The biggest asteroid to cruise by Earth in 35 years will make its closest approach Tuesday at 6:28 p.m. Scientists say there is no danger. The 1,200-foot-long charcoal-black space rock, called 2005 YU55, will come no closer than 200,000 miles, just inside the orbit of the moon. It is too faint to see with the naked eye, but backyard astronomers can spy the asteroid with six-inch or larger telescopes as the nearly spherical rock zooms across the constellations Aquila and Pegasus. Read full article > >

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Rare asteroid will fly by Earth on Tuesday evening

An asteroid some 400m across is set to pass by the Earth, on a path closer to us than the Moon – though it poses no danger.

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Giant asteroid to pass near Earth

Passing closer than the moon.

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Huge Asteroid Will Brush Earth

Two spacecraft called Grail launch from Florida on a mission to map the Moon’s gravity in unprecedented detail.

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Moon twins to make gravity maps

Nasa has released new images of the Apollo landing sites on the moon, taken from an orbiting spacecraft.

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VIDEO: Photo ‘dispels moon landing doubt’

Remarkable new images of the Apollo landing sites on the Moon have just been released by Nasa.

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Moon landing sites shown in high definition

Perhaps it was simply the power of suggestion that brought to mind Gustav Holst’s thrice-familiar score, “The Planets,” as I listened to Osvaldo Golijov’s new piece, “Sidereus,” under Marin Alsop’s baton at the Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s concert at Strathmore Hall on Thursday. After all, “Sidereus” is inspired by Galileo’s ruminations on our moon and the motions of the celestial bodies in our solar system, and ever since “The Planets” premiered early in the last century, listeners have been hard-wired to hear any space-based music in the context of Holst’s mightily influential score. Read full article > >

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Baltimore Symphony Orchestra’s co-commissioned ‘Sidereus’

Scientists analyzing bits of hardened lava from long-ago lunar eruptions found about as much water as in similar magmas on Earth.

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Evidence of Water Beneath Moon’s Stony Face

Analysis of sediments brought back by the Apollo 17 mission shows that the Moon’s interior holds far more water than previously thought.

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Moon soil hints at water bonanza

Aren’t there better ways to prove you’re over the moon? Los Angeles police took a woman into custody Thursday after she allegedly attempted to sell a possible moon rock for $1.7 million. Moon rocks are considered “national treasures,” and it is illegal…

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Woman Shills Moon Rock for $1.7M

“Ladder to the Moon” by President Obama’s half-sister Maya Soetoro-Ng, introduces readers to the siblings’ late mother, Ann Dunham.

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ArtsBeat: Inside Obama’s Half-Sister’s Children’s Book

Until we first orbited the Earth fifty years ago, our only view of the surface was the view from an airplane window. The first flights of Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard expanded our vision — we saw the curvature of the planet, as well as the lack of man-made boundaries. It was a leap forward, as Civilization author Kenneth Clark would call it. Clark said, “Three or four times in history, man has made a leap forward that normally would have been considered unthinkable.” We demonstrated this spirit of reaching beyond all reasonable bounds when we took the next leap, only a few years later, onto the moon. From the moon, our view of the Blue Planet penetrated our very consciousness as citizens of the Earth. Fifty years later, we have advanced from a single orbit around the Earth to a permanent human presence on orbit, living and working on the International Space Station. Human beings have always been explorers. Adventuring into the unknown challenges us to learn and grow. Having a vision, and the potential to realize that vision, keeps us alive and confident. As one of a small group of people who have had the opportunity to orbit the Earth on the Space Shuttle, I can personally say that going into space takes a little courage, as well as a great deal of trust in the technology and the people who make the technology work. But my experience was built on the history of others who went before me, and a record of successful missions. Yuri Gagarin and Alan Shepard were the true space explorers. From opposite ends of the Earth, they had the courage to trust their nations’ newly minted launch systems and engineers. They took the leap forward into the untested concept of manned spaceflight, leading the way. I salute their achievements.

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A Leap Forward: Reaching Beyond All Reasonable Bounds

What if the Soviet Union had beaten the US to the Moon?

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Space race

On Saturday afternoon, the moon will be the closest it’s been to Earth in more than 18 years. The “supermoon,” as observers have dubbed it, will appear at 3 p.m. ET at a distance of 221,565 miles away. It will appear 14 percent larger and 30 percent…

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‘Supermoon’ Will Occur Saturday Night

‘Voltron’ Movie Finally Heating Up Word via Vulture is that there’s currently a bidding war going on in Hollywood over the rights to finance a live-action Voltron movie. Kids of the 1980s should remember Voltron as the giant robot made up of several smaller robot lions commanded by five young pilots who were tasked with protecting the planet. Well, with Transformers going on hiatus for awhile following Michael Bay’s trilogy-ending Dark of the Moon due out this summer, Hollywood is itching to piece together another Transformers-like franchise to take its place … and apparently that’s Voltron. Can Voltron keep the giant robot-related summer blockbuster alive? Sound off and let us know what you think. New ‘X-Men: First Class’ Posters Arrive… Read More Read Comments

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Fanboy Fix: ‘X-Men: First Class,’ ‘Voltron’ Movie and ‘Green Lantern’