ASTRONOMICAL EVENTS

ASTRONOMY PICTURE OF THE DAY

Asteroid Strikes / Meteor Showers

Solar Storm Warnings

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Where is the Hubble Telescope Right Now?


Space isn't remote at all. It's only an hour's drive away if your car could go straight upward. - Sir Fred Hoyle

OCTOBER 2001:

Plans to save civilization from doom by sending people and important documents into space in a 21st Century Noah's Ark may get a boost from heightened fears of bioterrorism.

Scientists have figured out how to make mirrors that are so light that it should be possible to put colossal telescopes in orbit that will dwarf the Hubble Space Telescope.

Odyssey's Triumph Puts NASA Back on Track. But Where To? What does the success mean for the future of the Mars program, or for the possibility of putting people on Mars?

Physicists in Denmark have made two samples of trillions of atoms interact at a distance in an experiment which may bring Star Trek-style teleportation and rapid quantum computing closer to reality.

SEPTEMBER 2001:

The international organization responsible for naming asteroids plans to name three space rocks in memory of the victims of the Sept. 11 terrorist attacks on the World Trade Center and the Pentagon and the United Airlines flight 93 hijacking. The plan, which has not been detailed publicly but was explained to SPACE.com, would involve names that officials hope will resonate with a world struck by the tragedy and grieving its victims. There are currently 29,074 known "minor planets," mostly asteroids and a handful of comets and other objects. Of those, only 8,830 have been named, leaving 20,244 that are numbered but not yet named.

A severe meteor storm expected to peak in November will challenge the world's satellites with an unusually dense flurry of space dust, creating the greatest threat of a meteor impact since 1966, NASA scientists said. The Leonid meteor shower occurs annually but is forecast by some experts this year to be a storm unlike anything seen in recent decades.

A group of Western investors announced plans to launch the first commercial space station, Russian-built and specially designed to host fare-paying space tourists. Jeffrey Manber, head of MirCorp, said his company had signed a deal with the Russian space agency and Russia's leading spacecraft builder Energiya that could put a station in orbit by 2004. MirCorp once had similar plans - complete with a hoped-for stock market listing-- to turn Russia's aging Mir space station into a money-spinning cosmic hotel, before Moscow sent it to earth in a fireball last year. The company, which is based in Amsterdam and is 60 percent owned by Energiya, had also set up a deal to blast a U.S. game show contestant into space.

METEORITE SEARCH - a fireball was spotted in the Western skies on August 17th. Reports were of a white ball described as up to 40 times brighter than the moon. Data from an acoustic tracking system at the Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico suggest the meteor weighed roughly a ton, by far the largest and brightest they've ever had come down in Colorado. It plummeted toward earth at 11.25 miles a second.


AUGUST 2001:

ASTEROIDS - A newly discovered asteroid whose orbit around the Sun had only been tentatively investigated was rumored last weekend to be on a collision course with Earth. As with similar cases in recent years, further scientific observations showed the asteroid, called 2001 PM9, poses no threat.

Picture a soccer ball as tall as a house. Now picture it blowing around the surface of Mars - rolling over boulders with the greatest of ease. That's the type of probe NASA is looking at sending to the red planet.

Several private groups see the Moon as high-end entertainment - On the frontlines hoping to cash in on making the Moon a fun zone is LunaCorp of Fairfax, Virginia. The breed of android that LunaCorp wants to offer can conduct telepresence exploration on auto-pilot. Back on Earth, this all-encompassing image beamed through space will surround ticket-holding visitors at science centers and planetariums, immersing them in a full-body encounter with the Moon.

"NASA is scheduled to launch Genesis, a major new mission to study solar eruptions. With all the activity flaring from the sun, scientists say, the Genesis spacecraft is blasting off just when Earth's high-tech tools need it most. Last April, the largest explosion ever observed in the solar system sent a burst of energy from the sun that overwhelmed sensors on government satellites, prompting warnings by the National Oceanographic and Atmospheric Administration. Afterward, several commercial flights over the poles were grounded and radio communication blackouts were reported. Hundreds of objects circling the globe sank into lower orbits as the atmosphere warmed and expanded because of disruptions in the Earth's magnetic field."

Turkish pilots encountered a UFO over the Aegean Sea.


JULY 2001:

A team of international researchers said they have found what could be the first proof of life beyond our planet - clumps of extraterrestrial bacteria in the Earth's upper atmosphere. Although the bugs from space are similar to bacteria on Earth, the scientists said the living cells found in samples of air from the edge of the planet's atmosphere are too far away to have come from Earth.

One of the first astronauts to ride the space shuttle called for a greater push to put people on other planets -- or else the human race could perish when a cataclysmic disaster strikes Earth. He says it is only a matter of time before Earth suffers a catastrophic event that could kill off most species. Humans could fall to a meteor - similar to the one some believe killed off the dinosaurs - or to a super volcano.


JUNE 2001:

Solar planes - NASA is planning a series of tests flights of an experimental, unmanned flying wing that is designed to run on solar power and cruise for days at a time at an altitude of 100,000 feet, more than three times higher than commercial jets fly.

Astronomers and tourists are flocking to Zambia for the first solar eclipse of the millennium and police are tightening security ahead of the June 21 spectacle.

Encounter 2001 is working to build an unmanned spacecraft, fill it with DNA samples and messages from up to 4.5 million people, then blast it beyond the solar system. The company hopes to launch its spacecraft in late 2003. For $50, people can have their digitized photos and messages as well as hair samples placed on the spacecraft.

EARTHLINGS PLAN TO SEND ALIENS TO MARS - A Martian invasion could take place as early as 2007 - but it will be Earth invading the Red Planet, instead of the other way around.


MAY 2001:

Earth's moon might be a biological preserve, a celestial cemetery where protolife or fossil extremophiles are awaiting discovery in volcanic shadowed sites.

Is there a space tourism market? A new NASA-funded study has looked into a crystal ball, peering toward the 2010-2030 time period. Kelly Space & Technology forecasts passenger traffic for suborbital flights at 10,000 people from 2010-2010 into 2020. Orbital trips would see 4,000 tourists taking flight above Earth in the 2015-2025 time frame.

Like a coincidence culled from one of his novels, on the day writer Douglas Adams, 49, died from a heart attack, the Minor Planet Center announced the naming of asteroid "Arthurdent," after a character created by the late British author. In 1978 Adams created The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy series of books, radio programs and television shows. A common theme were the strange space travels of a mild-mannered Earthling called Arthur Dent who was rescued from Earth just before it was destroyed to make way for a hyperspace bypass.

Humans could venture to Mars in 20 years or less, NASA chief Daniel Goldin says. NASA plans to launch a precision lander spacecraft toward Mars in 2007, with Martian samples to be collected and returned to Earth by 2009 to 2011.

A group of about 20 former government workers, many of them military and security officials, have stepped forward to say they had witnessed evidence of aliens and unidentified flying objects and called for congressional hearings about such sightings. Many believe that the United States and other governments have known about UFOs for at least 50 years and have been keeping the information secret. There are some 400 witnesses who claim to have firsthand experience with UFO sightings or alien evidence, and are willing to testify before Congress.

Space vacations - the next big thing. Several companies are investing millions and promising service on "floating hotels in the sky" in the later half of the decade. Frommer's has already published a travel guide to the moon. And the Rochester Institute of Technology now offers a 10-week, two-credit course in space tourism development.

Astronomers hear whispers of the 'music of creation' - Using scientific measurements taken from a balloon floating high above the Earth, scientists believe they've found evidence of "notes" in the sound waves dating back to just after the Big Bang that created the universe.

Thanks to the bullying effects of massive stars, young planets may have a hard time growing up, a new study suggests. That could mean other planets -- and the possibility of other life -- might be more rare than we thought.

A Near-Earth Asteroid that passed our planet in September appears to be a binary space rock. amateur video of the asteroid racing through the sky on October 2nd.

Scientists recently revealed the way meteorites reach the Earth, saying their paths were influenced more by the sun than cosmic collisions. How meteorites, or asteroid fragments, come to collide with the Earth has been the subject of scientific debate for some 200 years. Previous theory held that asteroids, which exist in a belt between Mars and Jupiter, collided, ejecting meteorites into regions in the asteroid belt called orbital resonances. Within those regions the gravitational fields of Jupiter and Saturn acted on the meteorites, sending them into new paths that might intersect the Earth. But know it is believed that differential warming and emission of heat by asteroid fragments in the asteroid belt cause them to drift into orbital resonances over time. "Essentially, the "afternoon" side of the rotating body (asteroid) is warmer than the "morning" side, so the re-radiation of the Sun's heat produces a small net force across its path.


APRIL 2001:

Preparing for the next billion years - What will happen to Earth as the moon, sun and stars evolve?

Conversing With Aliens - some ideas of what conmmunication with extra-terrestrial life would be like.

A newly presented mathematical argument suggests that the birth of Homo sapiens was guided by catastrophic asteroid or comet impacts, which created climate conditions that competing species, frankly, couldn't handle. It also holds that our human ancestors avoided early elimination by the statistical skin of their rotting teeth. According to the study we are alive due to cosmic luck rather than our genetic makeup. Populations of hominids and early modern humans were extremely small. "Had any of these impacts occurred in the proximity of these population groups, we might also have gone the way of the dodo."

The British Flying Saucer Bureau is closing after chronicling UFO activities for nearly 50 years - because of a sharp decline in the number of reported UFO sightings. The group, which once had 1,500 members worldwide, used to receive at least 30 reports a week of sightings of unidentified flying objects, but they had now virtually dried up.

The Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) system has just installed a three-eyed monster of a camera to scan the heavens for asteroid threats to earth. The new camera can collect three times more data and survey 1.5 times more sky than the present NEAT camera. The NEAT program has a proposed goal of detecting 90 percent of all large, near-Earth asteroids by 2010.

Looking forward to a future in space.

Astronomers have drawn up a map showing the galactic "street" where extra-terrestrials are most likely to live. They have identified a "habitable zone", consisting of a thin ring of stars covering one percent of the Milky Way.

Using metal from outer space, Northwestern University Professor Greg Olson and his students are planning to make a sword tough enough to slay a dragon. They will extract iron from a meteorite and use computers to cook up a recipe for super-strong steel. The 3-foot, double-edge blade will look like the sword Beowulf wielded in his epic battle with the dragon.


MARCH 2001 -

A faint in-bound comet, Comet Linear, discovered in January and due to become a nice observing target in June, seems to have "turned on" much sooner than expected. Following a major outburst this past week the comet was much brighter than expected. Observers around the world agree that something dramatic has happened to this comet.

The 200-ton meteor that blew up over the Yukon last year is turning out to be older than any other known meteorite, older than our planet, probably the oldest matter ever to come to Earth. It is unlike any of the other meteorites we have found on Earth.

A growing number of astronomers are asking that people start giving serious thought to how to deal with the threat of an impact on Earth. Researchers have made substantial progress in identifying larger near-Earth asteroids. They now are contemplating building a telescope that would allow them to spot smaller near-Earth asteroids - space rocks that could inflict substantial regional damage if they struck. Now it's time to focus on dealing with the threat - from identifying which official or agency gets the first phone call when a threatening object is identified to establishing plans for coping with the aftermath of an impact.

Doomsday Asteroid


FEBRUARY 2001 -

In what sounds like a purely fantastic voyage, a private U.S. group that boosts planetary exploration said it plans to use the power of light to sail a giant windmill-shaped contraption through space. The mission, called Cosmos 1, would begin with a sub-orbital test deployment of the solar sail in April and an orbital flight of several days, weeks or months toward the end of the year. The mission does not aim to travel between the stars or even between the planets, but merely to show that the technology exists that could make this possible in the future.

The poles of the sun's powerful magnetic field have reversed, signaling a time of peak solar activity that could spell trouble for planet Earth, astronomers said this week. The bipolar flip did not take astronomers by surprise. It takes place like clockwork on the sun, once about every 11 years around the time of solar maximum. Solar blasts heading toward Earth can stoke up beautiful auroras in the nighttime sky, and wreak havoc on communications satellites and electrical power grids.

Starquakes and sunquakes are shaking in the Milky Way, and astronomers have mobilized observatories all over the world into a single network to measure the shakes much as geologists and seismologists measure quakes on the surface of the Earth.

Future thinkers at NASA have plotted out the goal of safe, effective and affordable 50- to 100-day human missions beyond low Earth orbit by 2010. That is to be followed, five to 10 years later, by 300- to 1,000-day treks of crews into deep space.

Meteor burst communications is one of the best-kept secrets in the communications industry. For the past 50 years, meteor burst systems have used the ionized trails of evaporating space rocks as a poor man's satellite, bouncing radio signals off them to receivers located more than 1,000 miles away. Meteor burst is cheaper than satellites and more reliable than cellular technology, but it has its downsides: it's slow, and only works in brief spurts with delays of seconds or minutes between transmissions. The military likes meteor burst technology because it can work in an upper atmosphere fouled by nuclear blasts and even through the Aurora Borealis, which is pretty but interferes with most radio communications. If all of the nation's satellites were knocked out, say be terrorists or nuclear war, the government could still beam important messages off meteor trails.

An international team of researchers announced findings in the subatomic world that, if proven accurate, could upset a basic set of laws that scientists use to describe the physical world. The potential change in thinking would force cosmologists to reconsider the origin, evolution and daily operation of the universe. The finding could mean that new and strange types of physics might be possible. One idea that could benefit from the possible upheaval in thinking is called supersymmetry, a theory that predicts the existence of companion particles for all the known particles in the universe. These companion particles, while never before seen, would not surprise most theorists, who have long suspected that "empty" space is actually a sea of virtual particles that appear and disappear almost instantaneously.

JANUARY 2001:

Russian scientists warned that 38 asteroids will hurtle Earthwards in 2001, some passing the planet as near, or as far as, 1.84 million kilometres away. But they scotched fears of planetary debris causing earthquakes, tidal waves and other global catastrophes, saying close encounters of the asteroid kind were not a reason for panic.

Jan. 26th - An airport in southern Siberia was shut down for an hour and a half when an unidentified flying object (UFO) was detected hovering above its runway, the Interfax news agency reported.

Jan. 25th - In Canada a mysterious light steaked across the sky. The fireball was visible from Edmonton to Calgary. Astronomers are trying to determine if a fireball that streaked across the sky before exploding sent any meteorite particles falling towards the Earth.

Jan. 24th - Six orange UFOs were seen this week in Malaysia. 38 orphans saw the objects, so did their religious teachers and villagers from neighboring Kampung Pintu Pandang. The UFOs appeared in a straight line and were seen for about 10 minutes before they disappeared. A spokesman for the Kuala Lumpur International Airport later said that no such objects were traced.

In 2005 U.S. scientists aim to blast a comet with a copper projectile to learn about the formation of the solar system as part of a $270 million project funded by NASA. The project, called Deep Impact, will cause an explosion capable of destroying a small town.

Jan 10th - Police detained eight people in Turkey for shooting at the moon during the lunar eclipse. Mehmet Baris, the chief mufti or religious official in Kahramanmaras, said the men shot out of fear. "But they can"t scare the moon by shooting at it," he said. The newspaper said that police were also on alert in the southeastern city of Batman where others shot in the air during the lunar eclipse.

The idea of a national virtual observatory, offered as part of the U.S. space community's plan for the next decade, could become reality within five years at an estimated cost of $25 million and a global version could be in place by 2010. Anyone with a computer modem and a clever idea may be able to explore the cosmos in the virtual space observatory - online.

DECEMBER 2000:

When humans finally decide it's time for life on Mars, the vegies will be ready. A New Zealand scientist has grown asparagus and potatoes for the first time in soil taken from Martian meteors. Not only did they grow, but the Martian samples outgrew their earthly equivalents.

Christmas Day will be extra special this year. Weather permitting, people all across North America will be able to watch the Moon glide across the low December Sun, creating a partial solar eclipse. This event will be visible throughout nearly all the inhabited parts of North America (except Alaska and the Yukon), as well as from most of Mexico and the Caribbean. To find out when the eclipse will occur, how much of the Sun will be covered from your location, and how to observe it safely, see Sky & Telescope's Web site.

Some astrology buffs already have linked the Christmas eclipse to the prophecies of Nostradamus and this year's drawn-out election discord. Astronomers scoff at that kind of talk, but there is something primal about witnessing even a partial eclipse.
The next upcoming eclipses:
• Jan. 9, 2001: Total lunar eclipse visible from Africa, Asia and Europe.
• June 21, 2001: Next total solar eclipse, with prime viewing from Africa.
• Dec. 14, 2001: Annular solar eclipse, with best viewing from Central America.
• Aug. 21, 2017: Next solar eclipse with totality visible from continental U.S.
• Dec. 25, 2307: Next solar eclipse after 2000 to occur on Christmas Day.

This week's Geminid meteor shower peaks on December 13th and plenty of Geminid meteoroids are already streaking through Earth's atmosphere. You can listen to their eerie-sounding radio echoes in realtime.

Striking new pictures of the surface of Mars show evidence that the planet was once a lot more like Earth with layers of sedimentary rock that scientists say were likely to have been formed in large lakes or oceans. The latest pictures of Mars can be found on the Malin Space Science Systems Web site.

Future Missions to Search for Earth-like Planets - Several space missions have been dreamed up to search for Earth-like planets around other stars. Some may remain dreams, others are closer to reality. Six of the more promising candidates.

A team of geologists examining meteorites found on Antarctica and the Lybian desert have discovered evidence of a monstrous "cataclysm" from space that bombarded both the moon and the Earth nearly 3.9 billion years ago, around the time life on Earth is thought to have begun.

Resembling a swirling witch's cauldron of glowing vapors, the black hole-powered core of a nearby active galaxy appears in a NASA Hubble Space Telescope image.

NOVEMBER 2000:

Nature will give North America a rare treat: a partial solar eclipse on Christmas Day, the first eclipse on that holiday in more than 40 years. The last Christmas eclipse occurred in 1954. The next won't happen for more than 300 years - in 2307.

Water may be on the surface of the Red Planet. New images, taken from space show new evidence of gullies on the surface of Mars that may have been carved by the passage of streams.

The International Committee Against Mars Sample Return warns that
bringing samples back from Mars could infect Earth with an
interplanetary plague. NASA hopes to accomplish a Mars rock retrevial
within the decade.

It is impossible to guarantee that Russia's Mir space station will sink in the Pacific Ocean rather than hit land, a Russian space official says. Some parts of the aging station's component modules would not burn up in the atmosphere and would fall to earth, over a swath some 8,000 kilometres long and 200 kilometres wide, he said. It is quite possible that steel spherical bottles, parts of large module frames, gyros and rocket engines would hit land. Current plans are for Mir to reenter earth's atmosphere in February of 2001.

Forecasting the intensity of the annual Leonid meteor shower has gone from luck to precise science, and two astronomers who predicted 1999's shower with unprecedented accuracy call for a modest display on Nov. 17 and 18. When the storm peaks Saturday, Nov. 18, viewers can expect to see around 100 meteors per hour.

The international space station is a concept that has taken decades to happen. But astronauts and scientists see a rosy future now that it's finally occupied and even has a name.

While the "pickings" might be good for mining the Moon or crushing up asteroids, creating markets and making money on the space frontier currently is more prophet than profit.

One day after sounding an alert, astronomers said additional data had eliminated any chance that a recently discovered space object would collide with Earth in 2030. The revised forecast shows the object passing no closer than 3 million miles.

Asteroid-watchers announced that a newly detected object has a 1-in-500 chance of hitting Earth in September 2030, with the possibility of setting off a blast 100 times as powerful as the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Based on its brightness, astronomers are guessing that the object is 30 to 70 meters (yards) wide - an impact would have local consequences, but not worldwide. Preliminary calculations favor the Southern Hemisphere as the area of impact.

OCTOBER 2000:

In a discovery that has scientists rethinking where they came from, a groundbreaking study has revealed that living organisms could emigrate through the solar system in the relatively cool womb of a space rock, spreading life with little more fanfare than the arrival of a shooting star.

Russian Astronaut sees space station Mir's demise as paving way for a new era in space.

By using synthetic gases, Mars, the Red Planet, could be returned to the habitable state it once was billions of years ago. A remake of Mars could be accomplished within 50 to 100 years.

When does an asteroid become a planet? That question has astronomers debating the status of their latest discovery - tucked secretively between Neptune and Pluto, is a newfound sphere of rock and ice that could be our 10th planet.

Is a homemade rocket the future? - For NASA, the high cost of space travel is an enormous barrier, but the answer may lie in a rocket made from parts bought at a hardware store.

China's budding space program plans to explore the moon for commercially useful resources and hopes one day to take part in an international expedition to Mars, members of the secretive program said. China sees manned space flight as key to securing its international stature and economic survival. A test flight is scheduled for November.

"NASA engineers are developing an intelligent robot snake that may help explore other worlds and perform construction tasks in space. The robot serpent, able to independently dig in loose extraterrestrial soil, smart enough to slither into cracks in a planet's surface and capable of planning routes over or around obstacles, could be ready for space travel in five years, NASA engineers predict."


SEPTEMBER 2000:

Asteroids Could Shut Down Earth - The danger of a catastrophic impact is so great that any private company incurring comparable risks would fail British safety standards, the Near Earth Objects Task Force said.

The Outer Space Treaty, signed by the United Nations in 1967, bans any nation from laying claim to the moon. But the treaty does not say individuals cannot own lunar land. That opened the door for Dennis Hope, who l aid claim to the entire land surface of the moon 20 years ago, under the Homestead Act of 1862. Hope notified the governments of the U.S. and the then-Soviet Union, as well as the United Nations General Assembly. They did not object or officially dismiss his claim, and so the celestial squatter proceeded to sell acreage of the moon and 8 planets. MoonEstates.com says there are presently 300,000 Earthbound owners of lunar land, some of the more illustrious being former presidents Ronald Reagan and Jimmy Carter, John Travolta, Nicole Kidman, and some cast members of Star Trek.

"Science-fiction writer Arthur C. Clarke was once asked when the "space elevator," a notion he helped to popularize, would become a reality. Clarke answered, "Probably about 50 years after everybody quits laughing." Nowadays NASA scientists are taking the idea seriously. In fact, they've compiled plans that could turn the space elevators of science fiction into a real-life mass transportation system to space by the end of the 21st century.

Mysterious star defies classification.A strange star appears to be enshrouded by dust with strings of beads radiating from it, say Hubble telescope scientists.

Engineers have demonstrated a new technology that could take flight high over Mars in future years. The work may lead to a platoon of balloons drifting through the thin Martian atmosphere. They would relay back to Earth outstanding aerial views of a variety of Red Planet wonders.


AUGUST 2000:
"Russian doctors have given Santa Monica, Calif., businessman Dennis Tito a clean bill of health for space travel, bringing him closer to becoming the first "space tourist." MirCorp, a private company arranging for Tito to fly to the Mir space station in mid-2001, said that Tito will now start training at Russia's Star City space facility. Tito has agreed to pay approximately $20 million to blast off with two Russian cosmonauts and fly for brief a visit to Mir.

NASA is making great strides with its menu for a 1000-day mission to Mars. A team has spent two years concocting 200 recipes from plants which can all be grown in a hydroponic greenhouse on the Red Planet. Find out what gastronomic delights the space agency has got up its sleeve.

NASA WILL SEND YOUR NAME TO MARS for free! And you get a really nice certificate that you can print out commemorating your name journeying to Mars on the 2001 Lander.

Scientists this week released a preview of the demise of our own solar system: a time-lapse movie showing a star, similar to our sun, ejecting gas during a late stage of its life.

Scientists hope to have created the first atoms of antimatter by the end of this year. It could give them a clue as to why this universe exists. Some scientists dream of harnessing this energy to send spacecraft to other solar systems orbiting distant stars. However, most believe that antimatter propulsion and other practical applications of the mirror world is a long way off.

"From a technological point of view," said Mars Society President Robert Zubrin, "we are much better prepared today to send humans to Mars than we were to send people to the moon in 1961 when John F. Kennedy started the program." In opening remarks, Zubrin said that if the next president showed that same Kennedy zeal, vision and courage, " we could have people on Mars in 2008."

NASA announced plans to launch two large scientific rovers to the red planet in 2003, rather than the original plan for just one. A striking new video of the planned Mars 2003 rover mission.

The Christian Association of Stellar Explorers (CASE) is mending the rift between science and religion. "We believe God created everything in the universe, by whatever means or method," says founding member and club president Patrick C. Carr. "After that, science is a perfectly acceptable way of learning how the universe works."

Scientists are planning a $240 million grab-and-run mission at three asteroids using a hovering spacecraft that will collect material at space rocks the way a hummingbird gathers pollen at flowers. The spacecraft then will rocket that asteroid material to Earth.

JULY 2000:

NASA has unveiled its plans for a 2004 mission to the Red Planet. The next explorer, called the Mars Exploration Program Rover, will parachute into the planet's atmosphere, bounce about 12 times in an air bag, and roll up to a half-mile to a stop. The airbag will deflate and retract and the petal-like panels of the spacecraft will open, revealing the 300-pound roving explorer. The mission will last 90 days and the robot is scheduled to touch down in January 2004.

Beware - the next giant asteroid belt is overdue and its serious enough to wipe out 10% of the world's population.

If investment visionaries have their way, the 21st century Earth's moon is going to be dotted with robot factories, underground cities, power towers, tourist stopovers, science stations, even lunar burial sites. David Schrunk, a former aerospace engineer and founder of the Science of Laws Institute in San Diego, California, said that a major milestone in coming years will be the manufacturing of a solar cell from lunar surface materials. "That will be as significant as fire, the computer, or the steam engine."

Walter Anderson is an eccentric libertarian billionaire who tried and failed to build his own spaceship and who recently leased the Russian space station Mir for $200 million a year. Anderson plans to sell space vacations and produce a TV show modeled on Survivor in which contestants compete to become astronauts. (New York Times Magazine, July 23)

NASA has designed the next generation of robonauts that have seeing eyes, a head, arms and, best of all, dexterous hands.

Comet LINEAR S4 is making its way into the constellation Perseus and is visible only in the wee hours of the morning. As it climbs up the night sky toward the North Star, it will soon be visible all night long. Its peak of brightness, when you are likely to have the best chance of seeing it, is expected to come around July 23.

The effect of sun and moon on fishing .

JUNE 2000:

The crust of the planet Mars may hold two to three times more water than scientists had previously believed.

June 21, 2000 - it will be the brightest comet since Hale-Bopp graced the heavens three years ago.

Physicists suspect that we might be surrounded by a parallel universe of mirror matter, where mirror particles assemble themselves into mirror galaxies, mirror stars and mirror planets--even mirror life. And two scientists will soon try to get a first glimpse into this mirror world.

"Within the next 50 years, flights into space will be as common as business trips from New York to Tokyo. Space probes will be propelled into the outer reaches of the solar system not by rocket fuel, but by massive laser beams. Science satellites will stop at asteroid "gas stations," where mining ships will be ready to fill them with fuel converted from the asteroids' innards. "

NASA has no more plans to send spacecraft to the moon, although a handful of commercial companies are interested in launching their own probes to transmit lunar images for entertainment purposes. Japan plans to launch a probe in 2003 to map the moon.

LunaCorp, the small company with big plans for moon exploration, announced Thursday that it is teaming with RadioShack to send robots to Earth's pockmarked satellite to pave the way for human settlement. The nation's largest retailer of consumer electronics will inject about $1 million between now and the end of the year to help LunaCorp get closer to its 2003 mission to send a robot rover to the moon to confirm that ice exists at its poles.

MAY 2000:
May 25 — An orbiting telescope the size of a school bus will begin plunging through Earth's atmosphere in the next few days. NASA will destroy the observatory intentionally. The agency fears that if one of the two remaining gyroscopes fails, it might not be possible to control where the pieces of the craft — some as heavy as a ton — will crash into Earth, significantly increasing the risks to people on the ground. One NASA study indicates that the chances of a human fatality from an uncontrolled descent would be one in 1,000.

Crystal balls rarely have anything to do with science, but soon NASA researchers will be using a set of quartz spheres to examine one of the last, untested portions of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity. The spheres make up four extraordinary gyroscopes heading for Earth orbit on board the Gravity Probe B mission in 2002 to measure the twisting and compression of space and time around our rotating planet.

In only 10 years, scientists could develop molecule-sized machines capable of building new space outposts for humans to colonize, according to some futuristic thinkers. 'There used to be a saying in aerospace that if God had intended for us to go to space, he would have given us more money,'' joked Thomas McKendree, referring to the steep cost of traditional space launches. ''Molecular nanotechnology will produce a real revolution. God does intend for us to go to space.''

The planets Venus and Jupiter will pass less than 42 arcseconds apart on May 17. Because the pair is so close to the Sun, only the Solar and Heliospheric Observatory will have a good view of the close encounter, which is similar to the "Christmas Star" conjunction of 2 BC. FULL STORY

An alignment of the Sun, the Moon and the five brightest planets with the Earth has arrived without the disasters predicted by some doomsayers.

UC-Berkeley students suggest life on 'red planet' may exist.

APRIL 2000:
A handful of small U.S. space companies are plotting a return to the moon, triggering their own version of a 21st-century style lunar race. "The companies, mostly start-up ventures, are busy trying to pull together both the technological know-how and the money to send spacecraft into lunar orbit or land upon on the moon's surface. At stake is more than just bragging rights. The companies believe a moon mission can yield profits, mostly in the entertainment and information arenas."

Exploding star picture preview's Sun's future

"Virtual telescopes" will herald perhaps the greatest revolution in the history of astronomy. Researchers at Microsoft are working on an ambitious Internet database that will make the data from massive surveys of the cosmos available to anyone with a Web browser. In the next five years most of the major Earth- and space-based telescopes will start making their data available in gigantic online databases. At the same time, vast archives of older, photographic plates of the cosmos are being digitized in an attempt to make most of the astronomical data gathered in the last century available in digital format.

By the year 2005, NASA expects to have a fleet of 30 Earth-science satellites circling the planet.

Scientists at NASA are developing a plane that looks set to fly higher than any aircraft has flown before and stay up in the air for months. Revolutionary Plane Could Fly Non-Stop for a Year. The pilotless plane named Helios will be powered by solar cells during the day; at night a new energy storage system that includes fuel cells will take over. NASA's initial target is a 96-hour non-stop flight in 2003. The plane has already been built and the key breakthrough will come when the new storage system is added .

NASA's next spacecraft to Mars will probably come equipped with a flight data recorder, similar to those aboard commercial aircraft.

Los Alamos scientist Mark Tilden, a self-proclaimed "robobiologist", imagines a horde of what amounts to robotic ants swarming over a lunar landing site, preparing the way for human habitation. They could do everything from cleaning up the pesky lunar dust to laying pavement and communication cables before the first settlers arrive. Now Tilden may get a chance to take the first step toward proving it's possible. One of his creatures may travel as cargo on the first unmanned commercial mission to the moon.

Saudi Arabia and Malaysia are about to be the next countries to enter orbit as it was announced that a Russian booster will launch those countries' first ever satellites later this year.

On Thursday, April 6, three planets and the thin crescent Moon are going to put on a memorable sky show when the four converge inside a circle 9 degrees across. The grouping is just the prelude to a grander alignment of planets on May 5, 2000. Is doom at hand, as many mystics assert?

MARCH 2000:

Predicting solar storms that can fry satellite electronics, threaten astronauts and even shut down power systems on Earth.

Doomsayers charge that the gravitational effects of an upcoming planetary alignment will wreak havoc on Earth. Astronomers call the idea absurd. Scientists say 'no way' to solar tidal doom.

Predicting solar activity can be tricky but now space weather forecasters have a way to predict the future. Researchers using the orbiting Solar and Heliospheric Observatory have developed a new method to see what's on the far side of our star before it rotates over the Sun's limb to face Earth.

Possible Hypernova Could Affect Earth - the likely damage is not to humans directly, but to satellites and the upper atmosphere. Eta Carinae could blow anytime, or it could continue rumbling and spewing gas until the day, perhaps tomorrow, perhaps thousands of years from now, when it will suddenly let go with the most phenomenal display of violence ever witnessed by humans.

NASA says there is a 1-in-1,000 chance of casualties if the Compton Gamma-Ray Observatory makes an uncontrolled fall through the atmosphere. Weighing in at 35,000 pounds, the observatory is big enough that some pieces could survive the fatal plunge, potentially raining down over an area 16 miles wide by almost 1,000 miles long. Mission managers feared that the Observatory would have to be brought down in March because of a gyroscope failure, but now they are working on a way to control the 35,000-pound craft even if its two other gyros. At its current 318-mile-high (510-kilometer-high) orbit, atmospheric drag would force Compton into a free fall in three to 11 years if the spacecraft were left on its own. But considering the risk of injury, mission managers don't want to take any unnecessary chances.

FEBRUARY 2000:

No one can predict which month or week will be worst, but the sun is at the height of its 11-year cycle of storms, which means the Earth can expect several barrages of excess charged particles. NASA's Advanced Composition Explorer (ACE) spacecraft, orbiting a million miles (1.6 million km) from Earth, has a magnetometer and a particle detector aboard that can warn of the solar bursts about 45 minutes before they reach the atmosphere. Its information can help to protect not only electricity networks, but satellite users ranging from broadcasters to automated teller machines and even pager companies.

A group of investors has signed a $20 million deal to rent the aging Russian Mir space station orbiting 125 miles (200 kilometers) from Earth and turn it into an out-of-this-world holiday spot and commercial laboratory. Space tourists will be asked to fork out $20 million a head to visit the outpost which measures five school buses in size. It is expected to be able to accommodate five guests at a time.

Search for the end of space - Mexican - U.S. Team Builds One of World's Strongest Telescopes. From the top of a 15,060-foot extinct volcano, it seems like you can see forever. And that is exactly what a small group of Mexican and U.S. scientists expect to do with their joint venture to build one of the world's most advanced telescopes--so powerful and precise, they predict, that it will look to the end of space and the beginning of time. Some telescopes already in operation are bigger, and some are arguably stronger, but the scientists here say nothing combines the size, power, flexibility and precision of the telescope under construction on this mountain 110 miles east of Mexico City. It will pick up faint signals from the far edges of the cosmos, about 71,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 miles away.

Imagine watching live on your computer as a spacecraft flies over the poles of the moon to search for frozen water that could one day provide fuel for deep space voyages, or even sustain a human lunar colony. Boeing says it could happen by 2001.

Asteroids - Gold Mine or Pile of Rubble?

JANUARY 2000:

Mars Polar Lander Found? Jan. 26 — A mysterious radio peep — apparently from the direction of Mars — has prompted NASA to fire up a new round of tests to see if the wayward Mars Polar Lander might somehow be alive and operating.

Researches Say Flu Bugs Rain Down From Outer Space. Data shows that previous periods of high sunspot activity coincided with flu pandemics (large-scale epidemics). A roughly 11-year cycle of solar activity is increasing now and is expected to peak soon.

Lunar eclipse on Thursday, January 20th, will be visible across Americas. The eclipse is expected to be very bright, with the moon probably glowing a bright brick red.

"We can be reasonably certain about predicting what will occur in the heavens over specific periods. Sure, events can sometimes take us by surprise. Some comets, for example, have such incredibly slow orbits -- 5,000 to 100,000 years -- that every visit close to the sun seems like the first time around. But others, like Halley's, follow shorter, more predictable periods. Its next appearance in 2061 should be a winner. Its head will be bright and fuzzy, and its tail may span half the sky. Fortunately there are plenty of sky wonders on the way that won't require a 60-year wait. Top 10 list of the events for the early years of the 21st century - astronomical headliners that require nothing more than the naked eye.

Aurora Borealis 2000 is expected to be one of the best in recent history. And the Canadian Arctic will be one of the best viewing spots — barring any cloud cover.

"The next test of NASA's faster, cheaper, better approach to space exploration is set to take place next month when the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (NEAR) spacecraft closes in on and then starts circling its target -- a huge chunk of space rock called 433 Eros. But as the probe draws a bead on its celestial prey, there's more head scratching and nail biting than usual. The reason? To date, it hasn't all been smooth sailing for NEAR, which is now getting a rare second chance to make good on its goals. NEAR is to circuit Eros for a year, zipping over the asteroid's surface in closer and closer flybys. The probe may even attempt a landing on the asteroid.

As the sun reaches the peak of its 11-year cycle of activity this year, scientists say they are closer to understanding the process and are more able to accurately predict the severity of solar storms. Space weather forecasts are becoming important as more people and satellites are launched into space, and the world increasingly depends on sensitive electronics that can be fried by particles and radiation emitted by the sun. Though researchers for years have noticed solar activity increases every 11 years or so, they have been unable to accurately predict the severity of the eruptions. The current cycle is expected to peak sometime in 2000.

What a way to start the official last year of the second millennium: An easy-to-watch total lunar eclipse on the night of Jan. 20-21. Viewers with the time, patience and clear sky will be rewarded with about 78 minutes of totality. In the early partial-eclipse phase, the moon starts crossing Earth's shadow, known as the umbra, at about 10:01 p.m. EST on the evening of Jan. 20. At 11:04 p.m., the moon moves into the totality phase, according to Espenak. At about 12:22 a.m., the lunar eclipse once again goes into a partial phase that lasts until about 1:25 a.m. How this lunar eclipse will appear is anyone's guess. Sometimes the moon becomes so dark it seems invisible, and at other times it turns red or orange. Since there has been no major volcanic activity recently, it is predicted that the moon will turn a bright red or orange.

DECEMBER 1999:

Lunar light show prompts fears of big tides. "Tide 2K" - a lesser-known hysteria wrought by fear of killer tides generated by the closest full moon in 133 years, occurring in ominous conjunction with the winter solstice and the approaching millennium. The winter solstice - when the sun appears to stop its southward movement, occurred Wednesday - as did the full moon, which shone brighter and appeared larger than normal because of its relative closeness to the earth. The U.S. National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration says that there won't be any coastal flooding or record-breaking tides due to the astronomical phenomena.

Thousands of families were being warned they may have to move out of their homes over Christmas as the South coast of Britain is hit by the highest tides in the region in living memory.
Doomsayers appear again, preaching celestial doom as millennium approaches.December, with the year's earliest sunsets, offers the longest star-watching nights, what may be 1999's best meteor showers and backyard views of such planets as Jupiter and Saturn. Saturn tips toward Earth just perfectly to showcase its rings, astronomers say. Inland amateur astronomers even are looking ahead to Jan.20, when North America will see its first total lunar eclipse in three years and the first after Y2K. There are speculations about a close lineup of the sun, moon and five planets that is coming in spring 2000. The lineup, scientists say, has absolutely no significance. And, to render it even more a nonevent, the sun will totally block the view from Earth. After astrologers saw a similar lineup in February 1524, their predictions fell through, and there were no floods, earthquakes or other catastrophes.

Will the upcoming solar maximum be the real Y2K bug, with the anticipated period of intense magnetic activity on the sun wreaking havoc on everything from cell phones to power grids? Probably not, a group of scientists working on predicting the outcome of the solar max said Thursday. Solar Max May Not Be As Meddlesome As First Thought However, post-Cold War manufacturing practices might also play a role in the increased risk. To cut costs, computer chips flown in outer space are rarely radiation hardened, as was routinely done until recently. That could make them more susceptible to flare-ups associated with the solar max.

Rethinking the Bethlehem star: Astrology and astronomy

Do you see what I see? - The Star of Bethlehem.

Scientists look to Jupiter's moon for possible life. Scientists have posited the possibility of life on Europa before. But new evidence from the moon, including photographs returned only last week from the Galileo spacecraft, show a "clement and comfortable" world where microorganisms may well have taken hold.

New theories about the star of Bethlehem "The dramatic astral phenomenon that the Bible says heralded the birth of Jesus has been a source of Christmas wonderment, and of scholarly controversy, for nearly 2,000 years. Was the star of Bethlehem a true miracle–a divine beacon sent to guide the gift-bearing wise men to the scene of the Nativity? Or could it have been a natural phenomenon–a comet, perhaps, or a supernova–whose appearance was interpreted at the time as a messianic sign? Or might the entire episode be, as some modern scholars contend, merely a pious legend rooted more in theology than in literal history?"

What Killed the Mars Polar Lander? 3 Possibilities - 1: The cruise stage didn't detach. 2: The engines were unstable. 3: The Mars landscape was hostile. It'll will probably be a long wait before anyone homes on one culprit. "I guess the best answer will come," ABCNEWS space consultant James Oberg says, "when a museum recovers the wreckage in a hundred years."

NASA, the space agency, is in serious trouble. Not only are its next two Martian landers nearly identical to the stricken craft, but there is also very little chance that engineers will ever discover what went wrong.

Quakes on pulsars follow the same power law as the stock market, traffic jams: Here's a hot stock tip -- the market, earthquakes, traffic jams, and magnetars follow the same power law. This oddity of the universe won't make you rich; it certainly can't be used to predict where the market is headed. But it follows a recent theory called self-organizing criticality.

New York Times Magazine, Nov. 28, surveys entrepreneurs' visionary ideas for outer space: bioengineered "space squid" that draw energy from the moons of Jupiter, a lunar mining camp, a "nanotube" elevator from Earth to a geostationary satellite, and an orbiting resort hotel with zero-g honeymoon suites.

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