Earth Could Face Another Asteroid

Another could soon be coming.

NASA To Send Another Rover to Mars

NASA announced plans for a robust multi-year Mars program, including a new robotic science rover set to launch in 2020. The plan to design and build a new Mars robotic science rover brings a total of seven NASA missions operating or being planned to study and explore our Earth-like neighbor.

The 2020 mission will constitute another step toward being responsive to high-priority science goals and the president's challenge of sending humans to Mars orbit in the 2030s.

Lego Man in Space

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Two Toronto teenagers earlier this month when Mathew Ho and Asad Muhammad sent a Lego-manned flight capsule into space.

The two 17-year-old Agincourt Collegiate Institute students completed their year-long mission two weeks ago, successfully sending a balloon carrying a Lego man and a small Canadian flag out of earth's atmosphere.

The unit was launched from a park near Ho's east-end home and ascended 80,000 feet before the balloon popped. The Lego man and his cargo fell safely to earth, with the help of a homemade parachute, where it landed in a Peterborough field.

The whole mission was captured by four cameras on board the shuttle and tracked by the GPS inside a phone. The astonishing photographs showed the Lego man hovering well above earth and captured glorious views of our planet from space.

The space mission began more than a year ago but work really got underway when Ho and Muhammad started drawing up plans in September, working during the weekends to sew together the parachute, perfect the flight pod and iron out all the problems that come with launching an object into space.

The pair, who first met in middle school, saw a similar project done by a group of IT students and figured they could do it themselves.

"Almost to prove to ourselves and prove to everyone else that we could do it," Ho told The Toronto Star.

"I knew I wanted to do something like this but I couldn't do it alone," added Muhammad.

"Once we started doing it, I really wanted to retrieve it back because I wanted to show everyone that we could do it."

Ho has applied to Canadian universities with the intention of pursuing a commerce degree. Muhammad has applied to several engineering programs.

Astronauts Watched 9/11 from Space Station

A great image released by NASA.

The only American not on Earth on that day in 2001, NASA astronaut Frank Culbertson, had a unique vantage point on the attacks. From the International Space Station, Culbertson snapped a photo of smoke streaming from the World Trade Center wreckage that day after two hijacked planes crashed into the Manhattan towers.

"I didn't know exactly what was happening, but I knew it was really bad because there was a big cloud of debris covering Manhattan," Culbertson said in a new video released by NASA for the 10th anniversary of the attacks.

Culbertson, a retired U.S. Navy captain, was commanding the orbiting laboratory's Expedition 3 mission and was living on the outpost with Russian cosmonauts Vladimir Dezhurov and Mikhail Turin at the time.

"My crewmates have been great," Culbertson wrote in a letter published the day after the attacks. "They know it's been a tough day for me and the folks on the ground, and they've tried to be as even keeled and helpful as possible. Michael even fixed me my favorite Borscht soup for dinner," he added, referring to Turin.
Ultimately, though, the NASA astronaut couldn't help but be affected by his position as the only American in space.

"The most overwhelming feeling being where I am is one of isolation," Culbertson wrote. "The feeling that I should be there with all of you, dealing with this, helping in some way, is overwhelming."

"I zipped around the station until I found a window that would give me a view of NYC and grabbed the nearest camera," Culbertson wrote. "The smoke seemed to have an odd bloom to it at the base of the column that was streaming south of the city. After reading one of the news articles we just received, I believe we were looking at NY around the time of, or shortly after, the collapse of the second tower. How horrible."