A group of scientists, joined by a member of Congress, used the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska asteroid event this week to draw attention to their belief that the United States is not doing enough to defend the planet against the dangers posed by near-Earth objects.
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NASA’s new administrator, Michael
D. Griffin, faced the media Monday
for the first time since being confirmed by the Senate last week and
vigorously defended the Bush administration’s ambitious plan to send
astronauts to the moon and Mars.
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Astronomers have changed the controversial Torino Scale, which
categorizes the danger of an asteroid hitting Earth, to avoid
needlessly scaring the public.
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Astronauts preparing to launch on the first space shuttle flight
since the Columbia accident more than two years ago expressed
reservations Thursday about the feasibility of repairing a damaged
orbiter and safely flying it home.
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With the scheduled launch of the space shuttle Discovery weeks away,
NASA managers declared Tuesday that they were ready to fly, while
acknowledging that it was impossible to eliminate the risk of another
catastrophic accident like the one that claimed Columbia two years ago.
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In a sunlit gallery of the Museo Archeologico Nazionale in Italy,
astronomer Brad Schaefer came face to face with an ancient statue
known as the Farnese Atlas.
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Astronomers have for the first time measured the reflected light of
planets outside our solar system, a breakthrough that could advance
the search for habitable worlds in deep space.
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The Cassini spacecraft, which has been unveiling the secrets of
Saturn’s giant moon Titan, has found an atmosphere on a second moon
circling the ringed planet.
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President Bush on Friday announced his choice of Johns Hopkins
University physicist Michael
D. Griffin, a strong advocate of robotic
and manned space exploration, to become the new head of
NASA. If confirmed by the Senate, Griffin – head of the space
department at Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory – would
replace Sean O’Keefe, who led the space agency through three
tumultuous years that included the triumphant Mars rover missions as
well as the Columbia space shuttle disaster.
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Like an automobile passing through a dust storm, the Earth’s passage
through a giant cloud in space could have led to global freezing that
virtually wiped out life on the planet hundreds of millions of years ago.
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