaces.

Previous comet flyby missions enabled detailed studies of the photometric properties of several cometary nuclei from disk-resolved images, including 9P/Tempel 1, 19P/Borrelly, and 81P/Wild 2. Two recent missions, DIXI and Stardust-NExT, encountered Comets 103P/Hartley 2 and Tempel 1 respectively, expanding the pool of sampled cometary nuclei in their unique ways: Hartley 2 is a hyperactive comet; Tempel 1 was visited and impacted by the Deep Impact dual-spacecraft during its previous perihelion passage. Photometric modeling shows that the global photometric properties of the nuclei of Hartley 2 and Tempel 1 are similar to those of other cometary nuclei. The photometric variation of the hyperactive nucleus of Hartley 2 is about 15%, similar to that of weakly active comets Tempel 1 and Wild 2. The photometric properties of Tempel 1 measured by NExT suggest little change from those measured by DI. These results, together with the photometric properties of Wild 2 and Borrelly, indicate that the photometric properties of cometary nuclei are independent of the activity level and gross geomorphology of cometary nuclei. Instead, cometary nucleus photometric properties might be determined by its outgassing, which leaves low-albedo deposit on the surface and forms similar photometric texture. The time scale for the photometric alteration on cometary nuclei due to outgassing should be much shorter than the dynamic time scale.

One of the interesting aspects of optical meteor studies is that the spectral composition of the brightness reveals information about the element composition of the solid particles that enter Earthfs atmosphere from interplanetary space. Deriving composition from optical spectra requires understanding the entry process during which the entering solid interacts with atmospheric species. This is especially so, because most meteors are observed at altitudes where the mean free path changes from tens of meters to millimeters, that is in the 120 km to 80 km altitude range within the atmosphere. The ionization that causes optical emission also reflects radio waves, so that meteors are observed with different kinds of radar instruments. Incoherent scatter radar facilities are in particular designed to study the upper atmosphere by using the backscattering from free electrons and are basically High Power Large Aperture radars. During the past 15 years they have been increasingly used for meteor studies. The phased-array incoherent scatter radars that are currently under development, such as the planned EISCAT-3Dsystem in northern Scandinavia, will further improve the spatial and time resolution of radar observations and will allow simultaneous measurements of the meteors and of the parameters of the surrounding ionosphere. Radar backscattering is also sensitive to objects that are smaller than those detected optically, so that the observations also permit studying the extension of the meteoroid size distribution to smaller sizes. In this presentation we consider the possibilities for measurements with the future EISCAT-3D as a new path of studying the physics of meteor phenomena with high accuracy.

Typically, to analyze the data of the phase dependence of brightness atmosphereless celestial bodies one use some modification of the shadow mechanism involving the coherent mechanism. There are several modification of B.Hapke [2] model divided into two groups by the number of unknown parameters: the first one with 4 parameters [3,4] and the second one with up to 10 unknown parameters [1] providing a good agreement of observations and calculations in several wavelengths. However, they are complicated by analysing of the colorindex C(α) dependence and photometric contrast of details with phase K(α) and on the disk (μ o = cos i). We have got good agreement between observed and calculated values of C(α) = U(α)-I(α), K(α), K(muo) for Moon and Mars with a minimum number of unknown parameters [4]. We used an empirical dependence of single scattering albedo (ω) and particle semi-transparency(æ): æ = (1-ω)n. Assuming that [χ (0°)/χ(5°)] = χ (5°)/χ (0°)], where χ(α) is scattering function, using the phase dependence of brightness and opposition effect in a single wavelength, we have defined ω,χ(α),g (particle packing factor), and the first term expansion of χ(α) in a series of Legendre polynomials x1. Good agreement between calculated and observed data of C(α) = U(α)-I(α) for the light and dark parts of the lunar surface and the integral disk reached at n ≈ 0,25, g = 0,4 (porosity 0,91), x1 = -0,93, ω = 0,137 at λ = 359nm and 0,394 at λ = 1064nm;, for Mars with n ≈ 0,25,g = 0,6 (porosity 0,84), x1 ≈ 0, ω = 0,210 at λ = 359nm and ω = 0,784 at λ = 730nm.

1. Bowell E., Hapke B., Domingue D., Lumme K., et al. Applications of photometric models to asteroids, in Asteroids II. Tucson: Univ. Arizona Press. p.524-556. (1989)

2. Hapke B. A theoretical function for the lunar surface, J.Geophys.Res. 68, No.15., 4571-4586(1963).

3. Irwine W. M., The shadowing effect in diffuse reflection, J.Geophys.Res. 71,No.12, 2931-2937(1966).

4. Morozhenko A. V., Yanovitskij E.G., An optical model of the Martian surface in the visible region of spectrum, Astronomy Reports 48, No.4, 795-809(1971).

The observations of meteors using optical telescopes equipped with TV-cameras and the observations in radio signals using FM radio and TV translators are started in RI NAO since 2010.