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Asteroid to hurtle past the Earth at 27,000 mph A giant "potentially hazardous" asteroid more than three times the size of a football pitch is to hurtle past the Earth at more than 27,000 miles per hour Although the speeding chunk of rock, named 2000 EM26, will be 1.6 million miles away it still represents a close shave for our planet in astronomical terms ‘potentially hazardous’ asteroid which is three times the size of a football pitch and travelling at 27,000 miles an hour will pass close to Earth on Monday night. Although the speeding chunk of rock – named...

Near-Earth asteroid 2000 EM26 poses no threat of actually hitting the planet, but the online Slooh Space Camera will track the asteroid as it passes by Earth on Monday. The live Slooh webcast will start at 9 p.m. EST (0200 Feb. 18 GMT), and you can also watch the webcast directly through the Slooh website. You can also watch the asteroid broadcast live on Space.com. Scientists estimate that 2000 EM26 is about 885 feet in diameter, and it is whizzing through the solar system at a break-neck 27,000 mph, according to Slooh. During its closest approach, the asteroid will fly...

The results of a workshop to find the best ways to find, track and deflect asteroids headed for Earth were released by NASA on Friday (Feb. 7). NASA's Asteroid Initiative, started in 2013, includes a mission to capture a small near-Earth asteroid and drag it into a stable orbit around the moon, and a challenge to devise the best ideas for detecting and defending against potentially dangerous asteroids. The agency put out a request for information to refine the objectives of the Asteroid Initiative, to generate other mission concepts and increase participation in the mission and planetary defense. NASA received...

It is a commentary on how adrift NASA space policy is when one considers that four years after President Obama made his "we choose not to return to the moon" speech that the space agency may be pivoting back to the moon. Paul Spudis, a planetary geologist and return to the moon advocate, has read the tea leaves and has seen the first, tentative steps toward a pivot back to the moon. Elon Musk, the space entrepreneur and political ally of Barack Obama, has recently conceded that expeditions to the moon would be useful. NASA is partnering with private companies,...

(VIDEO-AT-LINK)With NASA reporting a “potentially hazardous” asteroid nearly half-a-mile wide possibly heading toward earth, and some upstate New Yorkers claiming they experienced a loud boom and a bright light in the sky last night caused by a meteor, a doctors’ organization is offering some timely advice: Just as when the American populace first prepared for the possibility of a nuclear blast, a person’s best option for surviving a meteor strike is the same “duck and cover” created during the 1940s and ’50s when nuclear weaponry was still in its infancy. The warning comes from Physicians for Civil Defense, which issued...

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...