TUMBLR THIS IS TOP-SECRET GOVERNMENT NASA VIDEO OF THE 2012 DA14 ASTEROID JUST BARELY MISSING THE ASTRONAUT IN ORBIT AROUND EARTH.
THIS IS VIDEO NASA DIDN’T WANT YOU TO SEE!!! TELL EVERYONE YOU KNOW, ESPECIALLY UNCLE LARNER WHO WANTS TO BELIEVE!!!
Tracks
If the Proclaimers would walk 500 miles, and then walk 500 more, they would still be 16,000 miles away from 2012 DA14.
THE SPACES BETWEEN This anaglyph 3D image of asteroid Vesta’s equator was put together from two clear filter images taken by the framing camera instrument aboard NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. The image shows hills, troughs, ridges and steep craters. (Photo: NASA / JPL-Caltech via Reuters / The Telegraph)
Five video clips showing that asteroid that whizzed by Earth at a distance of 7,600 miles — closer than many of the satellites we’ve got flying around up there.
The fine folks at Today showed a sped-up version which looked waaaaay more dramatic and awesome. I hope they post it to their Tumblr soon.
ROCK LONESTER The European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft, with NASA instruments aboard, flew past asteroid Lutetia on Saturday, July 10, at a minimum of 1,950 miles. This is the first close-up image of the biggest asteroid so far visited by a spacecraft. (Photo: ESA / NASA)
AFP: Japanese probe returns to Earth after three BILLION-mile roundtrip to asteroid, bringing back samples and bumper sticker that reads "I Made A Three-Billion-Mile Trip To An Asteroid And All Earth Got Was A Scoop Of Asteroid Soil"
NB4R, this is awesome.
A Japanese space probe which scientists hope contains material from the surface of an asteroid returned to Earth on Sunday, Japan’s space agency JAXA said, landing in the remote Australian outback.
The Hayabusa craft left Earth in 2003 and reached the potato-shaped Itokawa asteroid two years later on a mission to collect samples which may hold clues to the origins of the solar system.
As planned, the spacecraft itself burned up on re-entering the Earth’s atmosphere, creating a bright fireball in the night sky, but before doing so it released a heatproof sample canister which returned to the ground with the aid of a parachute.
JAXA said it had located the canister in the Woomera Protected Area, a restricted military zone in the South Australian desert, using a helicopter.
The capsule came to Earth shortly before midnight local time (1430 GMT) and JAXA said it would begin the task of retrieving the canister on Monday afternoon.
The round-bottomed capsule, which stands 20 centimetres (7.5 inches) tall and 40 centimetres in diameter, will be taken to the JAXA facility in Sagamihara, near Tokyo, for analysis by scientists from Japan, Australia and the United States.
It is the first time a spacecraft has made contact with an asteroid and returned to Earth.
