Big asteroid has close encounter with Earth

This NASA radar image showing asteroid 2005 YU55 was obtained on November 7, 2011, at 11.45am PST (2.45pm EST/1945 UTC), when the space rock was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometres, from Earth.


A black asteroid as big as an aircraft carrier has zoomed past Earth, delighting astronomers who trained telescopes on the ancient body in hopes of learning more about its composition and origin.

With a diameter estimated at 400 metres, or about a quarter of a mile, Asteroid 2005 YU 55 is the biggest asteroid to make a close pass by Earth since 1976.

During its closest approach, which occurred at 6.28pm EST (2328 GMT) yesterday, it was inside the orbit of the moon, about 322,000km above the planet. It posed no threat to either.






Thousands of professional and amateur astronomers were tracking the asteroid with telescopes, seeking to learn more about what it is made of, how fast it spins and ultimately, where it came from.

“It was pretty easy to find,” astronomer Ronald Dantowitz, director of the student-run Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Massachusetts, told Reuters. “It’s moving differently than the stars are moving. It looks like a giant rock floating through space.”

With automated controls for tracking, the asteroid appeared to be fixed in position, while background stars were a blur, Dantowitz said. The asteroid, however, was moving at about 48,000kph.

Astronomers believe YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, nudged out of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter after a gravitational elbowing by Jupiter.

Computer models simulating the asteroid’s path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth or the moon during that time, said Don Yeomans with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

Astronomers do not expect it will be a threat beyond that time either but have not run the models beyond 100 years.

Asteroids are of interest to scientists trying to piece together how the solar system formed.

“It costs millions of dollars to send a spacecraft for a close encounter with an asteroid,” Dantowitz said. “Instead, this one is coming to us. It’s literally streaming through our backyard.”

YU 55 is believed to be one of the more common type, carbon-rich asteroids, albeit a large one. Its ancient rocks may contain water, metals and other materials that could be useful for space explorers.

NASA’s next human space venture beyond the International Space Station, a US$100 billion orbital research outpost flying about 385km above Earth, is a mission to an asteroid, targeted for 2025.

Astronauts offer pope unique view of Earth’s woes

A file photo from July 29, 2009 showing Space Shuttle Endeavour's payload bay with Earth in the background. Endeavour and space station crews gathered on May 21, 2011 for an unprecedented conversation with Pope Benedict.

The shuttle Endeavour and space station crews gathered today for an unprecedented conversation with Pope Benedict, who asked how the space programme can promote peace and if the astronauts pray while in orbit.

“I think it must be obvious to you how we all live together on one Earth and how absurd it is that we fight and kill each one,” the pope said.



“When you are contemplating the Earth from up there, do you ever wonder about the way nations and people live together down here, about how science can contribute to the cause of peace?” he asked,” he continued, via a televised link from the Vatican.

The pope added his personal wish for the recovery of Endeavour commander Mark Kelly’s wife, US Representative Gabrielle Giffords, who was shot in an January 8 assassination attempt that killed six and injured 12 others.

“Thank you for mentioning my wife, Gabby,” said Kelly. “We fly over most of the world and you don’t see borders, but at the same time we realise that people fight with each other and there’s a lot of violence in this world and it’s really an unfortunate thing.”

The shuttle commander agreed that people fight for many things, such as the ongoing struggle for democracy in the Middle East and for resources such as energy.

“The science and the technology that we put into the space station to develop a solar power capability, pretty much gives us an unlimited amount of energy and if those technologies could be adapted more on Earth, we could possibly reduce some of that violence,” Kelly said.

The pope also had a personal message for space station flight engineer Paolo Nespoli, whose mother died on May 2.

“How have you been living through this time of pain on the International Space Station? Do you feel isolated and alone, or do you feel united amongst ourselves in a community that follows you with attention and affection?” the pope asked, speaking in Nespoli’s native Italian.

“Holy Father, I felt your prayers and everyone’s prayers arriving up here,” Nespoli replied, also in Italian.

“My colleagues aboard the space station were very close to me at this important time, for me a very intense moment,” Nespoli said. “I felt very far, but also very close.”

Astronaut Roberto Vittori, also from the Italian Space Agency, demonstrated microgravity by flipping a coin given to him by the pope, a symbol of the Vatican’s involvement in the mission, the next-to-last for NASA’s space shuttle programme.

The coin will be returned to the pope after Endeavour lands, now scheduled for June 1.

“To live aboard the International Space Station, to work as an astronaut is extremely intense, but we all have an opportunity when the nights come to look out and, more, to look down at Earth. Our planet, the blue planet, is beautiful,” Vittori said.

“I do pray,” he added. “I do pray for me, for our families, for our future.”

The pope asked the astronauts about the environmental health of the planet, as viewed from space.

“On the one hand, we can see how indescribably beautiful the planet that we have been given is, but on the other hand we can really clearly see how fragile it is,” said NASA astronaut Ron Garan, a member of the live-aboard station crew.

“For instance, the atmosphere, when viewed from space, is paper-thin. And to think that this paper-thin layer is all that separates every living thing from the vacuum of space and is all that protects us is really a sobering thought,” Garan said.

What the astronauts find hopeful, Garan added, is the space station itself, a US$100 billion (RM301 billion) project of 16 nations that took more than a decade to build 355 kilometres above the planet.

“That just shows that by working together and cooperating, we can overcome many of the problems that face our planet,” he said.

Before the pope’s call, the Endeavour astronauts spent an hour surveying a 3.3-inch long section of the shuttle’s heat shield damaged by a debris impact during launch May 16.

The crew used the shuttle’s robot arm to sweep a sensor-laden boom over the damaged ceramic tile, located on the ship’s belly. NASA does not expect the damage to be a concern for re-entry, though the astronauts are trained to make repairs if it turns out to more serious than suspected.

Heat shield damage caused the 2003 Columbia accident, which killed seven astronauts.

Endeavour arrived at the space station on Wednesday to deliver the US$2 billion Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer particle detector and spare parts. The crew plans four spacewalks during their 12-day stay, the second of which is scheduled for tomorrow.

Russian spy Anna Chapman makes rare public appearance at cosmonaut ceremony

A Russian rocket with a U.S. astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts onboard blasted off successfully early Friday for the International Space Station, with flame-haired Russian spy Anna Chapman making an unexpected appearance at the cosmodrome to wave them goodbye.

The Soyuz TMA-01M was launched at the scheduled time of 5.10am from the Baikonur cosmodrome in the vast steppe of southern Kazakhstan.

The crew's relatives and supporters cheered when the Soyuz engines roared and the spaceship lifted off in a blaze of orange flames, making the ground shudder.

Russian engineers hugged and kissed one another after the craft shed its first stage and it became clear the launch was a success.

I spy: Miss Chapman was spirited away shortly after the launch

International Space Station crew member U.S. astronaut Scott Kelly waves before entering the Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft

Mike Suffredini, head of Nasa's space station programma who watched the launch from an observation point with his Russian counterparts, gave his thumbs-up to the launch: 'You can hear it all the way up.'

Scott Kelly and Russia's Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka are due to reach the orbiting laboratory in two days to begin their five-month mission.

They will join two U.S. astronauts and a Russian cosmonaut who have been at the station since June.

Chapman, who has avoided the public and the press since being deported from the United States in July, appeared at the farewell ceremony for the space crew.

She told a reporter that she had 'just arrived' and refused to answer any questions.

She then walked hastily to a guarded guest house near the launch pad accompanied by a burly man who blocked her from reporters.

An official with Russia's space agency, speaking on condition of anonymity, said Chapman was at Baikonur as an adviser to the president of FondServisBank.

The bank works with space industry companies and was handing out awards, the official said.
Chapman was one of 10 Russian spies deported from the United States.

Her sultry photos gleaned from social-networking sites made her a tabloid sensation.

Since returning to Russia she has kept a low profile. Last week, a trendy Moscow night club invited the media to a party to meet 'the head heroine of the spy scandal of the year, the Russian Mata Hari Anna Chapman.' But she did not show.

Kelly and the two Russians on their way to the International Space Station are flying in Russia's first all-digital Soyuz TMA-01M.

The overhauled Soyuz will allow a doubling of the launch rate of Soyuz spaceships, which will help maintain a crew of six aboard the space station when the Nasa shuttle fleet is retired.

Kelly, a New Jersey native, will be joined at the space station by his twin brother Mark, another Nasa astronaut who will fly a shuttle mission in February.

The Endeavor that will bring Mark Kelly to space is the next-to-last U.S. shuttle before Nasa wraps up 30 years of shuttle flight.

The International Space Station celebrates its 10th anniversary on Nov. 20. The mammoth station consists of 10 modules built by the United States, Russia, Canada, Japan and the 18-nation European Space Agency.

The Soyuz that will be used to ferry the next crew to the station in December was damaged during transportation by rail from the factory outside Moscow, and Russian space agency chief Anatoly Perminov said Thursday that the launch could be delayed by a few days if experts rule that the craft needs repairs.

Nasa's Suffredini said the United States is not worried about the incident and he expressed confidence that 'the Soyuz that flies out in December will be in excellent shape.'

A Russian Soyuz TMA-01M rocket with International Space Station (ISS) crew members - Russian cosmonauts Alexander Kaleri and Oleg Skripochka and US astronaut Scott Kelly - blasts off from a Russian-leased Kazakh Baikonur cosmodrome

Lady in red: The Russian spy was snapped at a farewell ceremony for some astronauts - and only briefly spoke to journalists to say 'I've arrived'

Service towers move away from the Russian Soyuz TMA-01M spacecraft carrying the International Space Station crew

US space crew lands in Kazakhstan

A Soyuz capsule carrying two Russian cosmonauts and a US astronaut back to Earth from the International Space Station landed safely in Kazakhstan today.

“The TMA module has landed,” an announcer at Mission Control outside Moscow said to applause from officials and relatives, relieved afer an initial attempt to return from the orbital outpost was foiled by an equipment problem yesterday.

Space officials said the capsule landed upright, on time and on target near Arkalyk on the central Kazakh steppe.

The Soyuz TMA-18 spacecraft is seen as it lands near the town of Arkalyk, northern Kazakhstan





Nasa TV showed technicians crouching over the hatch of the gumdrop-shaped capsule and helping Soyuz commander Alexander Skvortsov out in his spacesuit.

Nasa astronaut Tracy Caldwell Dyson was next out, smiling as she was carried to an armchair at the landing site and covered with a blue banket.

As cosmonaut Mikhail Korniyenko was extracted from the hatch in the top of the cramped capsule, Dyson chatted on a satellite phone.

Skvortsov, Dyson and Korniyenko spent nearly six months aboard the International Space Station.

They were to have returned yesterday, but the descent was aborted after latches holding their Soyuz TMA-18 craft to the orbital station failed to open, sending puzzled engineers scrambling for answers.

Nasa later said crew members rigged up a solution, attaching jumper cables to bypass a failed hatch sensor that was blocking commands, enabling the latches on the Russian-made Poisk module to open.

“Space station crew members installed a series of jumpers, bypassing a failed component that had prevented commands from being received by the Russian Poisk module’s docking mechanism,” the US space agency said on its website.

Dyson, Skvortsov and Korniyenko boarded the space station on April 4 after a flight up together in the same Soyuz that took them back to Earth.

It separated smoothly from the docking port this time and landed in Kazakhstan at 11:23 am local time (0523GMT).

US space shuttles have delivered some astronauts to the orbital outpost, but single-use Russian Soyuz craft will ferry all crews after the Nasa retires its shuttle fleet next year.

Earlier this year, Russia announced a halt to trips by millionaire space tourists to free capacity on Soyuz flights as the station has expanded to accommodate a permanent crew of six.

Russian Fyodor Yurchikhin and Nasa astronauts Doug Wheelock and Shannon Walker remained aboard the station as planned after Saturday’s departure.