NASA's Dawn Science Team Presents Early Science Results

Scientists with NASA's Dawn mission are sharing with other scientists and the public their early information about the southern hemisphere of the giant asteroid Vesta. The findings were presented today at the annual meeting of the Geological Society of America in Minneapolis, Minn. 


Dawn, which has been orbiting Vesta since mid-July, has found that the asteroid's southern hemisphere boasts one of the largest mountains in the solar system. Other findings show that Vesta's surface, viewed by Dawn at different wavelengths, has striking diversity in its composition, particularly around craters. Science findings also include an in-depth analysis of a set of equatorial troughs on Vesta and a closer look at the object's intriguing craters. The surface appears to be much rougher than most asteroids in the main asteroid belt. In addition, preliminary dates from a method that uses the number of craters indicate that areas in the southern hemisphere are as young as 1 billion to 2 billion years old, much younger than areas in the north.

Scientists do not yet understand how all the features on Vesta's surface formed, but they did announce today, after analysis of northern and southern troughs, that results are consistent with models of fracture formation due to giant impact.

Since July, the Dawn spacecraft has been spiraling closer and closer to Vesta, moving in to get better and better views of the surface. In early August, the spacecraft reached an orbital altitude of 1,700 miles (2,700 kilometers) and mapped most of the sunlit surface, during survey orbit, with its framing camera and visible and infrared mapping spectrometer.

That phase was completed in late August, and the spacecraft began moving in to what is known as High Altitude Mapping Orbit at about 420 miles (680 kilometers) above Vesta, which it reached on Sept. 29.

An archive of the live news conference is available for viewing at: http://www.ustream.tv/nasajpl2 .

The Dawn scientists also shared their findings at the recent European Planetary Science Congress and the Division of Planetary Sciences Joint Meeting 2011 in Nantes, France.

Diamond Studs

Read more

NASA to Launch New Satellite to Track Earth's Weather, Climate

A new NASA satellite that will be the first geared at observing key aspects of both Earth's climate and its weather is slated for launch on Oct. 27, the space agency announced today. The National Polar-Orbiting Operational Environmental Satellite System Preparatory Project (NPP) is the first mission designed to collect critical data to improve weather forecasts in the short-term and increase our understanding of long-term climate change.

NPP's five science instruments, including four new state-of-the-art sensors, will provide scientists with data to extend more than 30 key data records that have been kept for decades by a cadre of Earth-observing satellites. These records, which range from the ozone layer and land cover to atmospheric temperatures and ice cover, are critical for understanding and predicting changes in global climate.

"NPP's observations of a wide range of interconnected Earth properties and processes will give us the big picture of how our planet changes," said Jim Gleason, NPP project scientist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

"That will help us improve our computer models that predict future environmental conditions," Gleason added. "Better predictions will let us make better decisions, whether it is as simple as taking an umbrella to work today or as complex as responding to a changing climate."

Meteorologists with the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) will incorporate NPP data into their weather prediction models to produce forecasts and warnings that will help emergency responders anticipate, monitor and react to many types of natural disasters.

"The timing of the NPP launch could hardly be more appropriate," said Louis W. Uccellini, director of NOAA's National Centers for Environmental Prediction in Camp Springs, Md. "With the many billion dollar weather disasters in 2011, NPP data is critical for accurate weather forecasts into the future."

Diamond Studs

Read more

Another satellite set to crash back to Earth

Well, you may have been lucky last time, but there's another satellite heading back to Earth, and this time it's much more likely that it'll land on your head.

Just a couple of weeks ago, the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS) plunged safely into the south Pacific Ocean, six years after completing its mission.

And, now, a German research satellite called ROSAT is set to make a similar return to Earth in the next two or three weeks. It's an X-ray telescope weighing nearly three tons, that's been orbiting since 1990.

However, communication was lost in 1999, and the German Aerospace Centre (DLR) has lost control. There were suggestions at the time that the satellite's failure was triggered by a hacking attack from Russia.

ROSAT's now orbiting at around 270km above the Earth, descending slowly.

It's unlikely to burn up entirely on re-entry, because of the large amount of ceramics and glass used in construction - and this could mean that many pieces of debris would be razor-sharp.

Diamond Studs

Read more

Smallest Full Moon of 2011 Occurs Tuesday

In my more than 40 years as an amateur astronomer, I've given countless numbers of people views of a variety of celestial objects through telescopes. And most people usually will tell me that the first object in the sky that attracted their attention as youngsters was the ever-changing moon.

Many may recall the attention given to our nearest neighbor in space in March when that months' full moon very nearly coincided with the lunar perigee — the point in the moon's orbit in which it is nearest to Earth. At a distance of 221,565 miles (356,575 kilometers), some media outlets even christened it the "Supermoon" of 2011 because of its unusual closeness.

But on Tuesday night (Oct. 11) we will have the astronomical opposite of a supermoon. At 10:06 p.m. EDT (0206 GMT), the moon will officially turn full, but it will be the smallest full moon of 2011.

The sky map of the smallest full moon of the year shows where it will appear on Tuesday night when it reaches its full phase.

Less than 10 hours after the October full moon peaks, at 8 a.m. EDT (1200 GMT) on Wednesday, the moon will arrive at the apogee of its orbit (the farthest point from Earth each month), which in October is a distance of 252,546 miles (406,434 km). That's only 154 miles (248 km) shy of the moon's absolute farthest point from Earth it can reach.

A puny full moon
Looking at the moon during Tuesday night, perhaps you will be struck by the noticeably small size of the moon's disk, even when it's near the horizon (which is supposed to make it appear larger as a result of the familiar "moon illusion" effect).

Last March, when the full moon was at perigee, some reported it as looking absolutely enormous as it emerged from above the eastern horizon. Not so on Tuesday, however, because the moon will very close to apogee, making this the smallest full moon of 2011.

By coincidence, October's full moon comes just days after the second annual International Observe the Moon Night on Oct. 8, in which skywatchers participated in hundreds of lunar observing events at skywatching parties around the world.

In fact, it will appear 12.3 percent smaller than the so-called supermoon of March 2011.

And because it is near its maximum distance from the Earth when full, the moon will also be traveling relatively slowly in its orbit. So both effects will combine to make its motion against the background stars especially small from night to night.

As a result, to the casual skywatcher it will seem that the moon is full for not just one night, but for three nights in a row: Monday, Tuesday and Wednesday. The defect of illumination on the moon's disk — or put another way, the dark sliver near the edge — will be very slight on Monday and Wednesday night.

Diamond Earring Studs

Read more

New Solar Orbiter Mission in Development by NASA

According to a recent press release from the space agency, NASA, in a joint effort with the European Space Agency (ESA), are planning to develop new instruments which will be used on a new mission to study our Sun. Launch is currently scheduled for 2017.

Known as the Solar Orbiter mission, the new spacecraft focus its instruments on the sun from a distance comparable to the orbit of the planet Mercury. At this unprecedented close proximity to the Sun of only about 21 million miles, the Solar Orbiter will be able to much more accurately analyze the sun and help to forecast space weather and solar flares.

With humanity’s ever increasing reliance on electricity and electronics for navigation and communication, solar flares and other disturbances from the sun are a much larger concern than in the past. The orbiter will give scientists an earlier warning of impending solar storm, and give planners on the ground more time to prepare.

“Solar Orbiter is an exciting mission that will improve our understanding of the sun and its environment,” said Barbara Giles, director for NASA’s Heliophysics Division in Washington. “This collaboration will create a new chapter in heliophysics research and continue a strong partnership with the international science community to complement future robotic and human exploration activities.”

The two $80 million instruments currently at the focus of the development are:

- The Solar Orbiter Heliospheric Imager (SoloHI), which will provide revolutionary measurements to pinpoint coronal mass ejections or CMEs. CMEs are space weather events with violent solar eruptions that travel from 60 miles per second to more than 2,000 miles per second with masses greater than a few billion tons. Russell Howard from the Naval Research Laboratory in Washington is principal investigator.

- The Heavy Ion Sensor (HIS)

Diamond Earring studs

Read more

ESA To Collaborate with NASA on Solar Science Mission

On October 4, 2011, the European Space Agency announced it's two next science missions, including Solar Orbiter, a spacecraft geared to study the powerful influence of the sun. Solar Orbiter will be an ESA-led mission, with strong NASA contributions managed from Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Solar Orbiter will venture closer to the Sun than any previous mission. The spacecraft will also carry advanced instrumentation that will help untangle how activity on the sun sends out radiation, particles and magnetic fields that can affect Earth's magnetic environment, causing aurora, or potentially damaging satellites, interfering with GPS communications or even Earth's electrical power grids.

"Solar Orbiter will use multiple gravity assists from Venus to tilt its orbit until it can see the poles of the Sun, and that's never been done before," said Chris St. Cyr, NASA's project scientist for Solar Orbiter at Goddard. "A full view of the solar poles will help us understand how the sun's magnetic poles reverse direction every 11 years, causing giant eruptions and flares, called space weather, that can affect the rest of the solar system."

Being so close to the sun also means that the Solar Orbiter will stay over a given area of the solar surface for a longer time, allowing the instruments to track the evolution of sunspots, active regions, coronal holes and other solar activity far longer than has been done before.

Solar Orbiter is also designed to make major breakthroughs in our understanding of how the sun generates and propels the flow of particles in which the planets are bathed, known as the solar wind. Solar activity and solar eruptions create strong perturbations in this wind, triggering spectacular auroral displays on Earth and other planets. Solar Orbiter will be close enough to the sun to both observe the details of how the solar wind is accelerated off the sun and to sample the wind shortly after it leaves the surface.

Diamond earring studs

Read more

Best Evidence Yet That Comets Delivered Water for Earth’s Oceans

The idea isn’t new that Earth’s oceans originated from comets bombarding our planet back in its early days. But astronomers have now found the best evidence yet for this scenario. The Herschel infrared space observatory detected that comet Hartley 2, which originates from the distant Kuiper Belt, contains water with the same chemical signature as Earth’s oceans.

“Our results with Herschel suggest that comets could have played a major role in bringing vast amounts of water to an early Earth,” said Dariusz Lis, senior research associate in physics at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and co-author of a new paper in the journal Nature, published online on Oct. 5. “This finding substantially expands the reservoir of Earth ocean-like water in the solar system to now include icy bodies originating in the Kuiper Belt.”

Previous looks at various other comets showed water content different from Earth’s oceans, with deuterium levels around twice that of Earth’s oceans, but those comets came from the Oort Cloud. Scientists theorized that if comets of this kind had collided with Earth, they could not have contributed more than a few percent of Earth’s water.

But Herschel’s observations of Hartley 2 are the first in-depth look at water in a comet from the Kuiper Belt — home of icy, rocky bodies that includes dwarf planets and innumerable comets — and it showed a surprising difference.

Using HIFI, a highly sensitive infrared spectrometer, Herschel peered into the comet’s coma, or thin, gaseous atmosphere, and found that Hartley 2 possessed half as much “heavy water” as other comets analyzed to date. In heavy water, one of the two normal hydrogen atoms has been replaced by the heavy hydrogen isotope known as deuterium. The ratio between heavy water and light, or regular, water in Hartley 2 is the same as the water on Earth’s surface.

“Comet Hartley’s deuterium-to-hydrogen ratio is almost exactly the same as the water in Earth’s oceans,” says Paul Hartogh, Max-Planck-Institut für Sonnensystemforschung, Katlenburg-Lindau, Germany, who led the international team of astronomers in this study.

The amount of heavy water in a comet is related to the environment where the comet formed, and by comparing the deuterium to hydrogen ratio found in the water in Earth’s oceans with that in extraterrestrial objects, astronomers were hoping to identify the origin of our water.

Diamond earring studs

Read more

Giant Asteroid Vesta Has Mountain Taller Than Anything on Earth

A NASA spacecraft orbiting the asteroid Vesta is revealing new details about the huge space rock's surface, including a massive mountain that rises taller than Mt. Everest on Earth.

NASA's Dawn probe has been circling Vesta since mid-July, when it arrived in the asteroid belt that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. So far, Dawn has beamed back surprising views of Vesta that revealed an enormous mountain in the asteroid's southern hemisphere and show that its crater surface is incredibly diverse place.

"We are learning many amazing things about Vesta, which we call the smallest terrestrial planet," Chris Russell, principal investigator of the Dawn mission, said in a statement. "Like Earth, Mars, Venus and Mercury, Vesta has ancient basaltic lava flows on the surface and a large iron core … The south polar mountain is larger than the big island of Hawaii, the largest mountain on Earth, as measured from the ocean floor. It is almost as high as the highest mountain in the solar system, the shield volcano Olympus Mons on Mars."

Vesta's giant southern mountain is nearly as tall as Olympus Mons, the largest mountain (and volcano) in the solar system, which soars about 15 miles (24 kilometers) above the surface. On Earth, the largest terrestrial volcano is Mauna Loa in Hawaii, which rises up 6 miles (9 km) high, including the portion of the volcano that extends underwater to the sea floor. Mount Everest, the tallest mountain above sea level on Earth, is a paltry 5.5 miles (8.85 km) tall.

Dawn also revealed that Vesta's surface appears to be much rougher than most asteroids in the main asteroid belt, which is a vast region full of space rocks between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter.

Additionally, preliminary estimates of crater age dates on Vesta suggest that regions in the southern hemisphere are far younger than in the north — with some areas in the southern hemisphere only about 1 to 2 billion years old.

The findings were presented today at the 2011 European Planetary Science Congress and the Division for Planetary Sciences Joint Meeting in Nantes, France.

Diamond stud

Read more

Private Space Race On to Launch US Astronauts for NASA

LONG BEACH, Calif. — Private space companies will launch American astronauts into orbit years before NASA is ready to do so on its own again, but the race to be the first commercial space taxi service is still far from won.

NASA's next crew-carrying rocket, the heavy-lift Space Launch System, will blast off on its first test flight in 2017 at the earliest, agency officials have said. But a handful of private companies say they're on schedule to begin lofting astronauts by 2015 — or perhaps even earlier.

"We believe we'll be ready in three years," said Gwynne Shotwell, president of Space Exploration Technologies Corporation (also known as SpaceX).

Encouraging private spaceflight
NASA is happy about the progress SpaceX and other companies seem to be making. The agency is not in competition with these firms, after all; rather, NASA is encouraging them to develop their capabilities, via its Commercial Crew Development (CCDev) program.

In the last several years, the agency has given money to a handful of firms — including SpaceX, Boeing, Sierra Nevada Corp. and Blue Origin — in two rounds of funding. The goal is to help establish American means of human transportation to space again, an ability the nation has lacked since the retirement of NASA's space shuttle fleet in July.

Currently, the United States is completely dependent on Russian Soyuz vehicles to ferry its astronauts to and from the International Space Station.

"Obviously, our focus is to close the gap," said Ed Mango, NASA's CCDev program manager. "We want an American-led system in order to get us back into low-Earth orbit, just like we've had for the last 30 years."

NASA's Space Launch System (SLS) isn't the answer for low-Earth orbit. The heavy-lift SLS is designed to launch the agency's crew-carrying Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle toward deep space destinations such as asteroids and Mars.

Read more

Another Dead Satellite to Crash Land in November

A defunct NASA satellite that fell to Earth last week sparked some worldwide buzz, but it's not the only spacecraft falling out of space.

The decommissioned German X-ray space observatory, called the Roentgen Satellite or ROSAT, will tumble to Earth sometime in early November, but it's still too early to pinpoint exactly when and where debris from the satellite will land, according to officials at the German Aerospace Center.

The 2.4-ton spacecraft's orbit extends from the latitudes of 53 degrees north and south, which means the satellite could fall anywhere over a huge swath of the planet — stretching from Canada to South America, German Aerospace officials said. [6 Biggest Uncontrolled Spacecraft Falls From Space]

The latest estimates suggest that up to 30 large pieces of the satellite could survive the intense and scorching journey through Earth's atmosphere. In all, about 1.6 tons of the satellite components could reach the surface of the Earth, according to German Aerospace officials.

The re-entry will be similar to NASA's 6-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite (UARS), which plunged into the southern Pacific Ocean on Saturday (Sept. 24).

ROSAT coming home

In 1998, ROSAT's star tracker failed, which caused its onboard camera to be pointed directly at the sun. The event permanently damaged the spacecraft and ROSAT was officially decommissioned in February 1999.

Scientists are actively tracking the dead satellite, but many of the details will remain uncertain until roughly two hours before it hits Earth.

"It is not possible to accurately predict ROSAT's re-entry," Heiner Klinkrad, head of the Space Debris Office at the European Space Agency, said in a webcast posted on the German Aerospace Center's website. "The uncertainty will decrease as the moment of re-entry approaches. It will not be possible to make any kind of reliable forecast about where the satellite will actually come down until about one or two hours before the fact."

It will, however, be possible to rule out certain geographical regions from the potential drop zone about a day in advance, Klinkrad said. The largest piece of debris is expected to be the telescope's heat resistant mirror.

"Generally speaking, whenever a satellite re-enters the atmosphere, about 20 to 40 percent of its mass actually reaches the Earth’s surface," Klinkrad said. "In the case of ROSAT, this figure could be slightly higher because one of its characteristic features is that it carries heat-resistant mirror structures on board." [Related: Falling Satellites & Space Junk: Q&A with Orbital Debris Expert]

Diamond stud

Read more

NASA's Chandra Finds Nearest Pair of Supermassive Black Holes

Astronomers using NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory discovered the first pair of supermassive black holes in a spiral galaxy similar to the Milky Way. Approximately 160 million light years from Earth, the pair is the nearest known such phenomenon.

The black holes are located near the center of the spiral galaxy NGC 3393. Separated by only 490 light years, the black holes are likely the remnant of a merger of two galaxies of unequal mass a billion or more years ago.

"If this galaxy wasn't so close, we'd have no chance of separating the two black holes the way we have," said Pepi Fabbiano of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics (CfA) in Cambridge, Mass., who led the study that appears in this week's online issue of the journal Nature. "Since this galaxy was right under our noses by cosmic standards, it makes us wonder how many of these black hole pairs we've been missing."

Previous observations in X-rays and at other wavelengths indicated that a single supermassive black hole existed in the center of NGC 3393. However, a long look by Chandra allowed the researchers to detect and separate the dual black holes. Both black holes are actively growing and emitting X-rays as gas falls towards them and becomes hotter.

When two equal-sized spiral galaxies merge, astronomers think it should result in the formation of a black hole pair and a galaxy with a disrupted appearance and intense star formation. A well-known example is the pair of supermassive black holes in NGC 6240, which is located about 330 million light years from Earth.

However, NGC 3393 is a well-organized spiral galaxy, and its central bulge is dominated by old stars. These are unusual properties for a galaxy containing a pair of black holes. Instead, NGC 3393 may be the first known instance where the merger of a large galaxy and a much smaller one, dubbed a "minor merger" by scientists, has resulted in the formation of a pair of supermassive black holes. In fact, some theories say that minor mergers should be the most common way for black hole pairs to form, but good candidates have been difficult to find because the merged galaxy is expected to look so typical.

"The two galaxies have merged without a trace of the earlier collision, apart from the two black holes," said co-author Junfeng Wang, also from CfA. "If there was a mismatch in size between the two galaxies it wouldn't be a surprise for the bigger one to survive unscathed."

If this was a minor merger, the black hole in the smaller galaxy should have had a smaller mass than the other black hole before their host galaxies started to collide. Good estimates of the masses of both black holes are not yet available to test this idea, although the observations do show that both black holes are more massive than about a million suns. Assuming a minor merger occurred, the black holes should eventually merge after about a billion years.

Both of the supermassive black holes are heavily obscured by dust and gas, which makes them difficult to observe in optical light. Because X-rays are more energetic, they can penetrate this obscuring material. Chandra's X-ray spectra show clear signatures of a pair of supermassive black holes.

Read more

NASA Plans High-Speed Space Communications System

NASA is working on a laser-based optical communications system that will drastically reduce the time it takes to transmit multimedia from space, with data moving at rates up to 100 times faster than current systems.

The space agency aims to show off a high-speed communications system through a Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) in 2016. LCRD is one of three next-generation space technologies NASA is working on as part of its plans to create more sophisticated solutions to meet goals for the future of its space program.

Now that NASA has retired its space shuttle program, the agency aims to send manned spacecraft beyond low-Earth orbit and push the boundaries of current space communications, among other aims.

To the latter point, while it currently takes 90 minutes to transmit high-resolution images from Mars, LCRD will allow for actual streaming of high-definition video from distances beyond the moon, according to the space agency.

NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center came up the idea for the LCRD, which is now being developed by a cross-organizational team that also includes NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and the Lincoln Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. NASA will fly the system into space on a commercial communications satellite developed by Space Systems/Loral.

Dave Israel, who is leading the team developing the network, compared current NASA space communications capability to dial-up Internet speeds. Just as the home Internet user "hit the wall" with that technology, he said in a statement that NASA "is approaching the limit of what its existing communications network can handle."

LCRD, on the other hand, will be more comparable to a land-based optical network such as FIOS from Verizon, Israel added.

Read more

Star Blasts Planet With X-rays

A nearby star is pummeling a companion planet with a barrage of X-rays 100,000 times more intense than the Earth receives from the sun.

New data from NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory and the European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope suggest that high-energy radiation is evaporating about 5 million tons of matter from the planet every second. This result gives insight into the difficult survival path for some planets.

The planet, known as CoRoT-2b, has a mass about three times that of Jupiter -- 1,000 times that of Earth -- and orbits its parent star, CoRoT-2a at a distance roughly 10 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

The CoRoT-2 star and planet -- so named because the French Space Agency’s Convection, Rotation and planetary Transits, or CoRoT, satellite discovered them in 2008 -- is a relatively nearby neighbor of the solar system at a distance of 880 light years.

"This planet is being absolutely fried by its star," said Sebastian Schroeter of the University of Hamburg in Germany. "What may be even stranger is that this planet may be affecting the behavior of the star that is blasting it."

According to optical and X-ray data, the CoRoT-2 system is estimated to be between about 100 million and 300 million years old, meaning that the star is fully formed. The Chandra observations show that CoRoT-2a is a very active star, with bright X-ray emission produced by powerful, turbulent magnetic fields. Such strong activity is usually found in much younger stars.

Read more

Huge UARS Satellite's Fall From Space Captivates Skywatchers, Sparks Hoaxes

Skywatchers around the world were hoping for some unique views overnight Friday (Sept. 23), as a NASA satellite plunged to Earth on its final scorching journey through the atmosphere.

The 6.5-ton Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, or UARS, most likely pierced through Earth's atmospheric shield within 20 minutes of 12:16 a.m. EDT Saturday (0416 GMT), according to NASA officials. The agency is unable to confirm the precise time and location of the satellite's re-entry, but orbital debris scientists said that the satellite would have been flying over the vast Pacific Ocean at the time, well away from the North American coastline.

Throughout the night, rumors circulated that the defunct satellite crashed over Alberta, Canada, raining debris on the small town of Okotoks, which lies south of Calgary. Local authorities who were called to investigate later called the claims a hoax. [6 Biggest Spacecraft to Fall Uncontrolled From Space]

Read more

Landing of Dead NASA Satellite 'Too Early to Predict': NASA

A dead 6.5 ton NASA UARS satellite would make its re-entry into Earth's atmosphere on Friday, Sept. 23, bringing along a chance to watch a spectacular sky show. But NASA is still not sure where on Earth the satellite would land.

"It is still too early to predict the time and location of re-entry with any more certainty, but predictions will become more refined in the next 24 to 48 hours," National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said in a statement.

NASA added that the debris from the defunct satellite would not cause harm to humans.

NASA conducted a detailed re-entry risk assessment for UARS in 2002 and it showed that the debris from UARS is not harmful to human beings. Following are the excerpts of the study:

* Number of potentially hazardous objects expected to survive: 26

* Total mass of objects expected to survive: 532 kg

* Estimated human casualty risk (updated to 2011): About 1 in 3200

Read more

Tonnes of satellite space junk to pelt earth on weekend

Look out for a six-tonne satellite plummeting from the sky this weekend.

NASA scientists are doing their best to predict exactly when and where it will fall.

For now, they believe the earliest it will hit is Friday (NZ time), while the latest is Sunday.

Scientists put the odds of it hitting someone at 1-in-3200.

Over the years, space debris has fallen into the ocean or empty spaces.

If you do come across what you think may be a satellite piece, NASA doesn't want you to pick it up.

Or sell it on eBay.

As US government-owned property, it should be returned to its rightful owner – by being reported to police.

The 20-year-old research satellite is expected to break into more than 100 pieces as it enters the atmosphere, most of it burning up, the New Zealand Herald reports.

Twenty-six of the heaviest metal parts are expected to reach Earth, the biggest chunk weighing about 136 kilograms. The debris could be scattered over an area about 800 kilometres long.

Read more

Origin of Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Remains a Mystery

PASADENA, Calif. -- Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) mission indicate the family of asteroids some believed was responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs is not likely the culprit, keeping open the case on one of Earth's greatest mysteries.

While scientists are confident a large asteroid crashed into Earth approximately 65 million years ago, leading to the extinction of dinosaurs and some other life forms on our planet, they do not know exactly where the asteroid came from or how it made its way to Earth. A 2007 study using visible-light data from ground-based telescopes first suggested the remnant of a huge asteroid, known as Baptistina, as a possible suspect.

According to that theory, Baptistina crashed into another asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter about 160 million years ago. The collision sent shattered pieces as big as mountains flying. One of those pieces was believed to have impacted Earth, causing the dinosaurs' extinction.

Since this scenario was first proposed, evidence developed that the so-called Baptistina family of asteroids was not the responsible party. With the new infrared observations from WISE, astronomers say Baptistina may finally be ruled out.

"As a result of the WISE science team's investigation, the demise of the dinosaurs remains in the cold case files," said Lindley Johnson, program executive for the Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "The original calculations with visible light estimated the size and reflectivity of the Baptistina family members, leading to estimates of their age, but we now know those estimates were off. With infrared light, WISE was able to get a more accurate estimate, which throws the timing of the Baptistina theory into question."

WISE surveyed the entire celestial sky twice in infrared light from January 2010 to February 2011. The asteroid-hunting portion of the mission, called NEOWISE, used the data to catalogue more than 157,000 asteroids in the main belt and discovered more than 33,000 new ones.

Visible light reflects off an asteroid. Without knowing how reflective the surface of the asteroid is, it's hard to accurately establish size. Infrared observations allow a more accurate size estimate. They detect infrared light coming from the asteroid itself, which is related to the body's temperature and size. Once the size is known, the object's reflectivity can be re-calculated by combining infrared with visible-light data.

The NEOWISE team measured the reflectivity and the size of about 120,000 asteroids in the main belt, including 1,056 members of the Baptistina family. The scientists calculated the original parent Baptistina asteroid actually broke up closer to 80 million years ago, half as long as originally proposed.

This calculation was possible because the size and reflectivity of the asteroid family members indicate how much time would have been required to reach their current locations -- larger asteroids would not disperse in their orbits as fast as smaller ones. The results revealed a chunk of the original Baptistina asteroid needed to hit Earth in less time than previously believed, in just about 15 million years, to cause the extinction of the dinosaurs.

"This doesn't give the remnants from the collision very much time to move into a resonance spot, and get flung down to Earth 65 million years ago," said Amy Mainzer, a co-author of a new study appearing in the Astrophysical Journal and the principal investigator of NEOWISE at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena. Calif. "This process is thought to normally take many tens of millions of years." Resonances are areas in the main belt where gravity nudges from Jupiter and Saturn can act like a pinball machine to fling asteroids out of the main belt and into the region near Earth.

Read more

NASA satellite expected to crash to Earth in days

The sky is not falling. A 12,500-pound NASA satellite the size of a school bus is, though.

It's the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite, and it's tumbling in orbit and succumbing to Earth's gravity. It will crash to the surface Friday.

Or maybe Thursday. Or Saturday.

Out-of-control crashing satellites don't lend themselves to exact estimates even for the precision-minded folks at NASA. The uncertainty about the "when" makes the "where" all the trickier, because a small change in the timing of the re-entry translates into thousands of miles of difference in the crash site.

As of the moment, NASA says the 35-foot-long satellite will crash somewhere between 57 degrees north latitude and 57 degrees south latitude - a projected crash zone that covers most of the planet, and particularly the inhabited parts. In this hemisphere, that includes everyone living between northern Newfoundland and the frigid ocean beyond the last point of land in South America.

Polar bears and Antarctic scientists are safe.

It's the biggest piece of NASA space junk to fall to Earth in more than 30 years. It should create a light show. The satellite will partially burn up during re-entry, and, by NASA's calculation, break into about 100 pieces, creating fireballs that should be visible even in daytime.

An estimated 26 of those pieces will survive the re-entry burn and will spray themselves in a linear debris field 500 miles long. The largest chunk should weigh about 300 pounds.

As the Friday-ish crash gets closer, NASA will refine its estimate of timing and location, but the fudge factor will remain high.

"There are too many variations on solar activity which affect the atmosphere, the drag on the vehicle," said Nicholas Johnson, chief scientist for orbital debris at NASA.

The good news is that the satellite will probably splatter into the open ocean, because Earth is a water planet. And humans, for all their sprawl, occupy a very limited portion of its surface.

Read more

Satellite falls faster than forecast

NASA's Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite is now expected to fall to Earth sometime between Sept. 23 and 25, orbital experts reported today.

That's toward the early end of the original projections for UARS' fiery descent: Last week, when NASA announced that the long-defunct, six-ton satellite would crash, the time frame was given as late September to early October. That wide window of possibilities was due to the uncertainties over atmospheric conditions. Now the picture is becoming clearer, said Nicholas Johnson, head of NASA's Orbital Debris Program Office at Johnson Space Center in Texas.

"The sun has become very active since the beginning of this week, and it's accelerating the prediction," he told me.

Higher solar activity heats and expands the upper atmosphere, creating more drag for satellites in decaying orbits. The increased drag pulls down those satellites more quickly — and that's what's behind the earlier prediction.

NASA's UARS status page said the bus-sized satellite's orbit was 143 by 158 miles (230 by 255 kilometers) as of today, compared with 155 by 174 miles (250 by 280 kilometers) a week ago. Johnson said the status page would be updated again on Friday.

Read more

Behind the Scenes of NASA’s Upcoming MMORPG

These days, nearly every game company is trying to get their fingers in the MMORPG (Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Game) pie. Given the past successes of games like Ultima Online and Everquest and the current success of games like EVE Online and World of Warcraft, it’s no surprise that companies want try to create the next “killer app” of the MMORPG market.

One such game company that will be launching a new game is the company partnered with NASA to develop a space-based MMORPG for the space agency. Having raised nearly $40,000 in pledged funding via kickstarter, the company aims to start beta testing their offering some time next year.

So what does this new MMORPG do differently that will attract and retain paying customers? What makes Astronaut: Moon, Mars and Beyond different from say, EVE Online, Star Trek Online, or Star Wars Galaxies?

When a game developer becomes associated with a “big-name” property, expectations from both fans and developers can be quite high. Despite securing a license to create a game based on the Stargate franchise, a game development company never released the game and eventually ended up in bankruptcy. Star Trek Online, despite being one of the most anticipated MMORPG franchises went through two developers and when finally released had less than stellar sales. Of course, many fans of MMORPG’s are all too familiar with the myriad issues that plagued Star Wars Galaxies.

Read More