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Yeah, I know you’re rolling your eyes – another day, another killer asteroid. You’ll probably be thinking: ‘This is just paranoid riffraff.’ Well… it is, really. However, there is actually a dangerous lump of space rock barrelling towards us, and there is a (hilariously) small chance it could wallop our planet. NASA first discovered the asteroid back in 2009. Over the past decade, the space agency’s automated asteroid watching system – known as Sentry – has been tasked with keeping an eye on it. Don’t worry yourself too much though. NASA place the odds of JF1 actually hitting us at...

Can you imagine the devastation that would be caused if a massive wall of water several hundred feet high slammed into Florida at more than 100 miles an hour? To many people such a scenario is impossible, but that is what people living along the Indian Ocean thought before the 2004 tsunami and that is what people living in Japan thought before the 2011 tsunami. Throughout history, giant tsunamis have been relatively rare events, but they do happen. Scientists tell us that a mega-tsunami can race across the open ocean at up to 500 miles an hour, and when they...

A Boeing Delta II rocket carries NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft as it lifts off in Cape Canaveral, Florida, on January 13, 2005. In a first-of-its-kind mission, the spacecraft was sent to gather information about the comet Temple 1. NASA declared the mission complete on Friday, September 20. The most-traveled comet-hunter mission in history has ended, NASA announced this Friday rather with reluctance as it shut the book on the Deep Impact spacecraft. see more @ Nasa News

After almost nine years in space that included an unprecedented July 4th impact and subsequent flyby of a comet, an additional comet flyby, and the return of approximately 500,000 images of celestial objects, NASA's Deep Impact mission has ended. The project team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California, has reluctantly pronounced the mission at an end after being unable to communicate with the spacecraft for over a month. The last communication with the probe was August 8th. Deep Impact was history's most traveled comet research mission, going about 4.7 billion miles (7.58 billion kilometers). "Deep Impact has...

NASA's Stardust spacecraft returned new images of a comet showing a scar resulting from the 2005 Deep Impact mission. The images also showed the comet has a fragile and weak nucleus. The spacecraft made its closest approach to comet Tempel 1 on Monday, Feb. 14, at 8:40 p.m. PST (11:40 p.m. EST) at a distance of approximately 178 kilometers (111 miles). Stardust took 72 high-resolution images of the comet. It also accumulated 468 kilobytes of data about the dust in its coma, the cloud that is a comet's atmosphere. The craft is on its second mission of exploration called Stardust-NExT,...

NASA sends spacecraft on mission to comet Hartley 2 NASA/JPL NEWS RELEASE Posted: December 15, 2007 NASA has approved the retargeting of the Epoxi mission for a flyby of comet Hartley 2 on Oct. 11, 2010. Hartley 2 was chosen as Epoxi's destination after the initial target, comet Boethin, could not be found. Scientists theorize comet Boethin may have broken up into pieces too small for detection. The Epoxi mission melds two compelling science investigations -- the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization and the Deep Impact Extended Investigation. Both investigations will be performed using the Deep Impact spacecraft. In addition...

A pale green interloper among the stars of Cassiopeia, Comet Hartley 2 glows like an escapee from Krypton at the center of this exposure taken on the night of Sept. 28, 2010, by NASA astronomer Bill Cooke. Still too faint to be seen with the unaided eye, the comet was 18 million miles away from Earth at the time. Cooke took this image using a telescope located near Mayhill, N.M., which he controlled via the Internet from his home computer. "Before mid-October, Northern Hemisphere observers will be able to see the comet nearly all night long in the northeast," Cook...

A greenish comet named 103P/Hartley 2 flew within 11 million miles of the Earth on Wednesday, one of the closest approaches by a comet in centuries. But hardly anyone is likely to see it until a Maryland-led NASA mission sends a spacecraft past on Nov. 4. While the comet has been visible in the northern sky for weeks, it has been a difficult target for backyard stargazers, especially in light-polluted suburban skies. "This is probably one of the best comets of the year," said Armen Caroglanian, a member of an employees' astronomy club at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center....

BIG GREEN COMET: The icy nucleus of comet 103P/Hartley 2 measures no more than a couple of kilometers across. That tiny nugget, however, is surrounded by an vast atmosphere of gas more than 150,000 km in diameter--about the same size as the planet Jupiter! And it's coming our way. Amateur astronomer Nick Howes sends this picture of the approaching comet from Cherhill, WIltshire UK: "I photographed the comet on Oct. 1st using a 4-inch refractor," says Howes. "Four hours of exposure time revealed not only the comet's vast green atmosphere but also an emerging tail." Howes describes the processing of...

NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft flew 700 kilometers, or 435 miles, from comet Hartley 2 on Thursday morning. These five images were the first snapshots returned from the probe more than 13 million miles away from Earth. All five images were captured with Deep Impact's medium-resolution camera between 1358 GMT and 1401 GMT.

Jon Stewart host of THE DAILY SHOW joked with guest Neil deGrasse Tyson (astrophysicist, contributor to "NOVA" on PBS) on January 28, 2009 whether having a black President means an asteroid is on the way. Tyson said there's one due in 2029 projected to come between Earth and it's own orbiting satellites. Even the liberals are getting nervous that reality is going to mimic art, ie. DEEP IMPACT. If you recall the plot of the movie, the President used the coming disaster to execute martial law, round up a select few elites to be saved in underground cities, and leave...

Exploding asteroid theory strengthened by new evidence located in Ohio, Indiana Space & Earth science / Earth Sciences Ken Tankersley seen working in the field in a cave in this publicity photo from the National Geographic Channel. Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America -- when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans -- to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada. A comet/asteroid theory advanced by Arizona-based geophysicist...

In late June of 1908, a fireball exploded above the remote Russian forests of Tunguska, Siberia, flattening more than 800 square miles of trees. Researchers think a meteor was responsible for the devastation, but neither its fragments nor any impact craters have been discovered. Astronomers have been left to guess whether the object was an asteroid or a comet, and figuring out what it was would allow better modeling of potential future calamities. Italian researchers now think they've found a smoking gun: The 164-foot-deep Lake Cheko, located just 5 miles northwest of the epicenter of destruction. "When we looked at...

Smaller asteroids may pose greater danger than previously believed INCINERATION POSSIBLE - Fine points of the "fireball" that might be expected from an asteroid exploding in Earth's atmosphere are indicated in a supercomputer simulation devised by a team led by Sandia researcher Mark Boslough. (Photo by Randy Montoya ) Download 300dpi JPEG image (Media are welcome to download/publish this image with related news stories.)ALBUQUERQUE, N.M. — The stunning amount of forest devastation at Tunguska a century ago in Siberia may have been caused by an asteroid only a fraction as large as previously published estimates, Sandia National Laboratories supercomputer simulations...

Two years ago, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft blasted a hole in Comet Tempel 1, offering researchers their first look inside a comet. One small problem: The cloud of debris was so thick no one could clearly see the crater. But now the dust has cleared and another NASA spacecraft is returning to the scene to examine the hole Deep Impact wrought. The flash! The dazzle! The front page of the New York Times! Two years ago, NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft dropped an 820 lb copper projectile onto Comet Tempel 1, unleashing an explosion that made headlines around the world....

GRAND MARAIS, Minn. - A forest fire has led to a chance discovery of debris from the impact of a meteorite 1.85 billion years ago, more than 450 miles away at Sudbury, Ontario. Geologists had scheduled a field trip in May along the Gunflint Trail in northeastern Minnesota, but most areas they wanted to explore were closed because of a wildfire that charred more than 118 square miles. Geologist Mark Jirsa of the Minnesota Geological Survey went up the trail to scout new locations and, in a spot he had never visited before, stumbled across debris now linked to the...

The duo will make new observations of comets and characterize extrasolar planets. Stardust and Deep Impact will use their flight-proven hardware to perform new, previously unplanned, investigations... The EPOXI mission melds two compelling science investigations -- the Deep Impact Extended Investigation (DIXI) and the Extrasolar Planet Observation and Characterization (EPOCh). Both investigations will be performed using the Deep Impact spacecraft, which finished its prime mission in 2005... EPOCh's sensitivity will exceed both current ground and space-based observatory capabilities. EPOCh also will measure the mid-infrared spectrum of the Earth, providing comparative data for future efforts to study the atmospheres of extrasolar...

LOS ANGELES - NASA said Tuesday it is recycling two used spacecraft to lead new robotic missions to study comets and planets around other stars. The encore performances of the Deep Impact and Stardust probes allow the space agency to further its solar system exploration for a fraction of the cost it would take to start a mission from scratch. Both spacecraft successfully completed their primary missions to two different comets and their discoveries have helped scientists understand how the solar system formed. In 2005, Deep Impact released a copper impactor that smashed into comet Tempel 1. The collision carved...

Shanghai builds vast bunker to shield against terrorism attack (Filed: 31/07/2006) The authorities in Shanghai, which is the Chinese financial hub, have built a huge underground shelter against the eventuality of terrorism or industrial accidents. The vast 968,400sq ft subterranean complex could accommodate 200,000 people for up to 15 days.It is linked to government offices, commercial and residential areas and the transport system by a labyrinth of tunnels. The bunker can protect occupants from "nuclear radiation, poisonous gases, explosions and other disasters," the state's news agency Xinhua reported yesterday. "In peacetime, parts of the bunker could be used as garages,...

Although comets form at the frigid edges of the solar system, they appear somehow to contain minerals that form only in the presence of liquid water, and at much warmer temperatures, scientists are reporting today. On July 4, as planned, part of the Deep Impact spacecraft - essentially an 820-pound, washing machine-size bullet - slammed into the comet Tempel 1 at 23,000 miles an hour. The collision tossed up thousands of tons of ice and dust from the comet that were observed by telescopes on Earth as well as small flotilla of spacecraft. One of the observers was the Spitzer...