Beyond Astronomy: Information for amateur astronomers

Scientists confirm rocks fell from Mars

2012-01-17T21:22:00.001-05:00

They came from Mars, not in peace, but in pieces. Scientists are confirming that 15 pounds of rock collected recently in Morocco fell to Earth from Mars during a meteorite shower last July.

This is only the fifth time in history scientists have chemically confirmed Martian meteorites that people witnessed falling. The fireball was spotted in the sky six months ago, but the rocks weren't discovered on the ground in North Africa until the end of December.

This is an important and unique opportunity for scientists trying to learn about Mars' potential for life. So far, no NASA or Russian spacecraft has returned bits of Mars, so the only samples scientists can examine are those that come here in a meteorite shower.

Scientists and collectors are ecstatic, and already the rocks are fetching big bucks because they are among the rarest things on Earth -- rarer even than gold. The biggest rock weighs over 2 pounds.

"It's Christmas in January," said former NASA sciences chief Alan Stern, director of the Florida Space Institute at the University of Central Florida. "It's nice to have Mars sending samples to Earth, particularly when our pockets are too empty to go get them ourselves."

A special committee Tuesday of meteorite experts, including some NASA scientists, confirmed test results that showed the rocks came from Mars, based on their age and chemical signature.

Astronomers think millions of years ago something big smashed into Mars and sent rocks hurtling through the solar system. After a long journey through space, one of those rocks plunged through Earth's atmosphere, breaking into smaller pieces.

Read the entire article:
http://www.boston.com/news/science/articles/2012/01/17/apnewsbreak_mars_rocks_fell_in_africa_last_july/

What If Einstein Is Wrong? By Michio Kaku

2012-01-16T21:20:00.000-05:00

We'll have to recalibrate everything -- the age of the universe, the age of stars, the distance to the stars, the basic structure of modern electronics, the GPS, nuclear weapons -- all of that would have to be recalibrated and rethought ...

Source:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=9XjS4I4oQDY&feature=player_embedded

Kepler Discovers a Tiny Solar System

2012-01-12T11:02:00.001-05:00

Astronomers using data from NASA's Kepler mission have discovered the three smallest planets yet detected orbiting a star beyond our sun. The planets orbit a single star, called KOI-961, and are 0.78, 0.73 and 0.57 times the radius of Earth. The smallest is about the size of Mars.

"This is the tiniest solar system found so far," said John Johnson, the principal investigator of the research from NASA's Exoplanet Science Institute at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "It's actually more similar to Jupiter and its moons in scale than any other planetary system. The discovery is further proof of the diversity of planetary systems in our galaxy."

All three planets are thought to be rocky like Earth, but orbit close to their star. That makes them too hot to be in the habitable zone, which is the region where liquid water could exist. Of the more than 700 planets confirmed to orbit other stars -- called exoplanets -- only a handful are known to be rocky.

"Astronomers are just beginning to confirm thousands of planet candidates uncovered by Kepler so far," said Doug Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington." Finding one as small as Mars is amazing, and hints that there may be a bounty of rocky planets all around us."

Read the entire article:
http://science.nasa.gov/science-news/science-at-nasa/2012/11jan_smallestexoplanets/

Billions of habitable planets in Milky Way

2012-01-11T16:55:00.001-05:00

By scouring millions of stars in the night sky over six years, researchers found that the majority of the 100 billion stars in the Milky Way have planets similar to Earth or Mercury, Venus or Mars, the other similar planets in our solar system.

They estimated that in our galaxy there are about 10 billion stars with planets in the "habitable zone" – the distance from the star where solid planets can be found – many of which could in theory be capable of supporting life.

Dr Martin Dominik, a German research fellow at St Andrews University, said: "Even if life existed on only one planet in each galaxy there would still be 100 billion in the universe.

"We still don't have the evidence of life on another planet, and we could be unique, but confronted with these numbers it seems highly unlikely.

"There are a small number of planets which we think could harbour life, a small number of candidates with what we believe might be the right conditions."

More than 1,000 planets have already been detected in our galaxy, but the two different methods used to find them are best suited to those which are large and close to their host star – unlike anything in our solar system.

Using a third technique known as gravitational microlensing, the international team of astronomers were able to confirm the existence of planets at a similar distance from their star as Earth without directly seeing them.

Read the entire article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/space/9008012/Billions-of-habitable-planets-in-Milky-Way.html

Russian Space Failures May Be Result of Foul Play, Official Says

2012-01-11T16:32:00.001-05:00

Foul play may be responsible for the failure of Russia's Mars probe Phobos-Grunt, as well as a string of other embarrassing setbacks that plagued the country's space agency last year, the agency's chief suggested.

The 14.5-ton Phobos-Grunt spacecraft got stuck in Earth orbit shortly after its Nov. 8 launch, and Russian officials predict it will crash back into the atmosphere this Sunday (Jan. 15). Shadowy unnamed actors may have brought the probe down and caused four other Russian space failures in 2011, hinted Vladimir Popovkin, chief of Russia's Federal Space Agency (Roscosmos).

"It is unclear why our setbacks often occur when the vessels are travelling through what for Russia is the 'dark' side of the Earth — in areas where we do not see the craft and do not receive its telemetry readings," Popovkin told Russia's Izvestia newspaper, according to Agence-France Presse.

"I do not want to blame anyone, but today there are some very powerful countermeasures that can be used against spacecraft whose use we cannot exclude," he added.

Read the entire article:
http://www.space.com/14193-russia-phobos-grunt-space-failures-foul-play.html

Off the clock: Scientists create cloaking device that 'hides' whole events - making time itself disappear

2012-01-05T15:38:00.000-05:00

Most of the human race don't have any problem making time disappear - but scientists have cracked a very hi-tech way of doing exactly that. Scientists have developed a 'temporal cloaking' device that can hide events from view.

The demonstration 'hid' events for 40 trillionths of a second - or 40 picoseconds - by speeding up and slowing down different parts of a light beam.

The different parts of the light beam were then put back together, so that any observers could not detect what happened during the 'hidden' time.

The information is simply not there to be read or reconstructed.

So far, the technique only works on periods of 0.00012 of a second - so the police can probably rest easy, as evildoers would have to move far faster than human beings ever could to 'conceal' their actions.

Instead, the 'hidden' fractions of a second could be used for ultra-secure communications.

The scientists think that the technique could even be combined with recent advances in optical 'cloaking' - to hide an event in both space and time.

Read the entire article:
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2082266/Lets-time-warp-Scientists-create-cloaking-device-hide-events.html

Rare slow-spinning star reveals space oddity

2012-01-03T14:09:00.003-05:00

Astronomers have discovered a strange spinning star that appears to be older than the explosion that gave birth to it, scientists say. The star is a pulsar, a rotating, super-dense core left behind after a massive star goes supernova. This pulsar, known as SXP 1062, is spinning quite slowly, suggesting an advanced age.

But the pulsar can't be as old as it looks, because the star probably exploded less than 40,000 years ago, researchers said. They've just now begun delving into this newly discovered cosmic mystery.

A pulsar is born

Pulsars are created after supernova explosions, when a star's remnant collapses and becomes so dense that protons and electrons squish together to form neutrons. [ Supernova Photos: Great Images of Star Explosions ]

Conservation of angular momentum causes these newly formed, city-size neutron stars to rotate, often extremely rapidly. They're called pulsars because this rotation makes their light appear to pulse at regular intervals.

Astronomers feel fortunate to have detected SXP 1062.

"Not many pulsars have been observed within their supernova remnant, and this is the first clear example of such a pair in the [Small Magellanic Cloud]," study leader Vincent Hénault-Brunet, of the University of Edinburgh in the United Kingdom, said in a statement.

The Small Magellanic Cloud is one of the satellite galaxies of the Milky Way.

A second team, led by Frank Haberl of the Max-Planck Institute in Germany, independently confirmed Hénault-Brunet's findings that the leftover supernova debris is between 10,000 and 40,000 years old.

Read the entire article:
http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/45800105/ns/technology_and_science-space/

We recently updated our Android apps!

2011-12-30T10:58:00.009-05:00

We recently updated our Android apps and compiled them with the latest 3.2 API!

Our newer app can be found here:

https://market.android.com/details?id=com.tpcs.Astronomy

This new 3.2 API ads a nifty zoom feature that allows the app to adjust its size to your various screen sizes. You may still download this app with older Droid versions, as your device will auto download the appropriate version (1.5 API or 3.2 API) based on your device's abilities.

Thanks,
Dave

We should scour the moon for ancient traces of aliens, say scientists

2011-12-29T11:38:00.002-05:00

Online volunteers could be set task of spotting alien technology, evidence of mining and rubbish heaps in moon images. Hundreds of thousands of pictures of the moon will be examined for telltale signs that aliens once visited our cosmic neighbourhood if plans put forward by scientists go ahead.

Passing extraterrestrials might have left messages, scientific instruments, heaps of rubbish or evidence of mining on the dusty lunar surface that could be spotted by human telescopes and orbiting spacecraft.

Though the chances of finding the handiwork of long-gone aliens are exceptionally remote, scientists argue that a computerised search of lunar images, or a crowd-sourced analysis by amateur enthusiasts, would be cheap enough to justify given the importance of a potential discovery.

Prof Paul Davies and Robert Wagner at Arizona State University argue that images of the moon and other information collected by scientists for their research should be scoured for signs of alien intervention. The proposal aims to complement other hunts for alien life, such as the Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence (Seti), which draws on data from radiotelescopes to scour the heavens for messages beamed into space by alien civilisations.

Read the entire article:
http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2011/dec/25/scour-moon-ancient-traces-aliens

Earth Must Have Another Moon, Say Astronomers

2011-12-24T08:39:00.001-05:00

Scientists studying satellites orbiting the planet have come to an astounding conclusion: Earth has multiple moons at any given time, the MIT Technology Review reported.

Mikael Granvik, along with colleagues at the University of Hawaii, first discovered a mysterious body orbiting the Earth in 2006. The object -- or RH120 as it was known -- turned out to be a tiny asteroid just a few meters across. Moreover, it was a natural satellite just like our moon.

Since then, the researchers have been studying how this "Earth-Moon" gravitational system captures bodies into its orbit while also modelling their frequency and duration. The asteroid RH120 for instance was captured in September 2006 and orbited the planet until June 2007.

But how often do these "temporary moons" actually occur? Quite often, the astronomers found.

"At any given time, there should be at least one natural Earth satellite of one-meter diameter orbiting the Earth," Granvik, Jeremie Vaubaillon and Robert Jedicke wrote in "The Population of Natural Earth Satellites," a paper published in online physics journal ArXiv.org.

In other words, at this very moment, our planet likely has a secret moon orbiting us (no word as to whether it's a blue moon). Such objects typically stay for about 10 months, making three revolutions around the planet.

Read the entire article:
http://news.discovery.com/space/earth-has-two-moons-111222.html

NASA's Kepler Mission Confirms Its First Planet in Habitable Zone of Sun-like Star

2011-12-06T15:07:00.003-05:00

The newly confirmed planet, Kepler-22b, is the smallest yet found to orbit in the middle of the habitable zone of a star similar to our sun. The planet is about 2.4 times the radius of Earth. Scientists don't yet know if Kepler-22b has a predominantly rocky, gaseous or liquid composition, but its discovery is a step closer to finding Earth-like planets.

Previous research hinted at the existence of near-Earth-size planets in habitable zones, but clear confirmation proved elusive. Two other small planets orbiting stars smaller and cooler than our sun recently were confirmed on the very edges of the habitable zone, with orbits more closely resembling those of Venus and Mars.

"This is a major milestone on the road to finding Earth's twin," said Douglas Hudgins, Kepler program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Kepler's results continue to demonstrate the importance of NASA's science missions, which aim to answer some of the biggest questions about our place in the universe."

Read more:
http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/kepler/news/kepscicon-briefing.html

Additional reading:
http://lightyears.blogs.cnn.com/2011/12/05/first-planet-in-habitable-zone-discovered/?hpt=hp_t2

Astronomers discover biggest black holes ever

2011-12-06T15:05:00.000-05:00

Scientists have discovered the two biggest black holes ever observed, each with a mass billions of times greater than the Sun's, according to a study published Monday.

The two giants are located in the heart of a pair of galaxies several hundred million light years from Earth, said the study in scientific journal Nature.

Each black hole is estimated to have a mass about 10 billion times greater than the sun, dwarfing the previously largest-known black hole, which has a mass of 6.3 billion suns.

The University of California, Berkeley, team led by Nicholas McConnell and Chung-Pei Ma said one black hole is located in NGC 3842, the brightest of a cluster of galaxies about 320 million light years from Earth.

Read the entire article:
http://news.yahoo.com/astronomers-discover-biggest-black-holes-ever-153131310.html

'UFOs' Disrupting Search for 'God Particle'

2011-11-30T17:26:00.001-05:00

Physicists working at the Large Hadron Collider (LHC), a particle accelerator at CERN Laboratory in Switzerland, are trying to slam particles together hard enough to break them into never-before-seen pieces, which could solve some of the biggest puzzles in nature.

But UFOs — unidentified falling objects, that is — keep getting in their way.

The LHC is a 17-mile (27-km) circular tunnel lined with powerful magnets, which accelerate protons (particles in the nuclei of atoms) to 99.9999991 percent the speed of light. Beams of these super-brisk protons are accelerated clockwise around the ring and collide with beams traveling counter-clockwise, and, like a well-struck piñata, a dead-on hit produces a thrilling outburst of subatomic goodies. When they turn the proton beams up to full power, the physicists hope to find the Higgs boson, also known as the "God particle," which is believed to create the drag that gives everything else mass, among the collision debris. They'll also look for dark matter, the invisible substance that permeates the outskirts of galaxies.

However, since last year, something has been fluttering in the way of the proton beams and dampening the force of their blows, the physicists say. These "UFOs" aren't from outer space — they're probably microscopic dust particles of unknown origin — but they're still mysterious, and while they're around, the prize goodies will likely remain stashed. [LHC On Hold Until 2012]

Read the entire article:
http://www.space.com/13754-ufos-lhc-large-hadron-collider.html

CERN Experiment Excludes 1 Error In Faster-Than-Light Finding

2011-11-19T08:51:00.001-05:00

GENEVA — The chances have risen that Einstein was wrong about a fundamental law of the universe. Scientists at the world's biggest physics lab said Friday they have ruled out one possible error that could have distorted their startling measurements that appeared to show particles traveling faster than light.

Many physicists reacted with skepticism in September when measurements by French and Italian researchers seemed to show subatomic neutrino particles breaking what Nobel Prize-winning physicist Albert Einstein considered the ultimate speed barrier.

The European Organization for Nuclear Research said more precise testing has now confirmed the accuracy of at least one part of the experiment.

"One key test was to repeat the measurement with very short beam pulses," the Geneva-based organization, known by its French acronym CERN, said in a statement.

The test allowed scientists to check if the starting time for the neutrinos was being measured correctly before they were fired 454 miles (730 kilometers) underground from Geneva to a lab in Italy.

The results matched those from the previous test, "ruling out one potential source of systematic error," said CERN.

Read the entire article:
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2011/11/18/cern-experiment-faster-than-light_n_1101151.html

Jupiter's moon may hold life, researchers say

2011-11-18T12:21:00.001-05:00

For explorers searching for life beyond Earth, the siren song of Europa, Jupiter's icy moon, trills sweetly.

"Europa has the best chance of having life there today," said Britney Schmidt, who studies the moon at the University of Texas at Austin. Astrobiologists think so because NASA's Galileo probe found strong evidence for a deep, briny ocean covering the entire moon deep under the icy surface.

A theory published by Schmidt and colleagues Wednesday in the journal Nature is sure to raise the volume of the siren call. The scientists suspect liquid lakes lurk just under the moon's cracked and mottled surface.

The lakes themselves could provide a second habitat for life, said Don Blankenship, a geophysicist and Europa specialist also at the University of Texas.

Read the entire article:
http://www.sfgate.com/cgi-bin/article.cgi?f=/c/a/2011/11/17/MN1S1M059A.DTL

Massive, unstoppable rock hurtles toward Earth

2011-11-08T18:14:00.001-05:00

An asteroid the size of the U.S.S. Nimitz is bearing down on Earth. NASA's Near-Earth Object Program says the impact of the rock, dubbed 2005 YU55, would equal a 4,000-megaton blast and create 70-foot high tsunami waves, CBS News reports.

That's near 200,000 times more powerful than the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima or Nagasaki.

Fortunately for us, NASA predicts the murderous cosmic body will miss our planet by about 202,000 miles, passing around 6:28 p.m. on Tuesday. That's about 0.85 times the distance to the moon, NASA says. The last time an asteroid this size came this close to Earth was in 1976, and it shouldn't happen again until 2028 -- provided we're still here.

Read the entire article:
http://www.wtop.com/?nid=884&sid=2624431

NASA prepares for moon tourism

2011-11-07T20:21:00.002-05:00

NASA isn't headed back to the moon anytime soon, but some day space tourists may be on the way to the Apollo mission lunar landing sites.

...NASA isn't expecting the sites to generate the kind of traffic we see at national parks on Earth, but the prospect of future tourists could affect plans to inspect the sites and artifacts in the future. So, the space agency released guidelines this summer on protecting lunar landing sites and artifacts. They call for a 1,200 acre "no-fly" zone around the first Apollo 11 landing site, and final Apollo 17 one. Tourists could only walk within 82 yards of the Apollo 11 landing site where Neil Armstrong first took "One small step for man," on July 20, 1969, under the guidelines.

Read the entire article:
http://www.usatoday.com/tech/science/columnist/vergano/story/2011-11-06/apollo-moon-space-tourism/51084312/1

World's most powerful laser to tear apart the vacuum of space

2011-10-31T18:41:00.001-04:00

A laser powerful enough to tear apart the fabric of space could be built in Britain as part major new scientific project that aims to answer some of the most fundamental questions about our universe.

Due to follow in the footsteps of the Large Hadron Collider, the latest "big science" experiment being proposed by physicists will see the world's most powerful laser being constructed.

Capable of producing a beam of light so intense that it would be equivalent to the power received by the Earth from the sun focused onto a speck smaller than a tip of a pin, scientists claim it could allow them boil the very fabric of space – the vacuum.

Contrary to popular belief, a vacuum is not devoid of material but in fact fizzles with tiny mysterious particles that pop in and out of existence, but at speeds so fast that no one has been able to prove they exist.

The Extreme Light Infrastructure Ultra-High Field Facility would produce a laser so intense that scientists say it would allow them to reveal these particles for the first time by pulling this vacuum "fabric" apart.

They also believe it could even allow them to prove whether extra-dimensions exist.

Read the entire article:
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/science/science-news/8857154/Worlds-most-powerful-laser-to-tear-apart-the-vacuum-of-space.html

LROC Explores the Apollo 17 Landing Site

2011-09-06T20:02:00.003-04:00

I have often heard that we never went to the moon. One friend of mine is always asking me why we can't see any evidence of our past visits there. Well, recently the LROC has spotted the landing site (and the materials and trails left behind) of the Apollo 17 mission.

For more info look at the LROC section of the university of arizona
website:

http://lroc.sese.asu.edu/

A Plan To Place An Asteroid In Earth Orbit

2011-08-31T22:39:00.000-04:00

Chinese scientists have discovered a near Earth asteroid that, with a slight push, could enter Earth orbit

Most of the discussion about near Earth asteroids focuses on whether they represent a threat to Earth and what to do take if they turn out to be heading our way.

But today, Hexi Baoyin and pals at Tsinghua University in Beijing offer a different take. The question they ask is how to place an asteroid in orbit around the Earth

Read the entire article:
http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/arxiv/27112/

Jupiter-bound space probe captures Earth and Moon

2011-08-31T22:37:00.001-04:00

This image of Earth (on the left) and the moon (on the right) was taken by NASA's Juno spacecraft on Aug. 26, 2011, when the spacecraft was about 6 million miles (9.66 million kilometers) away.

It was taken by the spacecraft's onboard camera, JunoCam. The solar-powered Juno spacecraft lifted off from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida on Aug. 5 to begin a five-year journey to Jupiter. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Read the entire article:
http://www.physorg.com/news/2011-08-jupiter-bound-space-probe-captures-earth.html

Astronomers discover planet made of diamond

2011-08-25T15:37:00.000-04:00

(Reuters) - Astronomers have spotted an exotic planet that seems to be made of diamond racing around a tiny star in our galactic backyard.

The new planet is far denser than any other known so far and consists largely of carbon. Because it is so dense, scientists calculate the carbon must be crystalline, so a large part of this strange world will effectively be diamond.

"The evolutionary history and amazing density of the planet all suggest it is comprised of carbon -- i.e. a massive diamond orbiting a neutron star every two hours in an orbit so tight it would fit inside our own Sun," said Matthew Bailes of Swinburne University of Technology in Melbourne.

Read the entire article:
http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/08/25/us-planet-diamond-idUSTRE77O69A20110825

The Dirt on Mars' Soil: More Suitable for Life Than Thought

2011-08-23T15:06:00.002-04:00

Researchers have long suspected that the Martian surface is packed full of oxidizing compounds, which could make it difficult for complex molecules like organic chemicals — the building blocks of life as we know it — to exist. But the new study, which analyzed data gathered by NASA's Mars Phoenix Lander, suggests that's not the case.

"Although there may be some small amounts of oxidants in the soil, the bulk material is actually quite benign," said lead study author Richard Quinn of NASA's Ames Research Center and the SETI (Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence) Institute in Mountain View, Calif. "It's very similar to moderate soils that we find on Earth."

Astrobiologists have long been interested in characterizing soils on Mars, to help determine whether life could ever have gotten a foothold on the Red Planet. [5 Bold Claims of Alien Life ]

NASA's $420 million Phoenix mission has given them a lot to ponder in this regard. The Phoenix lander touched down near the Martian north pole in late May 2008, then gathered a variety of observations for the next five months.

Phoenix is most famous for confirming the existence of water ice on Mars, but it also made a lot of interesting soil measurements. One of those was the Mars dirt's acidity, or pH, level.

"People really didn't know what the pH was going to be," Quinn told SPACE.com. "A lot of people believed that the soils would be very acidic."

But just a month or so into its mission, Phoenix found that the dirt at its landing site was mildly basic, with a pH around 7.7. The lander also detected several chemicals that could serve as nutrients for life-forms, including magnesium, potassium and chloride.

These discoveries intrigued scientists, suggesting that Martian soil is perhaps more hospitable to microbial life than they had thought. And the new results provide further evidence along those lines.

Read the entire article:
http://www.space.com/12695-mars-soil-life-support-study.html

Australian Student Uncovers the Universe’s Missing Mass

2011-08-20T07:53:00.001-04:00

Not since the work of Fritz Zwicky has the astronomy world been so excited about the missing mass of the Universe. His evidence came from the orbital velocities of galaxies in clusters, rotational speeds, and gravitational lensing of background objects. Now there’s even more evidence that Zwicky was right as Australian student – Amelia Fraser-McKelvie – made another breakthrough in the world of astrophysics.

Working with a team at the Monash School of Physics, the 22-year-old undergraduate Aerospace Engineering/Science student conducted a targeted X-ray search for the hidden matter and within just three months made a very exciting discovery. Astrophysicists predicted the mass would be low in density, but high in temperature – approximately one million degrees Celsius. According to theory, the matter should have been observable at X-ray wavelengths and Amelia Fraser-McKelvie’s discovery has proved the prediction to be correct.

Dr Kevin Pimbblet from the School of Astrophysics explains: “It was thought from a theoretical viewpoint that there should be about double the amount of matter in the local Universe compared to what was observed. It was predicted that the majority of this missing mass should be located in large-scale cosmic structures called filaments – a bit like thick shoelaces.”

Read more here:

http://www.universetoday.com/85927/australian-student-uncovers-the-universes-missing-mass/#more-85927

Fact following fiction? Scientists plan mission to blow up an asteroid 'hurtling towards Earth'

2011-08-17T20:29:00.002-04:00

Scientists plan to smash a spacecraft into an asteroid so that they are prepared for having to stop one hurtling towards Earth. The news came as Nasa moved to calm fears that a comet is on a collision course with our planet. The plans for a test mission to stop an asteroid from colliding with Earth come from Nasa’s cousin, the European Space Agency.

One will be fired at an asteroid at break-neck speed in an attempt to push it off its course. The other will analyse data with the aim of informing future missions in which the future of mankind may be at stake.

One potential target for the test mission is a 1,600ft-wide asteroid called 99942 Apophis, which has a tiny chance – around one in 250,000 – of hitting Earth in 2036.

Nasa scientists yesterday took the unusual step of officially dismissing claims sweeping the internet that comet Elenin, discovered by an astronomer last December, is on a deadly course.

Read the entire article:

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2026710/Fact-following-fiction-Scientists-plan-mission-blow-asteroid-hurtling-Earth.html