An Asteroid Signal The Earth In Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula

The mass destruction of dinosaurs by a huge asteroid was made worse because it destroyed the fragile food chain,lessons that recent man should learn, a study warned.More than 65million years ago a mountain-sized asteroid plunged into the earth in Mexico wiping out many species counting the dinosaurs and ending the Cretaceous Period of Earthhistory. The study found the food chain was previously under sprain before the asteroid hit and could not survive with the calamity as plant life died off.

They warned man's utilization of the earth possessions could place humanity in the same peril as we stress the planet with mono crops and drive to disappearance animals, plant life and marine species. Scientists examining the brunt zone of the now-buried Chicxulub cavern on the coast of Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula said it had wide scattering knock on effects.

 

NASA Developed Orion spaceship- Test Flight 2014

Orion space capsule life form developed to fly astronauts to asteroids, the moon and finally to Mars arrived at the Kennedy Space Center in Florida for a 2014 test air travel. The spacecraft, built by Lockheed-Martin, is embattled for launch aboard an unmanned Delta 4 Heavy rocket as of Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, contiguous to the NASA spaceport.

A second test air travel in 2017 using NASA's planned huge-lift Space Launch System rocket is planned to put an unmanned Orion capsule around the light moon. The third test air travel, targeted for 2021, is probable to include astronauts.

 By 2025, NASA intends to send astronauts to explore a near Earth asteroid and then top on to Mars in the 2030s.Humans have not fly beyond a few hundred miles over Earth since 1972 when the Apollo missions to the moon finished. With the departure of the space shuttle last summer, NASA is dependent on Russia to fly crews to the space station, a $100 billion project of 15 countries that orbits about 240 miles over the planet.

The Asteroid 2012 TC4 by NASA -Earth

The great NASA scientists have announced that an asteroid thought to be as big as a house is predictable to pass by Earth today without any risk of creation impact. The asteroid, named 2012 TC4 by NASA, will obtain as close as 59,000 miles away as of Earth when it reaches its closest space to the planet. The asteroid will be much nearer than the moon as this is only one-fourth of its path around Earth. Scientists have branded about the asteroid for over a week, but quickly determined it posed no risk for bang and would not cause any scratch.

The asteroid is predictable to be 56 feet in width. Despite being the extent of a house, according to Twitter, NASA scientists regard as the asteroid to be small. “Small asteroid 2012 TC4 will securely pass Earth Oct. 12 at just .25 the reserve to our moon’s orbit,” they supposed on Twitter this week. While the moon’s orbit is typically around 238,000 miles, 2012 TC4 will get much quicker at less than 60,000 miles present from Earth. Even though 2012 TC4 will get close, even if it hit Earth it would not be measured a main threat to the planet.

NASA Dawn Spacecraft Returns Close-Up Image of Asteroid Vesta

NASA's Dawn spacecraft has returned the first close-up image after beginning its orbit around the giant asteroid Vesta. On Friday, July 15, Dawn became the first probe to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

The image taken for navigation purposes shows Vesta in greater detail than ever before. When Vesta captured Dawn into its orbit, there were approximately 9,900 miles (16,000 kilometers) between the spacecraft and asteroid. Engineers estimate the orbit capture took place at 10 p.m. PDT Friday, July 15 (1 a.m. EDT Saturday, July 16).

Vesta is 330 miles (530 kilometers) in diameter and the second most massive object in the asteroid belt. Ground- and space-based telescopes have obtained images of Vesta for about two centuries, but they have not been able to see much detail on its surface. "We are beginning the study of arguably the oldest extant primordial surface in the solar system," said Dawn principal investigator Christopher Russell from the University of California, Los Angeles. "This region of space has been ignored for far too long. So far, the images received to date reveal a complex surface that seems to have preserved some of the earliest events in Vesta's history, as well as logging the onslaught that Vesta has suffered in the intervening eons."

NASA's Swift And Hubble Probe Asteroid Collision Debris

Late last year, astronomers noticed an asteroid named Scheila had unexpectedly brightened, and it was sporting short-lived plumes. Data from NASA's Swift satellite and Hubble Space Telescope showed these changes likely occurred after Scheila was struck by a much smaller asteroid. "Collisions between asteroids create rock fragments, from fine dust to huge boulders, that impact planets and their moons," said Dennis Bodewits, an astronomer at the University of Maryland in College Park and lead author of the Swift study. "Yet this is the first time we've been able to catch one just weeks after the smash-up, long before the evidence fades away."

Asteroids are rocky fragments thought to be debris from the formation and evolution of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago. Millions of them orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. Scheila is approximately 70 miles across and orbits the sun every five years. "The Hubble data are most simply explained by the impact, at 11,000 mph, of a previously unknown asteroid about 100 feet in diameter," said Hubble team leader David Jewitt at the University of California in Los Angeles. Hubble did not see any discrete collision fragments, unlike its 2009 observations of P/2010 A2, the first identified asteroid collision.

The studies will appear in the May 20 edition of The Astrophysical Journal Letters and are available online. Astronomers have known for decades that comets contain icy material that erupts when warmed by the sun. They regarded asteroids as inactive rocks whose destinies, surfaces, shapes and sizes were determined by mutual impacts. However, this simple picture has grown more complex over the past few years. During certain parts of their orbits, some objects, once categorized as asteroids, clearly develop comet-like features that can last for many months. Others display much shorter outbursts. Icy materials may be exposed occasionally, either by internal geological processes or by an external one, such as an impact.

NASA Discovers Asteroid Delivered Assortment of Meteorites

An international team of scientists studying remnants of an asteroid that crashed into the Nubian Desert in October 2008 discovered it contained at least 10 different types of meteorites. Some of them contained chemicals that form the building blocks of life on Earth, and those chemicals were spread through all parts of the asteroid by collisions. Chemists at Stanford University found that different meteorite types share the same distinct fingerprint of polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). These complex organic molecules are distributed throughout the galaxy and form on Earth from incomplete combustion.

A research team from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., found amino acids in strongly heated fragments of the asteroid, where all such molecules should have been destroyed. Both PAHs and amino acids are considered building blocks of life. Before landing on Earth, the 13-foot asteroid was detected by a telescope from the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey based at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Hours prior to its demise, astronomers and scientists around the world tracked and scanned the asteroid. It was the first time a celestial object was observed prior to entering Earth's atmosphere.

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., created a search grid and impact target area. The data helped Peter Jenniskens, an astronomer at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., and the SETI Institute of Mountain View, Calif., guide a recovery team from the University of Khartoum in Sudan to search the desert landscape. During four expeditions, approximately 150 students recovered nearly 600 meteorite fragments weighing a total of more than 23 pounds. "Right from the start, the students were surprised to find so much diversity in meteorite texture and hue," said Muawia Shaddad, an astronomer at the University of Khartoum, who led the search effort. "We estimate the asteroid initially weighed about 59 tons, of which about 86 pounds survived the explosion high in the atmosphere."

Hayabusa Spacecraft Returns Asteroid Artifacts From Space

Scientists involved with the first space mission attempting to sample asteroid surface material and return to Earth, have confirmed presence of particles collected from a small container aboard the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa spacecraft. On June 13, 2010, Hayabusa visited the near-Earth asteroid, called Itokawa. The spacecraft landed at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, concluding a remarkable mission of exploration one in which NASA scientists and engineers played a contributing role. Initial research from an electron microscope reveals about 1500 grains identified as rocky particles, and judged to be of extraterrestrial origin from the asteroid. Their size is mostly less than 10 micrometers. Handling these grains requires very special skills and techniques.

JAXA is developing the necessary handling techniques and preparing the associated equipment for further analyses. Launched May 9, 2003, from the Kagoshima Space Center, Uchinoura, Japan, Hayabusa was designed as a flying testbed. Its mission: to research several new engineering technologies necessary for returning planetary samples to Earth for further study. With Hayabusa, JAXA scientists and engineers hoped to obtain detailed information on electrical propulsion and autonomous navigation, as well as an asteroid sampler and sample reentry capsule. The 510-kilogram (950-pound) Hayabusa spacecraft rendezvoused with asteroid Itokawa in September 2005. Over the next two-and-a-half months, the spacecraft made up-close and personal scientific observations of the asteroid's shape, terrain, surface altitude distribution, mineral composition, gravity, and the way it reflected the sun's rays.

On Nov. 25 of that year, Hayabusa briefly touched down on the surface of Itokawa. That was only the second time in history a spacecraft descended to the surface of an asteroid. The spacecraft departed Itokawa in January 2007. A team of Japanese and American navigators guided Hayabusa on the final leg of its journey. Together, they calculated the final trajectory correction maneuvers Hayabusa's ion propulsion system had to perform for a successful homecoming. To obtain the data they needed, the navigation team frequently called upon JAXA's tracking stations in Japan, as well as those of NASA's Deep Space Network, which has antennas at Goldstone, in California's Mojave Desert; near Madrid, Spain; and near Canberra, Australia. In addition, the stations provided mission planners with near continuous communications with the spacecraft to keep them informed on spacecraft health.

Two Asteroids to Pass by Earth Wednesday

Two asteroids, several meters in diameter and in unrelated orbits, will pass within the moon's distance of Earth on Wednesday, Sept. 8.Both asteroids should be observable near closest approach to Earth with moderate-sized amateur telescopes. Neither of these objects has a chance of hitting Earth. A 10-meter-sized near-Earth asteroid from the undiscovered population of about 50 million would be expected to pass almost daily within a lunar distance, and one might strike Earth's atmosphere about every 10 years on average. The Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Ariz., discovered both objects on the morning of Sunday, Sept. 5, during a routine monitoring of the skies.

The Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass., first received the observations Sunday morning, determined preliminary orbits and concluded that both objects would pass within the distance of the moon about three days after their discovery. Near-Earth asteroid 2010 RX30 is estimated to be 32 to 65 feet (10 to 20 meters) in size and will pass within 0.6 lunar distances of Earth (about 154,000 miles, or 248,000 kilometers) at 2:51 a.m. PDT (5:51 a.m. EDT) Wednesday. The second object, 2010 RF12, estimated to be 20 to 46 feet (6 to 14 meters) in size, will pass within 0.2 lunar distances (about 49,088 miles or 79,000 kilometers) a few hours later at 2:12 p.m. PDT (5:12 pm EDT). 

NASA's LRO Reveals 'Incredible Shrinking Moon'

Newly discovered cliffs in the lunar crust indicate the moon shrank globally in the geologically recent past and might still be shrinking today, according to a team analyzing new images from NASA's Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) spacecraft. The results provide important clues to the moon's recent geologic and tectonic evolution. The moon formed in a chaotic environment of intense bombardment by asteroids and meteors. These collisions, along with the decay of radioactive elements, made the moon hot. The moon cooled off as it aged, and scientists have long thought the moon shrank over time as it cooled, especially in its early history.

The new research reveals relatively recent tectonic activity connected to the long-lived cooling and associated contraction of the lunar interior. "We estimate these cliffs, called lobate scarps, formed less than a billion years ago, and they could be as young as a hundred million years," said Dr. Thomas Watters of the Center for Earth and Planetary Studies at the Smithsonian's National Air and Space Museum, Washington. While ancient in human terms, it is less than 25 percent of the moon's current age of more than four billion years. "Based on the size of the scarps, we estimate the distance between the moon's center and its surface shrank by about 300 feet," said Watters, lead author of a paper on this research appearing in Science August 20.

"These exciting results highlight the importance of global observations for understanding global processes," said Dr. John Keller, Deputy Project Scientist for LRO at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md. "As the LRO mission continues in to a new phase, with emphasis on science measurements, our ability to create inventories of lunar geologic features will be a powerful tool for understanding the history of the moon and the solar system." The scarps are relatively small; the largest is about 300 feet high and extends for several miles or so, but typical lengths are shorter and heights are more in the tens of yards (meters) range. The team believes they are among the freshest features on the moon, in part because they cut across small craters.

Congress propose Commission to Study Asteroid Impact danger

Lawmakers are paying new notice to how best to shield Earth from a bad day receiving whacked by an asteroid or comet that has our planet in its cross hairs. A new bill introduced to Congress proposes establish a government-sponsored commission to study the danger of a major space rock collision with Earth and how ready we are a country and a planet to face such a danger. There is a growing choir of concern concerning Near Earth Objects, or NEOs spot them and dealing with any Earth intimidating gatecrashers.

While the annual chance of the Earth being struck by a huge asteroid or comet is small, the consequences of such a collision are so disastrous that it is prudent to appraise the nature of the threat and prepare to contract with it, experts say. Last month, agent Dana Rohrabacher introduced the new bill before Congress, H.R. 5587, titled: "To establish a United States Commission on Planetary protection and for other purposes." The bill has been referred to the group on Science and Technology, on which Rohrabacher serves as a member. Both sides of the aisle are now looking at the commission idea.

"We require taking the next step, NEO search and tracking program continues to move forward, but nobody is taking blame for protection. I am surer than ever in our ability to identify potential threats from asteroids and comets, but it is critical to the future of humanity that we develop the capabilities to defend ourselves from those threats." Rohrabacher said that the Commission on Planetary Defense that he is proposing will review our planetary readiness for a force event and make recommendations on how to develop a sufficient response system to those threats.

Hayabusa Asteroid Mission Comes Home

The Hayabusa capsule and bus entered the Earth's atmosphere over Woomera, Australia, on June 13 at 11:21 p.m. local time. From the perspective of NASA's DC-8 airborne observation team, the capsule moved below and slightly ahead of the bus and stayed clear of the spectacular breakup of the bus.

After the bus had disintegrated, the capsule continued to create a wake, before reaching peak heating and then fading gradually. That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth.

The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers (1.25 billion miles) since its launch in May 2003. With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, JAXA concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers played a contributing role.
 

NASA Helps in Upcoming Asteroid Mission Homecoming

The space and astronomy worlds have June 13 circled on the calendar. That's when the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) expects the sample return capsule of the agency's technology demonstrator spacecraft, Hayabusa, to boomerang back to Earth. The capsule, along with its mother ship, visited a near-Earth asteroid, Itokawa, five years ago and has logged about 2 billion kilometers since its launch in May 2003.

With the return of the Hayabusa capsule, targeted for June 13 at Australia's remote Woomera Test Range in South Australia, JAXA will have concluded a remarkable mission of exploration -- one in which NASA scientists and engineers are playing a contributing role.

"Hayabusa will be the first space mission to have made physical contact with an asteroid and returned to Earth," said Tommy Thompson, NASA's Hayabusa project manager from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The mission and its team have faced and overcome several challenges over the past seven years. This round-trip journey is a significant space achievement and one which NASA is proud to be part of."

Asteroid Probe Tweak Path Back to Earth

A Japanese asteroid probe is a step closer to coming home – possibly with a piece of space rock on board – after firing its thruster to stay on course for a plan June 13 landing.The probe, called Hayabusa, start by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency in May 2003, is returning from the nearby asteroid 25143 Itokawa, where it land and tried to collect samples.

The beleaguered probe reached the asteroid in 2005, but has suffered a number of malfunctions during flight that have extended its mission nearly three years longer than planned.Mission scientists are not even sure if Hayabusa managed to collect samples on Itokawa but they still hope the explore managed to problem at least some asteroid dust and pebbles inside a collection canister.

The 950-pound (430-kg) spacecraft's sample return capsule is scheduled to land back on Earth June 13 at the Woomera Test Range in the waste of South Australia. In the recent maneuver JAXA was able to shift the probe's path from Earth's outer edge toward its intended landing site in Australia. The spacecraft is currently about 3.6 million kilometers away from Earth.The move went successfully, which was a nice break for the spacecraft after the lengthy string of engineering difficulties it has suffered since leaving its asteroid aim.