nasa ames research center

11.22.09

Meet the Asteroid Hunters

A network of space buffs is learning to track asteroids more accurately than ever to predict exactly when and where the next killer meteorite will strike

By Gregory Mone Posted 09.30.2009 at 9:45 am 0 Comments

No Pebble Unturned: Astronomers and students from the University of Khartoum form a line half a mile wide to comb the Nubian Desert for tiny fragments of a rare asteroid. Peter Jenniskens/NASA Ames Research Center/SETI

On October 7, 2008,shortly before dawn in northern Sudan, a trucker named Omar Fadul el Mula was praying at a remote teahouse in the Nubian Desert when a bright flash lit up the landscape. It was as if the world had switched from night to day. He sprung to his feet, ran around the small building, and saw a huge trail of dust and debris stretched high in the sky.

[ Read Full Story ]

READ MORE ABOUT > asteroids, deep impact, earth, feature, nasa, nasa ames research center, October 2009, space

Wanted: Inventors to Build Space Elevator

A $50,000 contest aims to inspire new ways to hoist you and your luggage into orbit

By Patrick Di Justo Posted 10.11.2005 at 1:00 am 0 Comments

Space travel is relatively cheap compared with the cost of leaving Earth. The space shuttle, for instance, burns more than half a million gallons of fuel blasting into orbit, making every pound of payload cost $10,000. Now the nonprofit Spaceward Foundation, with a $400,000 grant from NASA, hopes to fast-track the technology to reach space on the cheap, without rockets.

[ Read Full Story ]

Hail Venus! Is There Life Here?

A small group of scientists have their heads in the hot clouds of the 2nd planet.

By Erik Baard Posted 01.10.2003 at 1:42 pm 0 Comments

If our solar system has a Hell, it's Venus. The air is choked with foul and corrosive sulfur, literally brimstone, heaved from ancient volcanoes and feeding battery-acid clouds above. Although the second planet is a step farther from the sun than Mercury, a runaway greenhouse effect makes it hotterindeed, it's the hottest of the nine planets, a toasty 900

[ Read Full Story ]

Sweet Mystery of Life, At Last I've Found You

It is possible that if it weren't for sugar-bearing meteorites, you wouldn't be here.

By Paul Beck Posted 03.26.2002 at 11:30 am 0 Comments

The Pop Sci Unscrambler: Making Hard Science a Little Less Hard

The Paper: Carbonaceous meteorites as a source of sugar-related organic compounds for the early Earth. Published in Nature, December 20, 2001.

The Author: George Cooper, et al.

The Gist: It is possible that if it weren't for sugar-bearing meteorites, you wouldn't be here.

[ Read Full Story ]