Nasa

In what could be called a three-hour space oddity , the International Space Station lost communication with NASA's ground control in Houston on Tuesday while the station updated its software. Its astronauts, two Americans, three Russians and a Canadian, were left sitting in a tin can far above the world, and there was nothing they could do. Luckily, the spaceship knew which way to go. Thanks to its quick, 90-minute orbit around the Earth, the crew members were able to occasionally check in with engineers on the ground as they passed over Russia and got directions on how to fix the problem.

MOSCOW - Without warning, a celestial object that NASA described as a "tiny asteroid" streaked above Russia's Ural Mountains early Friday before exploding, creating a shock wave that rattled buildings, shattered glass and injured hundreds of people. Many witnesses in Chelyabinsk said they saw a white trail across the sky and a bright flash and heard a loud explosion seconds before buildings in the eastern part of the city were jolted. Scientists said it was the largest such event in more than a century, since a blast that leveled 800 square miles of forest in 1908, the so-called Tunguska event, also in Siberia.

At a news conference Friday, NASA scientists said the object that exploded over Russia was a “tiny asteroid” that measured roughly 45 feet across, weighed about 10,000 tons and traveled about 40,000 mph. The object vaporized roughly 15 miles above the surface of the Earth, causing a shock wave that triggered the global network of listening devices that was  established to detect nuclear test explosions. The force of the explosion measured between 300 and 500 kilotons, equivalent to a modern nuclear bomb, according to Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environment Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. “When you hear about injuries, those are undoubtedly due to the events of the shock striking the city and causing walls to collapse and glass to fly, not due to fragments striking the ground,” Cooke said.

NASA's Twitter celebrity "Mohawk Guy" helped send a rover to Mars, but now he's landing at the White House, thanks to First Lady Michelle Obama, and he'll be rocking a brand new hairstyle for the occasion. Bobak Ferdowsi shot to fame the night the Mars Curiosity rover landed on the Red Planet, when his stars-and-stripes hairstyle captivated viewers worldwide. His faux-hawk even earned a shout-out from President Obama, who joked that he had toyed with the idea of trying a similar 'do. Now, the first lady has invited the 33-year-old Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer to be one of her guests at the president's State of the Union address tonight.

VANDENBERG AIR FORCE BASE -- A 19-story white rocket successfully lifted a NASA science satellite into orbit from Vandenberg Air Force Base, located northwest of Santa Barbara. The picture-perfect launch, which took place Monday at 10:02 a.m. PST, occurred at the base's Space Launch Complex-3 along the Pacific Ocean. The Atlas V rocket, built by United Launch Alliance, boosted the Landsat 8 satellite about 410 miles above the Earth. The satellite's first signal was received 82 minutes into the mission at a ground station in Svalbard, Norway, the space agency said.

NASA's Curiosity rover has successfully drilled its first rock on Mars, officials at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory announced over the weekend. The drill's use is a Martian landmark -- the first time scientists have drilled into the surface. It's a key moment for for the Mars Science Laboratory mission as well, marking a coming of age of sorts for the rover. Since landing on the Red Planet on Aug. 5, Curiosity has tested each of its instruments, from its many cameras to its laser-zapping instrument called ChemCam, and the drill's use is the grand finale of the show.

Most Los Angeles Times business reporters have Twitter accounts that you can follow if you're interested in their areas of coverage. Here are some examples of topics that they are Tweeting about today. 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Mayan apocalypse? Avoided. Y2K anarchy? Suppressed. Gigantic asteroid hurled by the sun's gravity toward Earth? Well … Close but no cigar. Better go to Vegas, Earthlings, you're on a winning streak of avoiding disaster. In what NASA officials are calling the closest near-Earth fly-by in at least a generation, Asteroid 2012 DA14 , is expected to buzz by our blue marble on Feb. 15. The 150-foot space rock will cross from south to north in the afternoon, coming within 22,200 miles of Earth.

Scientists have taken the highest resolution images of the sun's atmosphere ever, and it offers an explanation for the decades-old mystery of why its outer most layer is up to 800 times hotter than its surface. Using photos from the High Resolution Coronal Imager (Hi-C) that was flung into space in July, scientists observed small bands of magnetism near the star's surface twist, turn and braid together before snapping apart, releasing heat and energy flares that heated up the star's atmosphere.

Katherine LaNasa plays a deliciously hard-edged, evil wife in the new TV series “Deception,” but at home in her Venice bungalow, she showcases a soft side influenced by her native New Orleans. “Being from New Orleans completely dominates my sense of style,” said the actress, who's also starring in “Jayne Mansfield's Car,” the forthcoming film directed by Billy Bob Thornton. “There is a drama and a funk to New Orleans. It's the last place people play it safe. They celebrate the vibrancy of life.” Following her divorce in 2010, LaNasa moved to the 950-square-foot bungalow to be near her son and his ill father, Dennis Hopper.