Without decent pictures this story will not go far beyond the science pages. A graph showing distribution of elements isn't the most attention-grabbing shot I can think of.
That's why the media industry uses 'artist's illustrations' (like this), along with other existing images and resources, such as the telescope and a video of its launch.
From TFA:
"This little cosmic surprise, designated 2009 DD45, turned up two days ago as a 19th-magnitude blip in images taken by Rob McNaught at Siding Spring Observatory in Australia. It was already within 1.5 million miles of Earth and closing fast."
So no, they had no prior info about this asteroid. And yes, this fact concerns me as well, but this is the problem with asteroids / comets having a low albedo - they're difficult to observe with the usual instruments.
What I'd like to see is the development of cold-resistant electronics. Can we use solid capacitors and batteries for that purpose?
Then the power-draining heaters won't be needed anymore and the power can be routed to more useful instruments (or the probes can be lighter, with lower launch costs).
The moon is made of green cheese. -- John Heywood
