With flawless precision, Mariner 4 dipped less than 10,000 km above the planet's surface and took 22 pictures. Mars was covered with desert sand and ancient craters. No cities. No canals. No Martians. No one would ever look at the red planet the same way again.
Most histories of the mission end right there, with Mariner 4 buzzing Mars - "the first spacecraft to visit the red planet" - and throwing cold water on a lot of good science fiction. But there's more to the story. After the flyby, something strange happened to Mariner 4, setting the stage for a 40-year mystery.
A meteor lit up the Hawke's Bay sky last night and burned up with a boom that rattled windows. "It was like an earthquake, but without the shaking," said one Akina woman. Maraekakaho woman Liz Wilson heard "the weirdest noise, like a V8 engine" at about 9.45pm. "We got in the car, as you do, and had a look around the place ... we so wanted to find a big, burning thing," she said. An Otane woman said her father saw a "huge, big fireball with a long tail" overhead and heading towards Elsthorpe.
If you are tired of thinking about global warming, terrorist attacks or contracting a deadly new virus, maybe you could get out of your rut by mulling over the possibility that some large celestial body may be on a collision course with our planet.
Last month, the asteroid 2004 XP14 passed some 268,873 miles (432,000 kilometers) from Earth. That distance is slightly greater than that between the Earth and the moon.
Astronomers called it "a close shave in the vastness of outer space."
"It was colored white, green and gold, and lights seemed to blow off it like it was a sparkler," said one observer, Andre Grønmo. "It looked like it was a comet, and it was around four- to five times larger than a plane, and it flew much faster."
A spectacular meteor shower might be in the offing late next summer, SPACE.com has learned.
It may not last very long, but could produce a bevy of bright, swift shooting stars for favorably positioned skywatchers. The prediction is found in a technical report, co-authored by two astronomers who are targeting Sept. 1, 2007 as the date for the potential display.
The meteors are called "Aurigids" because they appear to fan-out from the constellation of Auriga, the Charioteer.
It wasn't a satellite.
The U.S. Air Force Space Command, which tracks space movement over North America, said today there has not been a man-made object flying over the Edmonton and northern Alberta region since at least Tuesday.
So that rules out the possibility that a bright fireball seen over Edmonton in broad daylight was that kind of man-made object. A number of Edmontonians spotted a bright fireball low in the sky while driving northbound Wednesday shortly after 1 p.m.
Villagers in western India have begun worshipping rock fragments following a meteor shower, a report said Friday.
Residents in Gujarat state's Kutch region have been hunting for meteorite fragments after streaks of light were seen over three heavily populated districts late Monday, the Times of India daily said.
AHMEDABAD: Parts of Gujarat's Kutch region experienced what appeared to be a meteor shower, a private channel reported.
UPITue, 11 Jul 2006 12:00 UTC
STAVANGER, Norway -- A meteorite weighing about 4 pounds landed in western Norway during the weekend -- the second meteoritic impact in Norway within a month.
The meteorite, creating a crater about 10 inches deep, landed Sunday in the yard of a home, but caused no injuries or damage.
A Kiowa County man said he may have found what could be one of the largest meteorites ever reported.
Don Stimpson said he and Paul Ross were searching Ross' field recently with a giant metal detector when the device made so much noise they thought they'd found an old culvert. Instead, they began digging up pieces of meteorite. "We dug and dug and brought up a 250-pound meteorite," said Stimpson, who had thought the field had been cleared of meteorites. "And then we looked, and there was another one there. We dug it out and...well, wait a minute, there is more. We brought 1,500 pounds of meteorite from that one hole."
