Free Republic

As an Apollo-class asteroid, Nereus’ orbit frequently puts it close to Earth. Its orbital resonance is approximately 2:1, meaning that it orbits almost twice for every orbit of the Earth. This makes a mission to explore the asteroid very feasible. Nereus will come the closest to our planet it has been in the past 20 years, yet it set to pass 7.4 million km away, which is about 10 times the distance between the Moon and Earth. No missions are currently known to be ready to explore Nereus, however it has been considered before. Both NASA’s Near-Earth Asteroid Rendezvous-Shoemaker (NEAR)...

Red Semidouble SO FAR IN OUR PASCHAL SEASON, the choir of Martyr-Virgins has not yet offered to Jesus its crown of roses and lilies. It does so today, by presenting to him the noble Flavia Domitilla—the fairest flower of Rome, that was cut down by the sword of martyrdom in the first age of the Christian Faith. It was under the persecution of Domitian—the same that condemned John the Evangelist to be burned alive in the cauldron of boiling oil—that Flavia Domitilla was honored with banishment and death for the sake of our Redeemer, whom she had chosen as...

One of the world's most capable deep-sea research subs has been lost.The robotic vehicle Nereus went missing while exploring one of the ocean's deepest spots: the Kermadec Trench, which lies north east of New Zealand. Surface debris was found, suggesting the vessel suffered a catastrophic implosion as a result of the immense pressures where it was operating some 10km (6.2 miles) down. Nereus was a flagship ocean explorer for the US science community. "Nereus helped us explore places we've never seen before and ask questions we never thought to ask," said Timothy Shank, from the Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution (WHOI),...

A robotic submarine is undergoing final preparations to dive to the deepest-known part of the oceans. If successful, Nereus will be the first autonomous vehicle to visit the 11,000m (36,089ft) Challenger Deep in the Pacific Ocean. Only two other vehicles have ever visited the spot before, both of them human operated. The $5m submarine will make the attempt in late May or early June after a series of increasingly deep dives. “ From 6,500m to 11,000m metres Nereus has the field pretty much to itself ” Ian Rouse National Oceanography Centre "Instead of jumping directly into the deep end of...