72 Feronia

Also known as (72) Feronia, Feronia

main-belt asteroid

Picture of the Day · NASA

Pathfinder on Mars

2026-07-04

On July 4th, 1997, using its own array of fireworks, a parachute, and a cocoon of airbags, the Mars Pathfinder spacecraft bounced like a giant beach ball at least 15 times before it came to rest on the surface of Mars at 10:07 AM Pacific Daylight Time. After its then novel airbag-assisted landing sequence was completed, Pathfinder transmitted this color mosaic to mission operators on Earth. In the scene from another world, the Mars Sojourner robot rover is visible in the foreground, crouched on top of the unfolded Pathfinder. About the size of a large house cat, the six-wheeled, solar-powered Sojourner became the first successful Martian rover. Surrounding Pathfinder are deflated airbags and the rock-strewn terrain of the Ares Vallis floodplain. In the distance Martian hills appear against a dusty brownish sky. The Pathfinder lander was subsequently renamed the Carl Sagan Memorial Station.

via NASA APOD

Key facts

Discovered by: Christian Heinrich Friedrich Peters
Discovery date: May 29, 1861
Pronunciation: / f ɛ ˈ r oʊ n i ə /
Named after: Feronia
Minor planet category: Main belt

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Article

72 Feronia is a quite large and dark main belt asteroid. It was the first asteroid discovery by C. H. F. Peters, on May 29, 1861, from Hamilton College, New York State. It was initially thought that Peters had merely seen the previously discovered asteroid 66 Maja, but T.H. Safford showed that it was a new body. Safford named it after Feronia, a Roman fertility goddess.

This asteroid is orbiting the Sun with a period of 3.41 years, having a semi-major axis of 2.266 AU and an eccentricity of 0.121. The orbital plane is inclined by an angle of 5.4° to the plane of the ecliptic. This is a spectral type TDG asteroid with a cross-section size of 84 km. The asteroid has an estimated rotation period of 8.09 h. Hanuš et al. (2013) gives two possible solutions for the pole in ecliptic coordinates: (λ1, β1) = (287°, −39°) or (λ1, β1) = (102°, −55°).