Fly-bys

Discovery’s Final Final Flight

Pete Baker on April 18, 2012, 2:50 pm | Readers 11

Having completed its final mission last February, yesterday the Space Shuttle Discovery took off from the Kenedy Space Centre for the last time on the way to its final destination – the Smithsonian’s National Air and Space Museum Steven F. Udvar-Hazy Center in Chantilly, Virginia. During the flight, piggy-backing on a modified Boeing 747 (Shuttle Carrier Aircraft NASA 905), Discovery took in the sights at Washington DC at an altitude of about 1,500ft (457m). The Guardian has a number of images from the US capital …

“An aircraft carrier-sized asteroid will make a safe, close flyby of Earth…”

Pete Baker on November 8, 2011, 3:03 pm | Readers 3

If the calculations are correct, the 400m-wide asteroid 2005 YU55 will make a safe, close flyby of Earth at around half past eleven tonight (11.28pm GMT). [If?! – Ed] If not, we’ll have a wondrous new scar to boast about! Radar image of asteroid 2005 YU55 obtained on Nov. 7, 2011, at 11:45 a.m. PST (2:45 p.m. EST/1945 UTC), when the asteroid was at 3.6 lunar distances, which is about 860,000 miles, or 1.38 million kilometers, from Earth. [Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech] And with its …