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February 08, 2013

New NASA Mission To Help Us Better Estimate Asteroid Impact Hazard
Washington DC (SPX) Feb 08, 2013
Every year, sensors designed to detect nuclear explosions see harmless bursts in Earth's upper atmosphere from the breakup of an asteroid a few yards across. Tiny asteroids are much more numerous than big ones, so destructive hits to Earth are very rare. However, because of their potential for devastation, NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) observations program supports surveys which are undertaking sustained searches to find the largest objects and predict their impact threat to Earth. Accordin ... read more

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Near impact: asteroid to narrowly miss Earth Hold on to your hats: an asteroid will zoom within spitting distance of Earth next week, in what NASA said Thursday is the closest flyby ever predicted for an object this large. ... more		A Possible Naked-eye Comet in March Feb. 6, 2013: Far beyond the orbits of Neptune and Pluto, where the sun is a pinprick of light not much brighter than other stars, a vast swarm of icy bodies circles the solar system. Astronomers ca ... more		Kepler Data Suggest Earth-size Planets May Be Next Door Using publicly available data from NASA's Kepler space telescope, astronomers at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics estimate that six percent of red dwarf stars in the galaxy have Earth ... more
				NASA's Deep Impact Spacecraft Eyes Comet ISON NASA's Deep Impact spacecraft has acquired its first images of comet C/2012 S1 (ISON). The images were taken by the spacecraft's Medium-Resolution Imager over a 36-hour period on Jan. 17 and 18, 201 ... more		New "retention model" explains enigmatic ribbon at edge of solar system Since its October 2008 launch, NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) has provided images of the invisible interactions between our home in the galaxy and interstellar space. Particles emanati ... more

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

A spiral galaxy with a secret The NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope - with a little help from an amateur astronomer - has produced one of the best views yet of nearby spiral galaxy Messier 106. Located a little over 20 million lig ... more		Enigmatic "Ribbon" Of Energy Discovered by NASA Satellite Explained After three years of puzzling over a striking "ribbon" of energy and particles discovered by NASA's Interstellar Boundary Explorer (IBEX) at the edge of our solar system, scientists may be on the ve ... more		'Israel wants to keep Assad in power' Syria's jihadists have edge, control oil Commentary: Israel: Crises 360 degrees Tunisia teeters as it grapples with jihadists Unspent billions of Chilean defense fund remain a mystery N. Korea 'special envoy' in China meeting Iran expanding nuclear activities: IAEA		Earth-like planets may be closer than thought: study Scientists looking for habitable planets may not have to stray far from our galactic neighborhood, said a new study Wednesday, which calculated an Earth-size planet could be orbiting a red dwarf as near as 13 light years away. ... more
				Largest prime number to date found Thousands of volunteers, and their computers, have determined the largest prime number found to date - a 17 million digit number - a U.S. researcher says. ... more		Asteroid 2012 DA14 - Earth Flyby Reality Check Small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. NASA's Nea ... more

Solar systems for home and business installations

CubeSats, SmallSats and MicroSats

Tempur-Pedic Mattress Comparison & Memory Foam Mattress Review

Hubble Catches the Moment the Lights Went Out The further away you look, the further back in time you see. Astronomers use this fact to study the evolution of the Universe by looking at nearby and more distant galaxies and comparing their featu ... more		Are Super-Earths Actually Mini-Neptunes? In the last two decades astronomers have found hundreds of planets in orbit around other stars. One type of these so-called 'exoplanets' is the super-Earths that are thought to have a high proportio ... more		New discovery of ancient diet shatters conventional ideas of how agriculture emerged Why we need to put the fish back into fisheries Heat-related deaths in Manhattan projected to rise Climate change may have little impact on tropical lizards LLNL scientist finds topography of Eastern Seaboard muddles ancient sea level changes Parasitic wasps use calcium pump to block fruit fly immunity Storm shelters few in 'Tornado Alley'		Cassini Sees Titan Cooking up Smog A paper published this week using data from NASA's Cassini mission describes in more detail than ever before how aerosols in the highest part of the atmosphere are kick-started at Saturn's moon Tita ... more
				BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter Proto-Flight Mechanical and Propulsion Bus undergoes bake-out The BepiColombo Mercury Planetary Orbiter Mechanical and Propulsion Bus Proto-Flight Model (the structure with integrated heat pipes and chemical propulsion subsystem) has been baked out in the Phen ... more		Massive stellar winds are made of tiny pieces ESA's XMM-Newton space observatory has completed the most detailed study ever of the fierce wind from a giant star, showing for the first time that it is not a uniform breeze but is fragmented into ... more

The PI's Perspective: The Seven-Year Itch

New Horizons Gets a New Year's Workout

Halfway Between Uranus and Neptune, New Horizons Cruises On

Wood on the seafloor - an oasis for deep-sea life

Exploring the Seafloors of Earth and Europa in search of exo lifeforms

Synchrotron infrared unveils a mysterious microbial community

Earth-like planets may be closer than thought: study

Kepler Data Suggest Earth-size Planets May Be Next Door

Are Super-Earths Actually Mini-Neptunes?

Mapping Mars

Sampling Several Rock Targets

Weekend Test on Mars Was Preparation to Drill a Rock

	Seeing the Aurora in a New Light On a cold February night in Poker Flat, Alaska, a team of scientists will wait patiently for the exotic red and green glow of an aurora to illuminate the sky. Instead of simply admiring the vi ... more		Small Asteroid to Whiz Past Earth Safely The small near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass very close to Earth on February 15, so close that it will pass inside the ring of geosynchronous weather and communications satellites. NASA's ... more		Building a lunar base with 3D printing Setting up a lunar base could be made much simpler by using a 3D printer to build it from local materials. Industrial partners including renowned architects Foster + Partners have joined with ESA to ... more		Dawn Look Backs Its long and daring interplanetary journey continuing smoothly, Dawn is making good progress in gradually reshaping its orbit around the sun. Its uniquely efficient ion propulsion system is gently b ... more

Australia's resources boom over?

Israeli gas finds secure its self sufficiency

EU leaders face up to shale challenge

Chinese PM pledges stronger partnership with Pakistan

Computational tool translates complex data into simplified 2-dimensional images

Robots learn to take a proper handoff by following digitized human examples

Frigid Heat: How Ice can Menace a Hot Engine

Where are all the dwarfs?		Does probability come from quantum physics?		International Team Observe 'Hungry Twin' Stars Gobbling Their First Meals		Researchers develop model for identifying habitable zones around star		Stars can be late parents
Prehistoric humans not wiped out by comet		Gas promises bumper black hole weigh-in		Herschel Finds Past-Prime Star May Be Making Planets		Mercury's crust likely made of magnesium-rich basalt		New method of measuring the mass of supermassive black holes

NASA's SDO Provides First Sightings of How a CME Forms

TW Hydrae: There's more to astronomers' favorite planetary nursery than previously thought

NASA's Cassini Watches Storm Choke on Its Own Tail

Cool, New Views of Andromeda Galaxy

Solar Variability and Terrestrial Climate

Superbubble DEM L50

Computer Models Explain How Galaxies Formed and Evolved

Record Setting Asteroid Flyby

NYU physicists shine a light on particle assembly

Sounding Rocket Mission Offers Roadmap To Future Solar Missions

Stanford Researchers Break Million-core Supercomputer Barrier

Celestial Sleuths Track Historic Meteor Procession To South Atlantic

Betelgeuse braces for a collision

Hubble Finds Appearances can be Deceptive

Wood on the seafloor - an oasis for deep-sea life

Dung beetles follow the Milky Way

Exploring the Seafloors of Earth and Europa in search of exo lifeforms

The Origin And Maintenance Of A Retrograde Exoplanet

More than one brain behind E=mc2

Red Explosions - Secret Life of Binary Stars Revealed

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