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Scientists are keeping a close eye on a big asteroid that may pose an impact threat to Earth in a few decades. The space rock, which is called 2011 AG5, is about 460 feet (140 meters) wide. It may come close enough to Earth in 2040 that some researchers are calling for a discussion about how to deflect it. Talk about the asteroid was on the agenda during the 49th session of the Scientific and Technical Subcommittee of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS), held earlier this month in Vienna. A UN Action Team...

To avert a possible catastrophe – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint or big guns. The stickler is that time has long run out to build a spaceship to carry out the operation. ­NASA's data shows the 60-meter asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, will whistle by Earth in 11 months. Its trajectory will bring it within a hair’s breadth of our planet, raising fears of a possible collision. The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km...

From ChicoEr.comFlying close enough to Earth that in astronomic terms one could feel the breeze as it passed, a small asteroid flashed by just after midnight today.NASA reported the space rock, with the unimaginative name of 2012 KT42, was just 8,700 miles above the atmosphere when it went by.While the asteroid’s approach is actually within the orbit’s geosynchronous satellites, it is not of the sort to inspire fears of global destruction.NASA estimates the object is roughly 10 to 30 feet in diameter. It is still not tiny. The fireball that flashed over California earlier this year and dropped fragments of...

Explanation: What would it be like to fly over the asteroid Vesta? Animators from the German Aerospace Center recently took actual images and height data from NASA's Dawn mission currently visiting Vesta to generate such a virtual movie. The above video begins with a sequence above Divalia Fossa, an unusual pair of troughs running parallel over heavily cratered terrain. Next, the virtual spaceship explores Vesta's 60-km Marcia Crater, showing numerous vivid details. Last, Dawn images were digitally recast with exaggerated height to better reveal Vesta's 5-km high mountain Aricia Tholus. Currently, Dawn is rising away from Vesta after being close...

Several well-known billionaires are forming the new company Planetary Resources with plans to send a robotic spacecraft to mine precious metals from an asteroid and bring them back to Earth. Google executives Larry Page and Eric Schmidt and their business partners say the enterprise will "add trillions to the global GDP." But to whom do those trillions belong — the company, or everyone? Does a private company have a right to stake claim to an asteroid, or are celestial bodies such as the moon, planets and asteroids the communal property of all Earthlings? "The law on this is not settled...

A newly unveiled company with some high-profile backers — including filmmaker James Cameron and Google co-founder Larry Page — has announced plans to mine near-Earth asteroids for resources such as precious metals and water. Planetary Resources, Inc. intends to sell these materials, generating a healthy profit for itself. But it also aims to advance humanity's exploration and exploitation of space, with resource extraction serving as an anchor industry that helps our species spread throughout the solar system. (snip) "We're out there right now, talking to customers," Anderson said. "We are open for discussions with companies — aerospace companies, mining companies,...

To avert a new apocalypse – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint, or big guns. The tough part of either scheme is that time has long run out to build a spaceship for any operation. ­NASA confirms the 60-meter (197-feet) asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, has a good chance of colliding with Earth in eleven months. The rock's closest approach to the planet is scheduled for February 15, 2013, when the distance between the planet and space wanderer will be under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is lower...

A small asteroid will make an extremely close pass by Earth Friday (Jan. 27), coming much nearer than the moon, but the space rock poses no danger of impacting our planet, NASA scientists say. The newfound asteroid 2012 BX34, which is about the size of a city bus, will pass within 36,750 miles (59,044 kilometers) of Earth at about 10:30 a.m. EST (1530 GMT) Friday, astronomers with NASA's Asteroid Watch program announced via Twitter. The space rock is about 36 feet (11 meters) wide, making it much too small to pose a threat to Earth. "It wouldn't get through our...

Next week, the Earth's residents can once again play the popular game of "What if?" What if a hunk of cosmic rock is out there on a collision course with Earth? At the moment, an asteroid labeled "(433) Eros" is rushing toward our planet on a course that will bring it relatively close, at least on a cosmic scale. On the one hand, the chunk of rock—measuring 30 by 13 by 13 kilometers (19 by 8 by 8 miles)—is approaching Earth closer than any asteroid of this size has for a long time. But on the other, it is currently...

Gannett newspaper, link only: http://www.desmoinesregister.com/article/20120117/NEWS/301170042/0/mobile/?odyssey=nav|head

Earlier this week, a hunk of rock called asteroid 2005 YU55 came within smashing distance of Earth. It was purported to be the size of an aircraft carrier, and wound up flying by us at a distance of just under 200,000 miles, much closer than the Moon. But as close as the asteroid came to Earth, it seems the best we've managed to produce imaging-wise are highly pixelated images like the ones up top (alright, so the one in the middle is actually pretty decent, with a resolution of about 4 meters/pixel...although my favorite is the one on the far...

Closest approach to be 3:28 PST Tuesday afternoon.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon on Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said. Earth's close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST on Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet. "It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great -- and rare -- chance to study a...

Check out this website: http://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2005%20YU55;orb=1;cov=0;log=0;cad=0#orb you need JAVA installed to view the app COMET YU55 It is going to cross our orbital path and almost be directly in the same line and path as Earth, right along our orbital plane and orbital location around the Sun right around November 9 People used to freak about that comet Elenin, it misses us by quite a bit, but, YU55 is very close! Many conspiracy theorists are saying the government is covering this up, that it is the end of the world, Obama knows, that Fema camps are NOT for the NOW but...

A team of amateur astronomers has discovered a previously unknown asteroid in orbit that brings it near the Earth, highlighting the contributions regular folks can make to planetary defense, scientists announced Wednesday (Oct. 12). The skywatchers spotted the asteroid, which is known as 2011 SF108, in September using a telescope in the Canary Islands. While 2011 SF108's orbit appears to bring it no closer to Earth than about 18 million miles (30 million kilometers), it still qualifies as a near-Earth object — the class of space rocks that could pose a danger to our planet. The team took advantage of...

It seemed far-fetched on the silver screen. But the European Space Agency is planning to launch a mission similar to the plot of Hollywood movie Armageddon, in which Bruce Willis and his intrepid team attempt to blow up a huge asteroid that’s hurtling towards Earth. The real version, if it goes ahead in 2015, will see a satellite fired at break-neck speed into a ‘test’ asteroid to see if its course changes. The aim is to assess whether it would be possible to save Earth using this method, should we discover that an asteroid is on a collision course with...

The asteroid in the Earth's orbit around the sun has been hiding from view, mostly overhead during daylight, study finds. Turns out the moon's not the Earth's only traveling companion. Space scientists have discovered an asteroid that's been following our fair planet for thousands of years, at least — and there may be many more where it came from, according to a recent study.

With the space shuttle now history, Nasa's next great mission is so audacious, the agency's best minds are wrestling with how to pull it off. They have presidential orders to to send astronauts to an asteroid in less than 15 years. The challenges are innumerable, but many Nasa brains are thrilled to have such an improbable assignment - and believe civilisation may even depend on it. An asteroid is a giant space rock that orbits the sun, like Earth. And someday one might threaten the planet. But sending people to one won't be easy. You can't land on an asteroid...

The asteroid Vesta may be the brightest asteroid in the solar system, but it remains shrouded in mystery. When NASA's Dawn probe enters into orbit around Vesta on July 15 — the first spacecraft to visit the 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer) protoplanet — it promises to shed light on the many enigmas of the second-largest body in the asteroid belt. NASA launched the $466 million Dawn mission in 2007, with Vesta as the first (but not last) stop. The Dawn probe is also expected to visit Ceres, the largest asteroid in the solar system, but only after unlocking the secrets of Vesta....

NASA: An Asteroid Will Barely Avoid Slamming Into Earth Today David Edwards, The Raw Story Jun. 27, 2011, 11:47 AM Image: Flickr Ed Sweeny Astronomers have just discovered an asteroid that is expected come close enough to Earth Monday that it will be visible with amateur telescopes. The Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research centre (LINEAR) spotted Asteroid 2011 MD on June 22. It has an orbit similar to Earth's. The asteroid will be visible from parts of South Africa and Antarctica when it makes its closest approach at 1:14 p.m. EDT (1714 GMT), passing just 7,500 miles (12,000 kilometers) from the...

PASADENA -- NASA says a newly discovered asteroid will have a close encounter with Earth on Monday, but there's no need to worry. The space agency's Near-Earth Object Program Office says the small space rock -- dubbed 2011 MD -- will pass 7,500 miles above Earth's surface over the southern Atlantic Ocean at about 6:30 a.m. PDT.

The date for Armageddon has been set, and it's not going to happen in 2012. In 2004, NASA scientists announced that there was a chance that Apophis, an asteroid larger than two football fields, could smash into Earth in 2029. A few additional observations and some number-crunching later, astronomers noted that the chance of the planet-killer hitting Earth in 2029 was nearly zilch. Now Russian scientists estimate Apophis will collide with Earth on April 13, 2036. These reports conflict on the probability of such a doomsday event, but the question remains: How scared should we be? “Technically, they’re correct, there...

Astronomers have been busy trying to determine the spin period and composition of Venus' moon. On Dec. 8, 2010, results of the study were announced by JPL/Caltech scientists, led by Michael Hicks... It has the rather unfortunate name of 2002 VE68. That's because it was discovered on Nov. 11, 2002 by LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. 2002 VE68 is an Earth orbit-crossing asteroid that has been designated a Potential Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center... 2002 VE68 used to be a run of the mill, potential impact threat Near Earth Object (NEO). But approximately 7,000 years...

A tiny asteroid will zip close by Earth tonight (Nov. 16) at a range much closer than the moon, but poses no threat of striking our planet or even entering the atmosphere, NASA has announced. The asteroid 2010 WA will pass Earth at 10:44 p.m. EST (0344 GMT), missing the planet by about 24,000 miles (38,000 kilometers), NASA's asteroid-watching team wrote on Twitter. It is nearly 10 feet (3 meters wide), so small it would simply break apart if it encountered Earth's atmosphere. NASA officials said the asteroid is a "very small space rock" that will pass the Earth at...

MONTREAL — Great balls of fire have been reported swooping over Eastern Canada and several U.S. states. Even NASA's on the case. There are different theories about what was behind the sighting of those fireballs. A NASA spacecraft got a closer look at one of the possible sources today. The spacecraft flew past Hartley 2 -- taking closeup pictures after the comet made one of its closest passes by Earth this week. But one expert is skeptical of reports that any fireballs came from Hartley -- which is roughly 1.2 kilometres wide and spews deadly cyanide gas. Scientist Peter Brown...

A new report calls on NASA to establish a Planetary Defense Coordination Office to lead national and international efforts in protecting Earth against impacts by asteroids and comets. The final report of the Ad-Hoc Task Force on Planetary Defense of the NASA Advisory Council was delivered to the Council this month, proposing five recommendations that suggest how the space agency should organize, acquire, investigate, prepare, and lead national and international efforts in planetary defense against near-Earth objects.

In separate 10-page letters to the House Committee on Science and Technology and the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science and Transportation, John Holdren, director of the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, or OSTP, outlines plans for "(A) protecting the United States from a near-Earth object that is expected to collide with Earth; and (B) implementing a deflection campaign, in consultation with international bodies, should one be necessary." ... While Holdren indicates that no large asteroid or comet presents an immediate hazard to our planet, the fact that devastating impacts have occurred on Earth in the distant past...

Evidence that water came to Earth during its formation from cosmic dust, rather than following later in asteroids, has been shown by a group of international scientists. The origin of the abundant levels of water on Earth has long been debated with the main differences in the theories being the nature of the material that carries the water, and whether the water came during or after planet formation. Now, Nora de Leeuw at University College London, UK, and colleagues have used molecular-level calculations to prove that dissociative chemisorption of water onto the surface of olivine rich minerals, such as forsterite,...

A United Nations working group is currently looking into how the UN should respond to possible threats to the planet from near-earth objects, such as asteroids, Mazlan Othman, the Director of the UN Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA), told reporters at UN Headquarters in New York on October 14 2010, the UN News Service said. She said that the working group -- within the UN Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space -- is expected to come up with recommendations which would be presented to the General Assembly for UN member states to make a decision on response...

A color composite image of the June 3, 2010, Jupiter impact flash. Credit: Anthony Wesley observing from Broken Hill, Australia. In a paper published Thursday in the Astrophysical Journal Letters, a group of professional and amateur astronomers announced that Jupiter is getting hit surprisingly often by small asteroids, lighting up the giant planet's atmosphere with frequent fireballs. "Jupiter is a big gravitational vacuum cleaner," said co-author and JPL astronomer Glenn Orton. "It is clear now that relatively small objects left over from the formation of the solar system 4.5 billion years ago still hit Jupiter frequently." The impacts are...

**Update -- Intel Hub -- RSOE EDIS is reporting that a 1,000 strong search team was tasked with finding the impact area and so far have been unable to locate it... Such a colossal event, so little media coverage. Around 3:10PM Sunday afternoon residents of Colombia were awestruck when the clear sky was cracked open by a massive fireball that exploded upon impact leaving a 300 foot wide crater and a lot of rattled nerves.

The asteroid, which follows Neptune's orbit around the sun, ...classified as a Trojan, was found in a difficult-to-detect area near Neptune, known as the Lagrangian point L5. Lagrangian points are five areas in space where the gravitational tugs from two relatively massive bodies -- such as Neptune and the sun -- balance out. This allows smaller bodies, like asteroids, to remain stable and fixed in synch with the planet's orbit, as they orbit the sun... Trojan asteroids have previously been found in some of the stable points near Neptune and Jupiter, but this is the first discovery of a Trojan...

Want to know what would happen if a 10km-wide asteroid came out of the sky and slammed down on your city? Scientists at Purdue University and Imperial College London have updated their popular impact effects calculator first produced in 2004. Users dial in details about the hypothetical impactor, like its diameter and density. The web program then estimates the scale of the ensuing disaster, such as the size of the crater left behind. It will also tell you how far away you need to be to avoid being buried by all the material thrown out by the blast, or set...

The Geminid meteor shower, which peaks each year in December... are *not* caused by debris left behind from an active comet... Until recently, the favored view of Phaethon was that it's a dead comet -- the rocky core of a "dirty snowball" that lost its ices after too many close encounters with the sun. ... In June 2009 astronomers using the STEREO sun-watching probe suddenly saw the rocky body flare to life as it neared the sun, brightening by a factor of two... So, not so dead after all. But that brings us back to figuring out what exactly Phaethon...

An ancient meteor strike on Mars has revealed the first direct evidence of how warm liquid water may have shaped a habitable underground environment. Images taken by NASA's Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter have revealed the first carbonate rocks found inside Leighton Crater at a level that was once buried 4 miles (6 km) below the red planet's surface.

Two asteroids swooping past Earth Wednesday may have caught the attention of the public, but events like these are not actually rare, NASA scientists say. "This is the first time we've seen [two] combined within a 24-hour period, but that's probably because we don't know everything that is out there," said Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object program at NASA headquarters in Washington. Single asteroids have been known to make such close passes, but they usually slip by unnoticed, .. In fact, with a rough estimate of 50 million unknown asteroids, a 33-foot-wide (10-meter) near-Earth object could pass...

"It turns out that there are a significant number of asteroids that aren't just a single object, but two and even on occasion three in orbit around one another," Pollock said. He and his colleagues record information related to changes in amount of light reflected from asteroids. Sometimes this indicates the existence of a pair of asteroids that are revolving around each other... "When a single, irregularly shaped asteroid spins, the amount of reflective area changes and it appears to change brightness," Pollock said. "When you have two rotating asteroids revolving around one another, the brightness changes are much more...

NASA is pushing ahead with work on its new Orion space capsule and Ares rockets despite their ambiguous status as lawmakers discuss the agency's 2011 budget request.  Orion and Ares are part of Constellation, a NASA program designed to take astronauts back to the moon. Under his 2011 budget proposal, President Barack Obama called for canceling Constellation and urged NASA to work toward sending humans to an asteroid and then on to Mars. The outlook for Constellation's fledgling rocket and capsule spacecraft is not clear. Obama did recommend continuing development of Orion -- but only as an escape ship that...

Chelsea Clinton Wedding Guest List Revealed Posted by Devon Thomas NEW YORK (CBS) It's wedding season and Hillary and Bill Clinton's daughter Chelsea has her guest list all sorted out. The First Daughter, 30, who is getting married on July 31 to Marc Mezvinsky, is throwing a wedding bash that will reportedly have up to 500 guests, including some of the biggest names in politics and entertainment. Just who made the cut? According to the Hudson Valley News, guests include President Obama, singer Barbra Streisand, filmmaker Steven Spielberg and his wife Kate Capshaw, and media moguls Oprah Winfrey and Ted...

A European spacecraft zoomed by past a mysterious asteroid Saturday to take the first-ever close look at the space rock while flying more than 282 million miles from Earth. The European Space Agency's (ESA) Rosetta space probe flew past the asteroid Lutetia, an object discovered in 1852 that appeared only as a bright speck in the sky to astronomers until today. The first new photos of the asteroid revealed Lutetia to be a lumpy rock with a potato-like appearance. Rosetta was about 1,900 miles (3,100 km) from the asteroid at its closest approach. The enigmatic space rock, which is about...

The object 2010 KH has been observed only by WISE and currently has a disgusting orbit: semimajor axis = 3.2 +- 3 AU. In fact, it might not even be a NEO. However, by using the available data, we have found Virtual impactors, including one in 2015, of course with a very low impact probability (the asteroid could be almost anywhere, thus we cannot exclude that it could be on top of us at some time in the near future). Now this situation is very unpleasant. This object possibly does not even exist as a NEO, on the other hand...

A group of astronomers from NASA, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and other organizations had a front row seat to observe the Hayabusa spacecraft's fiery plunge into Earth's atmosphere. The team was aboard NASA's DC-8 airborne laboratory, packed with cameras and other imaging instruments, to capture the high-speed re-entry over an unpopulated area of central Australia on June 13, 2010. The Japanese spacecraft has been on a seven-year journey to return a sample of the asteroid Itokawa.

SYDNEY (AFP) – A capsule that scientists hope will contain a little slice of outer space after a seven-year journey across the solar system was sitting in the Australian Outback on Monday waiting to be recovered. The pod, which was ejected from a Japanese space probe as it burned up in a spectacular meteor-like display over Australia, could hold the first piece of asteroid ever brought to Earth. The heat-resistant pod parachuted into the Woomera military zone after being ejected from Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft as it flamed back into the planet's atmosphere late Sunday. Australian National University scientist Trevor Ireland,...

A Japanese spacecraft that visited an asteroid in 2005 is returning to Earth this weekend and should put on a brief, but spectacular, light show for fortuitously placed Australians late on Sunday. The Hayabusa probe was launched by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) on May 9, 2003 and rendezvoused with the Itokawa asteroid on September 12, 2005. [Photos of Japan's asteroid mission.] Now it is set to land back on Earth, hopefully with asteroid bits in tow.

In breaking news, Anthony Wesley reports another impact on Jupiter, this morning. In his words: ".. at approximately 20:30utc this morning I recorded a large fireball on Jupiter, it lasted a couple of seconds and was very bright.This was a large fireball, but it doesn't seem to have left any mark, probably all gone in the upper atmosphere before it reached the clouds."His preliminary image (a raw frame from the video) is shown below. The fireball can be seen in the upper left of frame. A video and more details will follow soon.Stay tuned to IceInSpace for more, and for...

Water ice has been found on the surface of a nearby asteroid for the first time – a discovery that could help explain how Earth got its oceans, scientists announced Wednesday. Two teams of researchers independently verified that the asteroid 24 Themis – a large rock hurtling through space in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter – is coated in a layer of frost. They also found that the asteroid contains organic material, including some molecules that might be ingredients for life. But scientists have not found any evidence for life itself on this asteroid, or anywhere else in...

WASHINGTON – Scientists have lots of ice in an unexpected place in our solar system: an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter. The discovery of significant asteroid ice has several consequences. It could help explain how Earth first got its water. It makes asteroids more attractive to explore. And it muddies the definition between comets and asteroids.

A giant asteroid smashing into Earth is the only plausible explanation for the extinction of the dinosaurs, a global scientific team said on Thursday, hoping to settle a row that has divided experts for decades.

Collisions between asteroids should be highly energetic affairs, with an average impact speed of close to 5 kilometers per second. We may be looking at the debris of a head-on collision between two asteroids in imagery provided by the Hubble Space Telescope. The object in question, originally thought to have been a comet, is P/2010 A2, discovered by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) sky survey on January 6 of this year. The follow-up Hubble imagery dates from late January, and shows an unusual filamentary pattern near the nucleus.Image: HST picture of the comet-like object called P/2010 A2. The object...

CURIOUS EVENTS IN NEBRASKA: Earthquakes don't rock Nebraska very often. In fact, seismically speaking, it is one of the quietest places in North America. Nevertheless, on Dec. 16th at 8:54 pm CST, USGS seismographs detected a magnitude 3.5 temblor centered near Auburn, Nebraska: Click to view earthquake details and Nebraska seismic probabilities"It sounded like those loud grain haulers that drive by, but about five times louder," reports Laurie Riley, who lives near the epicenter. "The whole house shook. My kids came running down stairs – they were scared. It even moved my car, [which was parked outside on icy ground]."...