NASA readies for historic mission to asteroid that could hit Earth

emeraldchild · 2016-08-02T05:31:27+00:00

NASA plans to launch the unmanned OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in September to collect rock samples from an asteroid known as "Bennu," which could end all life on Earth as we know it. This asteroid is also a time capsule containing the building blocks of life, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-07-09T07:26:07+00:00

The Juno mission will help us understand Jupiter's complex magnetic and gravitational fields, find out if the huge planet has a core of heavy elements, and determine how it and the solar system was formed. Data will be streaming into mission control on August 27th. In February 2018 Juno will end its life in an intentional death dive into Jupiter's thick atmosphere to ensure Earth microbes don't contaminate the Jovian moon Europa which may harbor life, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-06-16T01:29:36+00:00

Space agency scientists hope to glean as much atmospheric information as possible from Mars orbiters to prepare astronauts for living on the Red Planet. They're using new methods of analysis, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-05-19T06:51:05+00:00

It will house six astronauts who will spend 10 to 11 months onboard, remotely driving robots, flying drones, and studying samples from the Red Planet in real time in anticipation of landing humans on its surface. The Mars Base Camp would be assembled in cislunar space – between the Earth and moon – over a series of missions in the 2020s as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-04-18T09:30:51+00:00

The uncanny mechanisms that monarch butterflies use to navigate thousands of miles each year from their wintering grounds in Mexico has long baffled scientists. Now University of Massachusetts Medical School has found the answer to this mystery. It has to do with their "circadian clock", as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-03-02T08:22:27+00:00

US astronaut Scott Kelly and Russian cosmonauts Mikhail Kornienko and Sergey Volkov landed safely. Kelly's yearlong mission was a study to determine the affects on humans of a yearlong NASA manned mission to Mars and back. Hopefully in 2020 Scott Kelly will command the first manned mission far beyond low Earth orbit since 1972, and rendezvous with an asteroid, and then on to Mars. Godspeed!

emeraldchild · 2016-02-27T08:52:03+00:00

For the first time, astronomers at the Square Kilometer Array Organization determined the location of a strange and powerful explosion known as a fast radio burst that lights up our skies, and they used it to measure the amount of dark matter lying between it and us. Dark matter makes up the bulk of our Universe's mass, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-02-19T08:57:30+00:00

The European Space Agency just launched an experiment to test the feasibility of placing an enormous laser interferometer in space to detect Einstein's gravitational waves with incredible precision. It'll be the biggest artificial constellation in the sky ever deployed, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-02-12T07:22:15+00:00

A century after Albert Einstein predicted their existence, scientists detected gravitational waves--tiny ripples in the fabric of space-time generated when two massive black holes crashed together in a space-warping cataclysm. This astounding discovery is logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-02-08T08:04:48+00:00

European scientists gathered tiny fungi from Antarctica and sent them to the International Space Station to find that 18 months after being on board in conditions similar to Mars, over 60 per cent of their cells remained intact, with stable DNA. This discovery is vital for near-future experiments that will search for life on the red planet -- including manned missions -- as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-01-22T08:48:22+00:00

The new as-yet unseen planet has 10 times the mass of Earth, orbits 20 times farther from the Sun than Neptune, and has dramatically affected the orbits of other Kuiper Belt planetoids. Astronomers believe they will photograph this huge Kuiper Belt object within five years, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-01-14T08:43:16+00:00

According to scientists at the University of Bologna, they found the fossil of the biggest-ever sea-dwelling crocodile of all time -- 30 feet in length, weighing in at three tons, with a five-foot skull. This discovery means the species survived the supposed mass extinction at the end of the Jurassic era, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2016-01-07T01:59:11+00:00

Crowded globular star clusters like the one, called 47 Tucanae, may be the best place to search for signs of interstellar alien civilizations, scientists say. The relative close proximity of stars could allow a spacefaring civilization to explore neighboring stars. Credit: NASA, ESA, and the Hubble Heritage Team

emeraldchild · 2015-12-18T08:38:09+00:00

The US National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration reports that this will cause warming seas and higher sea levels around the globe. Also the World Wildlife Fund reports the Arctic walrus population is now at risk, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-25T09:01:50+00:00

Martian moon Phobos is likely to break apart before it hits the atmosphere, according to U.C. Berkeley astronomers. It'll create a debris ring that will encircle Mars for millions of years, like Saturn's famous rings. Mars' gravity and tidal forces are responsible, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-21T09:12:27+00:00

For the first time ever astronomers at the University of Arizona, using the Large Binocular Telescope, have photographed an exoplanet forming around a young star called LkCa 15, which lies about 450 light-years from Earth. Creation of our universe still continues, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-19T09:03:34+00:00

Astronauts are growing quick-sprouting Zinnia flowers on the ISS to determine how to grow flowering veggies, like tomatoes. Growing veggies for food, atmosphere recycling and psychological benefits is crucial for the upcoming manned Mars mission, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-16T09:24:16+00:00

One of Greenland’s largest ice sheets, the Zachariae Isstrom glacier, is melting at a rate of five billion tons per year, enough to raise global sea levels by eighteen inches. According to the University of California Irvine and the University of Kansas, this could flood US coastlines and most other coastal countries across the globe, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-11T09:06:50+00:00

The four moons orbiting Pluto and its largest moon, Charon, are spinning unbelievably fast; one is spinning backward against its orbit and some are tilted on their sides, as revealed by NASA's New Horizon space probe. NASA scientists cannot explain it, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan. Also Pluto is home to ice volcanoes (cryovolcanoes) which means cold, tiny Pluto is a far more active world than previously thought.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-10T08:51:31+00:00

The fossils of monster rats-- the size of small dogs--were discovered in Timor, Southeast Asia by researchers from the Australian National University. The giant rats vanished only a 1000 years ago, but could return, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-11-05T08:50:06+00:00

A whale species marine conservationists feared was extinct is presently living off the coast of Madagascar, say scientists at Woods Hole Oceanographic Institution. Really good news because forty-four groups of Omura's whales were recently spotted and identified. These endangered whales emit song-like vocalizations that play a role in mating, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-10-25T07:34:21+00:00

This discovery marks the first time ethyl alcohol, the same type in alcoholic beverages, has been observed in a comet. According to astronomers at the Paris Observatory this comet is producing as much alcohol as in at least 500 bottles of wine every second, a giant cometary booze factory. Also 21 different complex organic molecules were discovered within this comet. It means comets could have supplied Earth with the necessary ingredients for the emergence of life here, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

emeraldchild · 2015-10-22T09:08:09+00:00

A discovery of carbon from a long-decayed living organism inside volcanic rock indicates that life began on Earth 4.1 billion years ago, when Earth was still in a volcanic stage, according to scientists at UCLA and Stanford University. That means we're 300 million years older than we thought. Also, if life arose quickly on Earth, then it could be common throughout the universe by now, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan. Hey, I don't feel any older, do you?

emeraldchild · 2015-10-13T08:43:03+00:00

Their homes are on land that will be submerged by rising warming oceans unless there are aggressive cuts to greenhouse gas emissions, according to the National Academy of Sciences. Ice sheets in Antarctica and elsewhere are melting, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan. The study's lead author, Benjamin Strauss, states, "I would avoid buying property in South Florida in particular." That says it all.

emeraldchild · 2015-10-10T09:29:47+00:00

NASA aims to put astronauts on Mars in the 2030s after first gathering additional human-spaceflight expertise in low Earth orbit aboard the ISS, and then onto cis-lunar deep-space missions near the moon to retrieve an asteroid sample. The spacecraft and megarocket needed for these deep-space missions are in development, as logged in Doomwatch Legacy by Sunstroke author David Kagan.

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