Free Republic

It is frustrating, at a time when other nations are in ascendancy in space, that the administration of U.S. President Barack Obama seems committed to undermining the nation's own solar system exploration program. The Obama administration cut NASA's planetary-sciences budget by 20 percent in 2013. It has taken the National Research Council's (NRC) recommendations for prioritizing planetary investments in bad economic times and turned those recommendations upside down. The administration continues to favor large, directed projects at the expense of programs and missions that are openly competed.

Discretionary Spending--Option 11 Eliminate Human Space Exploration Programs The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Human Exploration and Operations programs focus on developing systems and capabilities required to explore deep space while continuing operations in low- Earth orbit. The exploration programs fund research and development of the next generation of systems for deep space exploration and provide technical and financial support to the commercial space industry. Complementing those efforts, NASA's space operations programs involve operating in low-Earth orbit, most notably using the International Space Station, as well as providing space communications capabilities. This option would terminate NASA's human space exploration...

| The discovery of mysterious rocks on the brightest large asteroid in the solar system, Vesta, deepens the mystery surrounding the huge object's origins, researchers say. Vesta is the second-largest asteroid in the solar system. The 330-mile-wide (530-kilometer) protoplanet is also the brightest large asteroid, with a surface about three times more luminous than Earth's moon.

NEW YORK — Members of the United Nations met with distinguished astronauts and cosmonauts this week in New York to begin implementing the first-ever international contingency plan for defending Earth against catastrophic asteroid strikes. Six of the space travelers involved in these U.N. discussions discussed the asteroid defense effort Friday (Oct. 25) in a news conference hosted by astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson at the American Museum of Natural History. Their goal: to drive home the very-real threats posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs), or asteroids traveling within the radius of Earth's orbit with the sun. You can see a video of...

I was prompted to post this asteroid database with over 600,000 asteroids that are plotted on this amazing visualization program in response to viewing sunkenciv's repost of the article originally posted February, 26, 2011 by LibWhacker. Record number of Near Earth asteroids discovered Urban Astronomer ^ | 2/26/11 | Allen Versfeld Posted on Saturday, February 26, 2011 4:59:15 PM by LibWhacker Reposted by Sunkenciv October 27, 2013 Free Republic:October 27, 2013:Record number of Near Earth Asteroids DiscoveredAsterank is a scientific and economic database of over 600,000 asteroids. We've collected, computed, or inferred important data such as asteroid mass and composition...

60 Minutes news program ran a segment entitled "Dangerous game of 'cosmic roulette'?" This segment highlighted the NASA program aimed at finding and tracking asteroids whose orbits cross Earth's thus placing them on a collision course with us. The NASA administrators at first bragged about how they knew with confidence about 95% of all the "major" threats to our planet and were currently tracking these threats. These administrators were clearly trying to convey to the public an attitude of "don't worry, we have it all under control." Yet as with most statements by government bureaucrats the devil is in the...

Albert Einstein. George Takei. Jerry Garcia. All of those men and many others have had an asteroid named after them. And if William Lowell Putnam III, trustee of Lowell Observatory, has his way, another name will be added to that list: Trayvon Martin. The retired broadcast executive, alpinist, author and Flagstaff resident believes that Martin has not received justice.

Russia and the United States will work together to improve protection against meteorites and other space threats, Russia’s emergencies minister said on Tuesday following a joint Russia-US working group meeting in Washington. “We have decided that the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and Russia's Emergencies Ministry will work together to develop systems to protect people and territory from cosmic impacts,” Russia’s Emergencies Minister Vladimir Puchkov told journalists. The meeting also covered other kinds of natural emergencies, such as recent years' extreme weather in Russia and United States, but it was cooperation to counter space threats that stole the limelight...

An asteroid less than a mile in diameter could hold more than $20 trillion in industrial and precious metals Resources on Earth are limited. Our planet was born with a fixed amount of water, hydrocarbons, nitrogen, and industrial and precious metals. And we're collecting, processing, and eventually throwing out those resources at an alarming rate: A United Nations report on resource depletion says that between 1980 and 2008 natural resources per capita declined by 20 percent in the United States, 33 percent in South Africa, 25 percent in Brazil, and 17 percent in China. For now, only protection and better...

As Uranus speeds in its orbit in the solar system, there are three large space rocks that are in lockstep with the gas giant, according to new simulations. Two of them are wobbling in unstable “horseshoe” orbits near Uranus, while the third is in a more reliable Trojan orbit that is always 60 degrees in front of the planet. The largest of this small group is the asteroid Crantor, which is 44 miles (70 kilometers) wide. Its horseshoe orbit, and that of companion 2010 EU65, means the space rocks seesaw between being close to Uranus and further away. They should...

<p>PASADENA, Calif. (AP) — Surrounded by engineers, NASA chief Charles Bolden inspected a prototype spacecraft engine that could power an audacious mission to lasso an asteroid and tow it closer to Earth for astronauts to explore.</p> <p>Bolden checked on the progress Thursday a month after the Obama administration unveiled its 2014 budget that proposes $105 million to jumpstart the mission, which may eventually cost more than $2.6 billion.</p>

The House Science, Space and Technology Committee will hold a hearing on how to “better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth,” Chairman Lamar Smith (R-Texas) said in a statement on Friday. The announcement comes after a meteorite exploded in a massive blast above Siberia that damaged buildings, houses and cars and injured about 1,000 people on Friday. "The light was so intense that it completely illuminated the courtyard of our apartment block," said Sergei Zakharov, head of the Russian Geographical Society in Chelyabinsk, according to The Wall Street Journal. "The sound, the shock wave came...

241 Germania $>100 trillion 164 Eva $>100 trillion 90 Antiope $>100 trillion 253 Mathilde $>100 trillion 132 Aethra $>100 trillion 84 Klio $>100 trillion 2 Pallas $>100 trillion 1 Ceres $67.45 trillion 1910 KU $64.42 trillion Each white dot is an asteroid.

Earth's gravity may not have the gravitas of Jupiter, but the planet regularly plucks small asteroids passing by and pins them into orbit. The mini-moons don't stay for long. Within a year or so they resume their looping, twisting paths like crazy straws around the sun. But others arrive to take their place. Simulations show that two asteroids the size of dishwashers and a dozen half-meter (1.6 feet) in diameter are orbiting Earth at any given time. Every 50 years or so something the size of a dump truck arrives. So far, there's been just one confirmed sighting. ... A...

Explanation: Rocks from space hit Earth every day. The larger the rock, though, the less often Earth is struck. Many kilograms of space dust pitter to Earth daily. Larger bits appear initially as a bright meteor. Baseball-sized rocks and ice-balls streak through our atmosphere daily, most evaporating quickly to nothing. Significant threats do exist for rocks near 100 meters in diameter, which strike the Earth roughly every 1000 years. An object this size could cause significant tsunamis were it to strike an ocean, potentially devastating even distant shores. A collision with a massive asteroid, over 1 km across, is more...

China's official news agency is reporting that the country's Chang'e 2 deep-space probe made an amazing flyby of the asteroid Toutatis this week, snapping a series of pictures as it passed just 2 miles away. The achievement signals China's entry into yet another exclusive space club. Only four of the world's space efforts have managed close encounters with asteroids: NASA (with NEAR Shoemaker and Dawn, for example), the European Space Agency (with Rosetta), Japan (with Hayabusa) — and now China with Toutatis

Scientists using data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, have uncovered new clues in the ongoing mystery of the Jovian Trojans -- asteroids that orbit the sun on the same path as Jupiter. Like racehorses, the asteroids travel in packs, with one group leading the way in front of the gas giant, and a second group trailing behind. The observations are the first to get a detailed look at the Trojans' colors: both the leading and trailing packs are made up of predominantly dark, reddish rocks with a matte, non-reflecting surface. What's more, the data verify the previous...

Scientists on NASA's asteroid sample return mission, Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx), have measured the orbit of their destination asteroid, 1999 RQ36, with such accuracy they were able to directly measure the drift resulting from a subtle but important force called the Yarkovsky effect -- the slight push created when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and re-emits that energy as heat... Observations that Michael Nolan at Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico made in September 2011, along with Arecibo and Goldstone radar observations made in 1999 and 2005, when 1999 RQ36 passed much closer to Earth, show that...

NASA's WISE Telescope Detects 4,700 Possibly Hazardous AsteroidsBy Mark Whittington | Yahoo! Contributor Network – 10 hrs ago According to CNN, NASA has announced that there are potentially 4700 asteroids -- give or take 1,500 -- that are large enough and pass close enough to the Earth in their orbits around the sun to constitute a hazard. Hazardous asteroids A hazardous asteroid, as defined by NASA, is a body that is greater than 100 meters or 330 feet in diameter and approaches Earth within 5 million miles, about 20 times the distance from the Earth to the moon. Such an...

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...