Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
August 24, 2005 Pasadena, California - For twenty months now, the robotic explorer, Spirit, has been exploring the Gusev Crater on Mars, while its twin rover, Opportunity, has been exploring the Meridiana Planum. The two sites are 6,600 miles from each other in the equatorial region.
August 12, 2005 College Park, Maryland - This week geologists, chemists, physicists and planetary scientists from around the world gathered at the 9th International Asteroids, Comets and Meteors Conference in Brazil. One of the presentations was by Carey Michael Lisse, Ph.D., Prof. of Physics at the University of Maryland, and member of the Deep Impact Science Team. Dr. Lisse is Principal Investigator of Deep Impact spectral results from the Chandra X-Ray and Spitzer telescopes.
"It is bigger than Pluto!!!"
Astronomer Michael Brown of Cal Tech wrote at his website.
"And it's not planetoid 2003EL61 announced yesterday,"
also by Brown's group.
July 30, 2005 Pasadena, California - Brown had hoped to confirm the object's size before public disclosure. But late last night at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California, he made a rushed announcement after his astronomy team, including Chad Trujillo (Gemini Observatory), and David Rabinowitz (Yale University), learned that a hacker had broken into their data with the idea of making "the tenth planet" discovery public first. Beyond 2003UB313, it has no other name yet, but a "more melodious name" was submitted to the International Astronomical Union in Paris for approval. It might have "Lila" in it, since Michael Brown has a 3-week-old daughter named Lila.
July 10, 2005 Austin, Texas - Astronomer Anita Cochran has been working at the University of Texas since 1982. Now she is a senior research scientist and Assistant Director of the McDonald Observatory in Austin. She and several hundred scientists around the world are helping to analyze the spectral data from the Deep Impact crash with Comet Tempel I on July 3 to 4, 2005. That night, Dr. Cochran was in Hawaii at the Kech I telescope, the largest in the world, watching to see if a light flare at the moment the impactor hit the very dim magnitude 11 comet could be seen.
Schedule of Impact Events
- NASA TV coverage: Begins July 3, 8:30 p.m., Pacific Daylight Time, PDTFor NASA TV, click on: http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/nasatv/index.html
- Expected time of impact with comet:
July 3, 10:52 p.m. PDT
11:52 p.m. MDT
July 4, 12:52 a.m. CDT
1:52 a.m. EDT
- NASA Post-impact briefing: July 4, 1 a.m. PDT
- NASA Post-impact press conference: July 4, 11 a.m. PDT
June 23, 2005 Darmstadt, Germany - I learned something amazing today from the Mars Express Orbiter Spacecraft Operations Manager. He is Michel Denis based at the European Space Agency's office in Darmstadt, Germany. I was getting an update about the plans for the deep ground-penetrating radar on ESA's Mars Express Orbiter which was turned on for the first time at 3 p.m. Pacific. The amazing fact I learned was that a month ago on May 7th, the Mars Express Orbiter and NASA's two spacecraft, the Odyssey and the Mars Global Surveyor could have collided!
"In a CDC study to be published next month in July 2005, an estimated 10% of Americans who develop the most severe form of West Nile disease will have polio-like paralysis. Many patients are in their 30s to 50s. The growing paralysis problems are of great concern, as well as the death toll. Since 1999, CDC has counted more than 16,600 human cases and 654 deaths." - 060205 Earthfiles
June 21, 2005 Atlanta, Georgia - The Centers for Disease Control issued the following press release this week:
"I can't imagine anything more catastrophic effecting the human race today than a pandemic of H5N1 influenza around the world. ...Anywhere from 180 to 360 million people could die from this particular strain of virus."
- Michael T. Osterholm, Ph.D., University of Minnesota
June 2, 2005 Minneapolis, Minnesota -
West Nile Fever Virus
Dr. Henry Masur at the National Institutes of Health (NIH) in Washington, D. C., told Associated Press this week that the West Nile Fever Virus working its way through the United States is more virulent than its viral cousin in Europe, Asia and Africa and "has caused more cases of paralysis than there were in many years of polio." By 2005, it has spread to nearly every state.