July 2nd radio show - Asteroids and Comets

The July 2nd radio show is now available here for your listening pleasure. Since June 30, 2008 was the 100th year anniversary of the Tunguska event, this show was devoted to the history of asteroids and comets impacting on the Earth. On this program, I talked about:

• Phoenix Mars Lander:
  • 24 June - returns sample to Optical Microscope for closer examination (link);
  • 25 June - first sample placed in the Microscopy, Electrochemistry, and Conductivity Analyzer, a wet chemistry laboratory (link);
  • 27 June - Preliminary results from MECA analysis indicate soil is similar to that found in upper, dry valleys in Antarctica, and Thermal and Evolved-Gas Analyzer (TEGA) which bakes its samples up 1800 degrees Fahrenheit almost done with its first analysis (link);
  • 29 June - Robotic arm reaches icy soil in a trench (link)
• News: Ulysses mission expected to end on July 1 (link); NASA begins development of a spacecraft to probe the Sun's corona called "Solar Probe+" (link); NASA expected to launch a prototype of a solar sail - a spacecraft which literally uses sunlight to move (link), recent book on the subject titled "Solar Sails: A Novel Approach to Interplanetary Travel" by Giovanni Vulpetti, Les Johnson, and Gregory L. Matloff; Lunar Cross Observation and Steering Satellite (LCROSS) passes major pre-launch tests (link; Herschel, next generation infrared telescope from the European Space Agency, passes acoustic and vibration pre-launch test; SOHO discovers its 1500th comet; Cassini celebrates 4 years around Saturn, completing its "prime mission", and now begins its extended mission (link); Congrats to Michael Keefe (Sciutate, MA), Matt Pleatman and Noan van Valkenburg (Bloomfield Hills, MI), and Ben Basalik (Collegeville, PA) for winning NASA's Cassini Scientist-for-a-Day contest; congrats to Jackson Warley (Colorado Springs, CO; 1st prize), Grace Nowadly (Williamburg, VA; 2nd prize), and Megha Subramanian (Hershey, PA; 3rd prize) for winning NASA's 50th Anniversary Essay Competition; congrats to Prof. Reinhard Genzel (MPE; UC-Berkeley) for winning the Shaw Prize for Astrophysics due to his group's measurements of stars orbiting the center of Milky Way, proving it is a black hole; congrats to the graduate students in Lockheed Martin's Engineering Leadership Development Program was setting the world amateur high-altitude balloon record (link); congrats to NASA's Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) team for winning the Robert J. Collier Trophy; congrats to the International Space Station for staying in orbit for 10 years; congrats to the scientists involved on the High-Resolution Soft X-ray Spectrometer (SXS) and the Global-Scale Observations of the Limb and Disk (GOLD) missions, chosed to be NASA's next Explorer programs; congrats to the recepients of NASA's Experimental Program to Stimulate Competitive Research (link); congrats to Fermilab, SLAC, NASA, and NIH for getting more money - needed to stave off layoffs at these facilities; NASA/Pixar introduce new WALL-E public service announcement; NASA introduces 50th anniversary card game (link)
• Calendar of upcoming Astronomy events in the greater New York / Poughkeepsie area
• Tunguska Event: Early Morning on 30 June 1908, a giant fireball and explosion was seen near Vanavara, Siberia, Russia which knocked down trees, blew down houses, but didn't leave a crater. While many different ideas were proposed, including aliens, anti-matter, and miniature black holes, it is now believed to have been an asteroid which broke up before it hit the ground. In the 2008 June 26 edition of Nature, there are articles discussing Tunguska, as well as past (Spaceguard) and future projects devoted to detecting Near-Earth Asteroids. On such project is NEOSSat, a Canadian satellite devoted to discovering such objects (link). Iowa State recently established Asteroid Deflection Research Center (ADRC) to study how to divert such an asteroid (link). Planet finder SuperWASP serendipitously observed brightening of Comet Holmes in October 2007 before it was first reported (link). Analysis of comet dust material falling to Earth discovered a new material (link), analysis of asteroid discovers chemical precursors of RNA and DNA (link), new analysis of an asteroid discovers it contains material from the very formation of the Solar System (link).

Please email or leave below any questions, comments, or concerns you might have. Thank you very much for listening.