the sky is falling . . .

[Mbukukanyau]

Well, That ozone thing can crash and burn for all I care.
Now the Mar's thingi is cool!!!

[2b2]

How Did We Get That Incredible Photo of Curiosity's Descent on Mars? - TheAtlantic
By Alexis Madrigal
Aug 6 2012, 12:38 PM ET

As the Mars Curiosity Rover descended through the atmosphere of Mars, humans on their couches weren't the only ones watching. The Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, NASA's Martian satellite, was also looking -- and taking pictures. Today, the MRO released an image of the rover descending, still attached to its parachute and before the heartstopping Sky Crane maneuvers. (below) You can see it up there on the upper left, labeled (1).

What you're looking at is a large parachute -- 16 stories tall, 50 feet in diameter, the largest ever flown outside the Earth-Moon system -- and beneath it, the one-ton rover with its "backshell" on. The parachute is on the upper right (rendering), labeled (2).

Finally, in the last panel (3), we see the full entry, landing, and descent sequence rendering. The MRO image is from about the middle of the overall maneuver, though it's difficult to tell if it was taken before or after the heatshield on the Mars-side of the rover package was jettisoned...

[2b2]

tho the first 360 degree panorama came out today (Link),

I wanted to share a picture found via Brenda Priddy on facebook:

[2b2]

Asteroid FlyBy: THIS FRIDAY! - space.com

The asteroid 2012 DA14 will fly extremely close to Earth on Friday, Feb. 15, but poses no risk of impacting our planet. It may, however, be visible in backyard telescopes if you know when and where to look, but will be a stargazing challenge, NASA says.

Discovered last year, asteroid 2012 DA14 is about half the size of a football field and will approach within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of Earth when it flies by during its close encounter.

Update, Tuesday, Feb. 12: Earth's close encounter with asteroid 2012 DA14 on Friday (Feb. 15) will be a record-setting flyby, the closest approach of a 150-foot (45 meters) space rock known in advance. Get the basics of the asteroid flyby in our new FAQ here, and find out exactly what would happen if 2012 DA14 hit Earth here...

this^ photo credit: bigthink.com

[2b2]

don't know if this is related to the asteroid but I'm suspicious...

100 injured after meteorite crashes in Russia - USA Today
2:05a.m. EST February 15, 2013

MOSCOW (AP) — A meteor streaked across the sky over Russia's Ural Mountains on Friday morning, causing sharp explosions and reportedly injuring around 100 people.

Fragments of the meteor fell in a thinly populated area of the Chelyabinsk region, the Emergency Ministry said in a statement...

...Reports conflicted on what exactly happened in the clear skies. A spokeswoman for the Emergency Ministry, Irina Rossius, told The Associated Press that there was a meteor shower, but another ministry spokeswoman, Elena Smirnikh, was quoted by the Interfax news agency as saying it was a single meteorite.

Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time (0320 GMT), leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.

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imho
space rocks are notoriously messy & this strike could be from rubble associated with the asteroid

[2b2]

NASA records giant explosion on moon as boulder crashes at 56,000 mph - FoxNews
By Clara Moskowitz
Published May 17, 2013

The moon has a new hole on its surface thanks to a boulder that slammed into it in March, creating the biggest explosion scientists have seen on the moon since they started monitoring it.

The meteorite crashed on March 17, slamming into the lunar surface at a mind-boggling 56,000 mph and creating a new crater 65 feet wide. The crash sparked a bright flash of light that would have been visible to anyone looking at the moon at the time with the naked eye, NASA scientists say...

...Scientists didn't see the impact occur in real time. It was only when Ron Suggs, an analyst at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., reviewed a video of the bright moon crash recorded by one of the moon monitoring program's 14-inch telescopes that the event was discovered...

...When researchers looked back at their records from March, they found that the moon meteor might not have been an isolated event.

"On the night of March 17, NASA and University of Western Ontario all-sky cameras picked up an unusual number of deep-penetrating meteors right here on Earth," Cooke said. "These fireballs were traveling along nearly identical orbits between Earth and the asteroid belt."

Though Earth's atmosphere protected our planet's surface from being hit by these meteors, the moon has no such luck...

..."We'll be keeping an eye out for signs of a repeat performance next year when the Earth-Moon system passes through the same region of space," Cooke said. "Meanwhile, our analysis of the March 17th event continues."

Read more: http://www.foxnews.com/science/2013/...#ixzz2TbpJzyGO

[ausrutherford]

Thats what the Moon is for. Rocks hit it, not us.