A place were I can write...

My simple blog of pictures of travel, friends, activities and the Universe we live in as we go slowly around the Sun.



February 28, 2013

More on future space flight

Crane operators, technicians and engineers practiced lifting and stacking techniques this week as they moved a 6-ton replica escape rocket called the LAS, for Launch Abort System, from a trailer to the top of a mockup Orion capsule.

Though stacking the real thing for a Space Launch System mission is still a few years off, engineers said performing the task now, using the same procedures and demands that will accompany the actual assembly, helps them anticipate difficulties ahead of time.

The practice also keeps the crane operators proficient in handling spacecraft components that must be moved gingerly and placed precisely. The exercise took place inside the Vehicle Assembly Building, or VAB, at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida using the same equipment and operators that stacked space shuttles for launch.

"The breakover, taking the LAS from horizontal to vertical, is not as easy as it sometimes seems, but the VAB guys are exceptional, they are really good at what they do so they really didn't have a problem," said Douglas Lenhardt, who is overseeing the Orion mock-up and operations planning for the Ground Systems Development and Operations program, or GSDO.

During missions, the LAS will be ready to ignite its solid-fueled engines and lift the Orion and its crew away from disaster in the unlikely event that the booster fails during the first part of launch. Its design is similar to that used during Apollo launches, though the LAS is larger than the escape rocket used before. A test flight in 2010 saw the LAS produce 500,000 pounds of thrust, about the same as the Titan II rockets that launched Gemini spacecraft into orbit.

As powerful as it is for an escape rocket, the LAS's power is a fraction of the overall thrust the Space Launch System is designed to produce to lift Orion into orbit and then propel it to deep space.

The LAS stacking topped off a mockup Orion and service module that has been standing at the north end of the transfer aisle in the VAB for several months. It will remain there so engineers and designers can continue to refine their plans for the spacecraft as it evolves from a concept that exists only on a computer screen to a spacecraft carrying humans into deep space.

"The number one thing people say about real hardware is, the computer-aided design (CAD) model doesn't do it justice," Lenhardt said. "Things seem to almost always work on a CAD mode. Real-life, things don't always work perfectly and that's why it really does help having a physical model."

Webb Space Telescope update

American manufacturing is critical to the development of NASA’s scientific instruments, satellites and telescopes – specifically the James Webb Space Telescope. The telescope, often referred to as JWST, will be the premier observatory of the next decade, studying every phase in the history of our universe from the first luminous glows after the Big Bang, to the formation of solar systems capable of supporting life on planets like Earth, to the evolution of our own solar system.

In order to observe these cosmic wonders, numerous technologies have been developed here on Earth by American manufacturers.

The heart of the telescope is its primary imager, an infrared camera that will, among other things, detect light from the earliest stars and galaxies in the process of formation. The Near Infrared Camera (NIRCam) is equipped with coronagraphs, instruments that allow astronomers to take pictures of very faint objects around a central bright object, like stellar systems. Built by the University of Arizona and Lockheed Martin, NIRCam will allow astronomers to determine the characteristics of planets orbiting other stars.

JWST will house four primary instruments on board. ATK developed and manufactured the special lightweight, high-strength, cryo-capable composite structure that holds all those instruments.

The instruments on board the Webb telescope must be cooled to a temperature below 50 degrees Kelvin to allow them to see these faint infrared emissions from astronomical objects. The solution – large sunshields acting as an umbrella to block the heat of the Sun. Sheldahl, a Minnesota company that specializes in advanced coated films, developed manufacturing techniques to apply the coatings to large continuous rolls of Kapton, which make up the sunshade membranes. Those membranes are being built by another American company, NeXolve. The sunshield membranes must fold around the telescope before it deploys in space.

Perhaps the most impressive feature of the Webb telescope is its mirrors, which were manufactured entirely in America, from the raw material mined in Utah to the forming, machining and polishing in Ohio, Alabama and California. Ball Aerospace, Axsys, Brush Wellman, and Tinsley Laboratories developed new mirror manufacturing technology to create the most advanced space telescope mirrors ever produced. Each of the 18 primary mirror segments are made of beryllium, which was selected for its stiffness, light weight and stability at cryogenic temperatures. Bare beryllium is not very reflective of near-infrared light, so each mirror is coated with gold. The microscopic gold coating enables the mirrors to efficiently reflect infrared light (which is what the Webb telescope's cameras see). In the last part of 2012, the secondary mirror and three primary mirror segments were delivered by Ball Aerospace in a trailer truck to Goddard Space Flight Center for assembly with the rest of the telescope.

HH 151 jet

This image shows an object known as HH 151, a bright jet of glowing material trailed by an intricate, orange-hued plume of gas and dust. It is located some 460 light-years away in the constellation of Taurus (The Bull), near to the young, tumultuous star HL Tau.

In the first few hundred thousand years of life, new stars like HL Tau pull in material that falls towards them from the surrounding space. This material forms a hot disc that swirls around the coalescing body, launching narrow streams of material from its poles. These jets are shot out at speeds of several hundred kilometers (or miles) per second and collide violently with nearby clumps of dust and gas, creating wispy, billowing structures known as Herbig-Haro objects — like HH 151 seen in the image.

Such objects are very common in star-forming regions. They are short-lived, and their motion and evolution can actually be seen over very short timescales, on the order of years. They quickly race away from the newly-forming star that emitted them, colliding with new clumps of material and glowing brightly before fading away.

Supermassive...

Two X-ray space observatories, NASA's Nuclear Spectroscopic Telescope Array (NuSTAR) and the European Space Agency's XMM-Newton, have teamed up to measure definitively, for the first time, the spin rate of a black hole with a mass 2 million times that of our sun.
The supermassive black hole lies at the dust- and gas-filled heart of a galaxy called NGC 1365, and it is spinning almost as fast as Einstein's theory of gravity will allow. The findings, which appear in a new study in the journal Nature, resolve a long-standing debate about similar measurements in other black holes and will lead to a better understanding of how black holes and galaxies evolve.

"This is hugely important to the field of black hole science," said Lou Kaluzienski, a NuSTAR program scientist at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

The observations also are a powerful test of Einstein's theory of general relativity, which says gravity can bend space-time, the fabric that shapes our universe, and the light that travels through it.

"We can trace matter as it swirls into a black hole using X-rays emitted from regions very close to the black hole," said the coauthor of a new study, NuSTAR principal investigator Fiona Harrison of the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena. "The radiation we see is warped and distorted by the motions of particles and the black hole's incredibly strong gravity."

NuSTAR, an Explorer-class mission launched in June 2012, is designed to detect the highest-energy X-ray light in great detail. It complements telescopes that observe lower-energy X-ray light, such as XMM-Newton and NASA's Chandra X-ray Observatory. Scientists use these and other telescopes to estimate the rates at which black holes spin.

Until now, these measurements were not certain because clouds of gas could have been obscuring the black holes and confusing the results. With help from XMM-Newton, NuSTAR was able to see a broader range of X-ray energies and penetrate deeper into the region around the black hole. The new data demonstrate that X-rays are not being warped by the clouds, but by the tremendous gravity of the black hole. This proves that spin rates of supermassive black holes can be determined conclusively.

"If I could have added one instrument to XMM-Newton, it would have been a telescope like NuSTAR," said Norbert Schartel, XMM-Newton Project Scientist at the European Space Astronomy Center in Madrid. "The high-energy X-rays provided an essential missing puzzle piece for solving this problem."

Measuring the spin of a supermassive black hole is fundamental to understanding its past history and that of its host galaxy.

"These monsters, with masses from millions to billions of times that of the sun, are formed as small seeds in the early universe and grow by swallowing stars and gas in their host galaxies, merging with other giant black holes when galaxies collide, or both," said the study's lead author, Guido Risaliti of the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., and the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics.

Supermassive black holes are surrounded by pancake-like accretion disks, formed as their gravity pulls matter inward. Einstein's theory predicts the faster a black hole spins, the closer the accretion disk lies to the black hole. The closer the accretion disk is, the more gravity from the black hole will warp X-ray light streaming off the disk.

Astronomers look for these warping effects by analyzing X-ray light emitted by iron circulating in the accretion disk. In the new study, they used both XMM-Newton and NuSTAR to simultaneously observe the black hole in NGC 1365. While XMM-Newton revealed that light from the iron was being warped, NuSTAR proved that this distortion was coming from the gravity of the black hole and not gas clouds in the vicinity. NuSTAR's higher-energy X-ray data showed that the iron was so close to the black hole that its gravity must be causing the warping effects.

With the possibility of obscuring clouds ruled out, scientists can now use the distortions in the iron signature to measure the black hole's spin rate. The findings apply to several other black holes as well, removing the uncertainty in the previously measured spin rates.

Dragons Tail

The weather forecast is now 80 percent favorable for liftoff of the SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket and Dragon spacecraft at 10:10 a.m. EST tomorrow from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. There is only a slight possibility of thick clouds and winds at launch time.

The mission is the second of 12 SpaceX flights contracted by NASA to resupply the International Space Station. It will mark the third trip by a Dragon capsule to the orbiting laboratory, following a demonstration flight in May 2012 and the first resupply mission in October 2012.

The Dragon and Falcon under went a test fire and countdown in the pre-launch test. They ran the engines for 2 seconds during the test. Happy flight Dragon..

Prada and NZ foiling at high speed

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OQk6HxLZXqU&feature=share&list=UUc36Cbub8hJ8wwc8xlPba2w

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=UL5U-88moEQ

Two videos of the AC 72's flying in NZ. The first one is a higher quality video, the second is more of just the flying cats without the added talking but not as good. This is what the AC will look like when they finally start to race, but in SF, the wind will be stronger and the chance of flipping higher. But they are getting good at turning while foiling, which is what they must do to win.

February 27, 2013

Fermi's Study in Spirograph

http://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/videogallery/index.html?media_id=160290501

The Vela pulsar outlines a fascinating pattern in this movie showing 51 months of position and exposure data from Fermi's Large Area Telescope (LAT). The pattern reflects numerous motions of the spacecraft, including its orbit around Earth, the precession of its orbital plane, the manner in which the LAT nods north and south on alternate orbits, and more. The movie renders Vela's position in a fisheye perspective, where the middle of the pattern corresponds to the central and most sensitive portion of the LAT's field of view. The edge of the pattern is 90 degrees away from the center and well beyond what scientists regard as the effective limit of the LAT's vision. Better knowledge of how the LAT's sensitivity changes across its field of view helps Fermi scientists better understand both the instrument and the data it returns.

Saturn's North Polar Hexagon

Saturn's north polar hexagon basks in the Sun's light now that spring has come to the northern hemisphere. Many smaller storms dot the north polar region and Saturn's signature rings, which appear to disappear on account of Saturn's shadow, put in an appearance in the background.

The image was taken with the Cassini spacecraft's wide-angle camera on Nov. 27, 2012 using a spectral filter sensitive to wavelengths of near-infrared light centered at 750 nanometers.

The view was acquired at a distance of approximately 403,000 miles (649,000 kilometers) from Saturn and at a Sun-Saturn-spacecraft, or phase, angle of 21 degrees. Image scale is 22 miles (35 kilometers) per pixel.

February 26, 2013

Last night in Portland


 So last night I enjoyed a glass of wine over looking Portland Oregon. Clouds but no rain for a change. This is looking East over the Willamette River and you can see some of the 10 bridges that cross it.




M51


Just looks cool!


February 25, 2013

Space flight...

NASA commercial partner Orbital Sciences of Dulles, Va., successfully conducted an engine test of its Antares rocket Friday, February 22, at the nation's newest launch pad.

The company fired dual AJ26 rocket engines for approximately 30 seconds while the first stage of Orbital's Antares rocket was held down on the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport (MARS) Pad-0A at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility in Wallops Island, Va. The test demonstrated the readiness of the rocket's first stage and launch pad fueling systems to support upcoming test flights.

"This pad test is an important reminder of how strong and diverse the commercial space industry is in our nation,” said Phil McAlister, director of Commercial Spaceflight Development at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “A little more than one year after the retirement of the space shuttle, we had a U.S company resupplying the space station, and another is now taking the next critical steps to launch from America’s newest gateway to low-Earth Orbit. Today marks significant progress for Orbital, MARS and the NASA team."

Orbital is building and testing its new rocket and Cygnus cargo spacecraft under NASA's Commercial Orbital Transportation Services (COTS) program. A demonstration flight of Antares and Cygnus to the space station is planned for later this year. Following the successful completion of the COTS demonstration mission to the station, Orbital will begin conducting eight planed cargo resupply flights to the orbiting laboratory through NASA's $1.9 billion Commercial Resupply Services contract with the company.

Wallops, which has launched more than 16,000 rockets in its 67-year history, provided launch range support for the hot fire test, including communications, data collection, range safety and area clearance.

NASA initiatives like COTS are helping develop a robust U.S. commercial space transportation industry with the goal of achieving safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation to and from the space station and low-Earth orbit. In parallel, NASA's Commercial Crew Program is working with commercial space partners developing capabilities to launch U.S. astronauts from U.S. soil in the next few years.

Court proccedings on the Bounty loss.

At the start of each day of the hearings, Commander Kevin Carroll does the same thing: he reads a statement. He tells all in attendance, “The purpose of the investigation is to determine the cause of the casualty and the responsibility therefore to the fullest extent possible; and to obtain information for the purpose of preventing or reducing the effects of similar casualties in the future.” A worthy purpose, to be sure. It’s the reason for the discussions about dry docks and caulking, shipwrights and rot, architects and owners, and why there has been so much talk about the crew and what they knew – and what they didn’t. But then he says something that some may have missed:
“This investigation is also intended to determine whether there is any evidence of any incompetence, misconduct, or willful violation of the law on the part of any licensed officer, pilot, seaman, employee, owner, or agent of the owner of any vessel involved…”
The hearings are also intended to look for evidence of negligence or incompetence.

Incompetence; it’s an ugly word largely because it is so misunderstood. It’s not about intent. Being incompetent isn’t really about fault. It’s about ability – or specifically lack of ability – to do a required job. The federal code defines it as “the inability on the part of a person to perform required duties, whether due to professional deficiencies, physical disability, mental incapacity, or any combination thereof.” While I’m not competent to be judge or jury in this regard, I can say without reservation that there was – by definition – incompetence aboard Bounty. It was the unaccounted for 17th passenger that ended the life of the ship, of her captain, and of Claudene Christian.

When Adam Prokosh fell from port to starboard on the tween deck and broke his back and ribs, he was instantly made incompetent as an able seaman. He was hardly able to crawl anymore. That wasn’t his fault. It just was. How he got in that situation is another matter. But how can Carroll find evidence of incompetence due to professional deficiency? In some cases it won’t be a stretch.

The engineer, Chris Barksdale, seemed like a very nice guy but he wasn’t competent. That he wasn’t licensed doesn’t mean he was professionally deficient – that he couldn’t correctly answer the simplest questions about diesel engines did. Believing that Bounty’s engines burned all the supplied fuel and that her engines “didn’t return any fuel to the tanks – they burned it all,” was all anyone needed to hear. When asked to describe Bounty’s bilge system Barksdale replied, “I’m not sure if it was brass or what it was,” and described the manifold as “a series of levers.” In his questioning of Bounty’s last engineer, Carroll was specifically trying to determine Barksdale’s knowledge about the bilge piping in the individual compartments of the ship:

Carrol: “So they didn’t have any flexible material?” (referring to how the strainers were attached)

Barks dale: “They may have had some, I don’t know.”
Every other witness testified that each strainer was connected to the bilge piping by a three to four foot length of rubber hose. The man on their ship most directly tasked with maintaining the ship’s mechanical systems couldn’t even describe the bilge system.
However, it is important to remember that Bounty’s engineer didn’t hire himself. He wasn’t to blame for his incompetence as a vessel’s engineer. He certainly wasn’t to blame in any way for the tragedy; not at all. But his presence aboard as the engineer points to a larger problem on Bounty – a system of incompetence.

Barksdale did have a lot of experience with mechanical systems (backhoes, tractors, plumbing, and small craft), but who would think that maintaining small skiffs would immediately translate into being a qualified ship’s engineer? Well, his friend John Svendsen, for one. By his acceptance of that suggestion, so too Captain Walbridge. (Did Hansen, the Bounty’s owner, approve? He’s not talking. But either he didn’t know Barksdale was incompetent, or he didn’t care.)

HR on Bounty
Svendsen and Walbridge appeared to do all of the hiring of crew for the HMS Bounty Organization. Walbridge had decades at sea. Svendsen had worked tall ships prior to Bounty. The rest of the crew- so far it seems – had an experience base of one:
  • The third mate, Dan Cleveland (25), came aboard from a career in landscaping. Bounty was his first wooden tall ship.
  • The Bosun, Laura Groves (28), had experience on smaller boats in the Keys. Bounty was her first wooden tall ship.
  • Joshua Scornavacchi (25), was on his first wooden tall ship.
  • Second mate Matt Sanders (37) had worked on a series of ships, including the schooner Margaret Todd, but Bounty was (wait for it) his first wooden tall ship.
  • Testifying Wednesday morning was Anna Sprague (20); of course it was her first wooden tall ship.
  • Claudene Christian (42) , was on her first wooden tall ship.
When the new cook, Jessica Black (34), put on her immersion suit to abandon ship on the 29th of October, she had been aboard Bounty – her first wooden tall ship – for a grand total of 45 hours. Walbridge and Svendsen had hired a crew – including several ships officers – who wouldn’t know any better. When they were told that “a ship is safer at sea,” and that “all wood boats leak*,” they had to believe it. They had learned everything they knew about their jobs from their captain and from each other. They were “professionally deficient” and didn’t even know it.

(* – All wood boats may leak a little, but all wood boats do not require constant bilge pumping.)
Walbridge often addressed his crew as “Future captains of America.” They all speak of Bounty as a great place to learn and as a school where they would learn from the master, Robin Walbridge. They were “honored to work for him.” But there has been a theme in the testimony that ”getting better” on Bounty was a substitute for good enough to begin with. The organization didn’t seem to care how little you knew about your job – so long as you were willing to get better, everything was just fine.

The sea doesn’t see it that way.

Svendsen questioned Anna Sprague, the youngest Bounty survivor:
Svendsen: “Were you trained well on Bounty?”

Sprague: “Oh yes.”

She was twenty years old and on the first boat she had ever known working for the only mariners she had ever worked for. Honestly, how on earth would she know how well she was trained?

Interview with The Masters
“Evidence of any incompetence” of a licensed captain would not come by asking questions of the crew that worked beneath him. They had never been in his position, they didn’t know what he knew or what he should have known. They simply believed and admired the man and trusted his decisions. To determine whether or not the trip itself was evidence of incompetence or negligence, Carroll had to find similarly credentialed and experienced captains to testify. He needed to ask them to put themselves in Walbridge’s place, and say what they would have done. He needed to speak with the best.

On the phone was Captain Daniel Moreland, arguably the most respected captain in the traditional sailing ship community. Moreland was calling in to testify from Tahiti. His ship, the Picton Castle, is on a six month voyage in the South Pacific. Moreland has taken the barque around the world five times since he’s been captain. His personal sailing experience started in the 1970′s. He is without question one of the most competent sailing ship masters in the world. When Carroll asked what his thoughts were when he found out Bounty was at sea from New London, Moreland’s response was no surprise:

Moreland: “I couldn’t believe it. I still don’t.”

At the time Sandy was tracking up the Atlantic, the Picton Castle was scheduled to leave home port for the world cruise she was now on. Moreland had cancelled because of the storm days before Bounty had left New London. He went on to discuss the much safer options available to Walbridge if he thought New London was unsafe due to storm surge. “New Bedford – up above the bridge,” Moreland offered. New Bedford, 100 miles to the north of New London, has a “hurricane barrier” specifically designed as a hiding place for ships that need to avoid storm surge.

When asked by Carroll if he believed that a ship is “safer at sea,” Moreland discussed the difference between a Navy vessel that had the ability to move at 22 knots and be 400 miles from the storm, and a slow-moving historic sailing vessel. “…and the Navy is paid to take that risk so that they can respond if needed for war…but between the ship and crew, you always have to go with what is safer for the crew.”

Moreland made it clear to investigators that he would not have made the same choice as Walbridge if put in that situation. In fact, he was in the same situation and hadn’t. The primary difference between Walbridge’s choice to leave and Moreland’s to stay, was that Picton Castle was larger, made of steel, rigorously inspected, and prepared for a global voyage. If Moreland wasn’t thinking about leaving port in late October – what was Walbridge thinking? Only the HMS Bounty Organization’s attorney had the nerve to ask:

Moreland: “I can’t imagine what he was thinking.”
There were no further questions from the Bounty Organization.

Ralph Mellusi, the attorney for the estate of Claudene Christian, wanted more specific testimony:
Mellusi: “What if the bilge system of your ship wasn’t in perfect working order and in fact your crew had told you they were concerned that it wasn’t working properly; would you have taken the ship to sea in those conditions?”

Moreland: “That would be unconscionable on a good day.”

Investigators interviewed two more captains of tall ships, including the captain of the Pride of Baltimore II , Jan Miles. Captain Miles, also a well-respected captain and a friend of Robin Walbridge, was so dismayed by his decision to sail into Sandy’s path that he wrote an open letter to Walbridge calling his decision to sail “reckless in the extreme.” He too told Carroll he wouldn’t have sailed, and that a ship wasn’t safer at sea, adding “I don’t know what would have caused her [Bounty] to go.” His responses to Mellusi’s questions were chilling. Mellusi simply read the most damning passages from Miles’ letter and asked the wooden tall ship captain, “Do you still stand by that statement.” Without hesitation, Captain Miles answered with only one firm word, “Yes.”
The masters had given no quarter to the deceased Walbridge. Leaving New London on October 25th and sailing toward hurricane Sandy was – in itself – negligent. No competent sailing captain would have done it.

But Robin Walbridge had competently sailed Bounty for seventeen years. Why, indeed, would he do something that no other captain would have done? The investigation continues; Commander Carroll has a massive job still ahead of him. But perhaps Robin Walbridge was suffering from the same thing his crew was – a lack of the right kind of experience. He had faced down storms before and won, he had tangled with hurricanes and made it home, his experience was that if he headed into harm’s way, he would get away with it. He had clearly confused the lack of failure with success, and may have begun to truly believe his own advice. Maybe it was something else, I don’t know. Robin Walbridge, the last captain of Bounty, isn’t here to ask.

At the start of each day of the hearings, Commander Kevin Carroll does something else: he reminds us of what brought us there in the first place. When his opening statement is finished, he asks everyone to stand and observe a moment of silence “for those who have lost their lives to this tragedy.” Carroll, like the tall ship sailors he has been questioning, is hard not to like as well.

The witness, Todd Kosakowski, looked at Coast Guard’s evidence # CG-41: a series of 29 photographs he had taken of Bounty during its most recent yard period. Mr. Kosakowski – the lead shipwright and project manager for Boothbay Harbor Shipyards - was in charge of the last maintenance project ever to be done on Bounty.

The pictures were of rotted frames and fasteners (trunnels) he found under the planking during repairs. Kosakowski told NTSB investigator Captain Rob Jones that he believes 75% of the framing above the waterline on Bounty may have been rotten, but that the ship’s representative in the yard, Captain Robin Walbridge, declined any further search for rotted wood. He convinced Kosakowski that they would make the repairs before their next Coast Guard hull inspection. The final witness of the day and the discussion of the evidence was stunning those of us in the crowd.

He had given the photos to the USCG Investigator back in December. That same Coast Guard investigator – Commander Kevin Carroll – was on the other side of the table today, asking questions.

Carroll: “And you had a conversation…did you tell Captain Walbridge?”

Kosakowski: ”Yes.”

Carrol: ”What did he say?”

Kosakowski: “He was also concerned. I told him I thought that he had to pick and choose his weather… he said that he was terrified of what we had found.”

Kosakowski said that he didn’t voice his concerns to anyone other than Captain Walbridge of Bounty and his own boss, Eric Graves, telling Carroll, “I believe that the owner’s rep is the extent of my debt to notify.”

Looking around to see if anyone else looked as dismayed as I felt, I didn’t have to look hard. What we were hearing from Kosakowski came at the end of a long day of testimony that painted a picture of maintenance and management of Bounty that was suspect at best.

Morning testimony by Miss Tracey Simonin – the HMS Bounty Organization’s “Director of Shoreside Operations” revealed confusion about the ship’s status as it related to tonnage certificates and maintenance management, ABS and USCG notification of repairs, and who may or may not be in charge of repair work aboard Bounty.

In July of 2011, at the urging of USCG Activities Europe and MCA, Simonin walked through a new Tonnage Certificate issued by ABS that set Bounty’s gross tonnage at 409. During a visit, inspectors noticed a change to the ship’s construction – specifically the removal of a tonnage opening – that was not reported to ABS. The new assessment made the Bounty subject to SOLAS, and the HMS Bounty Organization appealed. A year later they changed the vessel back to its previous configuration and received a new tonnage certificate that brought them back down to 266 regulatory tons, but it would seem that for a year Bounty operated in violation of IMO regulations. Like so much of what I’ve seen so far in these hearings, there are more questions than answers; Simonin answered “I don’t know,” and “I don’t remember,” frequently.

In Simonin’s defense, there was someone in the room better suited to answer the Commander’s questions today, but Mr. Robert Hansen (Bounty’s owner) is asserting his fifth amendment rights and will not be testifying. Simonin did clear up a couple of things. We learned that the person who posted on Bounty’s Facebook page was Jim Salapatek. He – not the captain – was the one who posted that the voyage into the hurricane was a safe decision, that the Coast Guard had issued a UMIB (Urgent Marine Information Broadcast) for Bounty on October 28th but had rescinded it (they hadn’t), and he did all of that from his home in Illinois. His connection to Bounty? His son, Drew (29) was crew aboard Bounty. How did he get his information? “I don’t know,” said Simonin.

There was a break from strained testimony and nervous answers when Mr. Bert Rogers, the executive director of Tall Ships America, was called as a witness. “Bounty was the star of the show at our events because of her star appeal and we featured her as a headliner vessel at our events,” Rogers said. When asked about Walbridge’s competence, Rogers spoke well of the captain and his efforts over the past 17 years to “turn Bounty around.” He said complimentary things about Bounty’s crew and the ship’s relationship and value to his organization.

It was 20 minutes of good news about the ship and her performance from a respected and experienced leader in the tall ship community. And then Rogers – the first experienced tall-ship captain to take the stand – was asked by Carroll, “Would you have taken her out into that storm?” ”No, I would have sought safer berth upriver.” No one was surprised.

Carroll: “Do you think the ship was safer at sea?”

Rogers: “I don’t believe that a ship is safer at sea. It is circumstantial. There are cases where that is the example and cases where it is not.”

Carroll: “Is the crew safer at sea?”

Rogers: “That is absurd; they are of course safer in bed than at sea. But if you have to decide between crew safety and ship safety you would have to go to the crew.”

Rogers left before he could hear Kosakowski recount the condition of Bounty and the rotted frames. He didn’t hear about Walbridge’s decision to wait until the next yard period to get into extensive repairs. He didn’t hear about the shipwright’s warning to keep the boat out of heavy weather. If he had, I wonder what he would have thought about those “circumstances?”

The last to question Rogers was the attorney for the Christian family, Mr. Jacob Shisha. The Christian’s daughter, Claudine (42), was recovered by the Coast Guard on October 29th.

Shisha: “In late October – how many member vessels did you have on the Atlantic Coast?”

Rogers: “About fifty.”

Shisha: “How many made a decision to leave port in anticipation of Hurricane Sandy?”

Rogers: “None that I know of…besides Bounty.”

Youth AC video

http://www.youtube.com/watch?feature=player_embedded&v=ULUNl1VQQGQ

Here is the UK youth AC sailing crew on the water for the Red Bull Youth America’s Cup trials. Nice video of some AC45 sailing action.

Rigging???

i think they need to rethink their rigging choice.... Looks like they 'barrowed' a rig from a Cal 22.

February 22, 2013

End of Vendee for this year.

Time flies when you're watching some of the most talented solo racers sail around the world. It seems hardly any time has passed since the November start of the Vendée Globe, the notorious singlehanded nonstop race around the world. But Alessandro di Benedetto's (Team Plastique) crossing of the finish line today at Les Sables d'Olonne, just 26 days behind winner François Gabart (the shortest-ever gap between first and last place), concluded the 2012-13 edition of the race.
Of course the skippers who spent anywhere from 78 to 104 days trying to keep their boats — and themselves — from falling apart over the 24,000-mile course probably feel differently. We watched as the fleet of 20 racers dwindled down to almost half, and a few of those were big questions marks until they actually crossed the line. There wasn't a mile of the course where any racer was safe from having his or her race ended in the most dramatic fashion — and dramatically is exactly how nine of them ended.

What makes this race so compelling to follow? It could be the unimaginable amount of courage each racer musters just to cross the start line, or the tremendous potential for disaster they face every moment of every day, or the intense competition between them, or the amazing sense of accomplishment we know each one feels as they cross the finish line. It could be any of those things, but it's most likely all of them. We fret for the racers, we bemoan their tragedies and we cheer for them all. We become invested in their success, because deep down a part of us wishes we were out there, too, sailing the open seas responsible for no one but ourselves.
You'll find our final recap of the race in the March issue of Latitude 38, due out on March 1. In the meantime, you can catch up on all the news at www.vendeeglobe.com/en.

Vendée Globe 2012-2013 final leaderboard
1- François Gabart (FRA/MACIF) 78d02h18m
2- Armel Le Cléac´h (FRA/Banque Populaire) 78d05h33m
3- Alex Thomson (GBR/Hugo Boss) 80d19h23m
4- Jean-Pierre Dick (FRA/Virbac-Paprec 3) 86d03h03m
5- Jean Le Cam (FRA/SynerCiel) 88d00h12m
6- Mike Golding (GBR/Gamesa) 88d06h36m
7- Dominique Wavre (SUI/Mirabaud) 90d03h14m
8- Arnaud Boissières (FRA/AKENA Vérandas) 91d02h09m
9- Bertrand De Broc (FRA/Votre Nom autour du Monde avec EDM Projets) 92d17h10m
10- Tanguy De Lamotte (FRA/Initiatives-coeur) 98d21h56m
11- Alessandro Di Benedetto (FRA-ITA/Team Plastique) 104d02h34m

DNF
Marc Guillemot (FRA/Safran) lost his keel on November 10
Kito de Pavant (FRA/Groupe Bel) hit a fishing boat on November 12
Louis Burton (FRA/Bureau Vallée) hit a fishing boat on November 14
Sam Davies (GBR/Savéol) dismasted on November 15
Jérémie Beyou (FRA/Maître CoQ) keel jack problem on November 17
Zbigniew Gutkowski (POL/ENERGA) autopilot issue on November 21
Vincent Riou (FRA/PRB) hit a UFO on November 24
Javier Sanso (ESP, ACCIONA 100% EcoPowered) capsized on February 3

DSQ - Bernard Stamm (SUI/Cheminées Poujoulat)

Colors of the Innermost Planet

This colorful view of Mercury was produced by using images from the color base map imaging campaign during MESSENGER's primary mission. These colors are not what Mercury would look like to the human eye, but rather the colors enhance the chemical, mineralogical, and physical differences between the rocks that make up Mercury's surface.

Sydney to Hobart

Sean Langman and crew are going to sail the 600 mile Sydney to Hobart course in “under 24 hours” on Team Australia, their bad-ass 60′ ORMA trimaran. We say probably no, but they are currently ripping along at around 25 knots… The “official” elapsed time record on 1 day 18 hrs 27 mins should be gettable, but under 24 hours???

February 21, 2013

Firefall.

Horsetail Fall looks more like an oil painting during a once-a-year convergence of light and weather conditions that causes the "firefall."

Dragon Prepares to Resupply Station

The Space Exploration Technologies, or SpaceX, Dragon spacecraft stands inside a processing hangar at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. Teams had just installed the spacecraft's solar array fairings.

NASA and its international partners are targeting Friday, March 1, as the launch date for the next cargo resupply flight to the International Space Station by SpaceX. Launch is scheduled for 10:10 a.m. EST from Space Launch Complex 40 at Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

SpaceX's Dragon capsule will be filled with about 1,200 pounds of supplies for the space station crew and experiments being conducted aboard the orbiting laboratory.

Star class back in the Olympics

We’ve heard the rumors for a long time now, but today we confirmed that the ink is dry on an agreement to bring the Star back to the Olympics for the 2016 games. No other class will be displaced; it’s all thanks to a strange IOC quirk that allows the host country to add an event of their choosing to the games. We’re told that Rio will need to pay for the costs of running the Star racing; a small price to pay for a very likely Robert Scheidt/Bruno Prada medal.

New Oracle boat???

Kind of funny....

The challenger...

http://youtu.be/fiKvoTwWg04

Lots on Oracle but not much on the challengers. Here is a little video of said challenger. Will be interesting to see if they foil their cat. If they don't, Oracle will crush them. Of course Oracle could flip again and that would end the race for them. With only three boats in this race, it will get boring quick. NZ and Artemis will duel it out and NZ will more than likely win. Then Oracle and NZ will race for the cup. It would be much more interesting if they just fleet raced. All the boat racing each other at once and the best of ten races is the winner. At least there would be some competition in the start, since the winner of the start will more than likely win the race.

February 20, 2013

Paradox

Paradox
Looks fun and scary all at once....

Russian Meteor

Why Wasn't the Russian Meteor Detected Before it Entered the Atmosphere?


This is the question that keeps cropping up, and it deserves an answer. Images are being posted showing the fragments and they look like ordinary chondrites of asteroidal origin. This material is dark, and not very reflective, which makes it difficult to spot out in outer space, especially if the object is bus or house size.
Astronomers measure brightnesses in magnitudes -- the larger, more positive the number, the fainter the object is. The Sun is magnitude -27, the planet Venus -4, the star Vega 0, and the faintest star you can see is about +6. The best asteroid survey telescopes have a magnitude limit of about +24, which is about 16 million times fainter than what you can see with the unaided eye.

We can now use the latest orbit determined by Dave Clark (and yes, the meteor came roughly from the East, not from the North as stated in the initial NASA reports) and combine it with the estimated size and reflectivity to figure out when we should have seen the meteoroid in the asteroid survey telescopes. The calculations can be displayed in a graph like this one. Note that, even with very large telescopes, the meteoroid would not have been visible until a mere 2 hours (135,000 km from Earth) before impact -- very little time to sound a warning.

Even if we had been looking at the right spot and the right time, there is another problem -- the meteoroid would be in the daylit sky, and telescopes cannot see faint objects in the daytime.
Simply put, the meteoroid was too small for the survey telescopes and came at us out of the Sun.


Cassini


During a chance encounter with what appears to be an unusually strong blast of solar wind at Saturn, NASA's Cassini spacecraft detected particles being accelerated to ultra-high energies. This is similar to the acceleration that takes place around distant supernovas.
Since we can't travel out to the far-off stellar explosions right now, the shockwave that forms from the flow of solar wind around Saturn's magnetic field provides a rare laboratory for scientists with the Cassini mission -- a partnership involving NASA, the European Space Agency and the Italian Space Agency -- to observe this phenomenon up-close. The findings, published this week in the journal Nature Physics, confirm that certain kinds of shocks can become considerably more effective electron accelerators than previously thought.
Shock waves are commonplace in the universe, for example in the aftermath of a stellar explosion as debris accelerate outward in a supernova remnant, or when the flow of particles from the sun - the solar wind - impinges on the magnetic field of a planet to form a bow shock. Under certain magnetic field orientations and depending on the strength of the shock, particles can be accelerated to close to the speed of light at these boundaries. These may be the dominant source of cosmic rays, high-energy particles that pervade our galaxy.
Scientists are particularly interested in "quasi-parallel" shocks, where the magnetic field and the "forward"-facing direction of the shock are almost aligned, as may be found in supernova remnants. The new study, led by Adam Masters of the Institute of Space and Astronautical Science, Sagamihara, Japan, describes the first detection of significant acceleration of electrons in a quasi-parallel shock at Saturn, coinciding with what may be the strongest shock ever encountered at the ringed planet.
"Cassini has essentially given us the capability of studying the nature of a supernova shock in situ in our own solar system, bridging the gap to distant high-energy astrophysical phenomena that are usually only studied remotely," said Masters.

History: What happened this day...


Inspecting Friendship 7

Astronaut John Glenn inspects artwork that will be painted on the outside of his Mercury spacecraft, which he nicknamed Friendship 7. On Feb. 20, 1962, Glenn lifted off into space aboard his Mercury Atlas (MA-6) rocket to become the first American to orbit the Earth. After orbiting the Earth three times, Friendship 7 landed in the Atlantic Ocean, just East of Grand Turk Island in the Bahamas. Glenn and his capsule were recovered by the Navy Destroyer Noa, 21 minutes after splashdown.

February 19, 2013

Moons

Fly me to the moons.... Jupiter with 4 moons plus an added bonus of a moon. This is an enhanced real image, no cut and paste.

AC 72 video

Some pretty impressive footage showing this thing rocketing along. Word is they went by Artemis like it was tied to a stump…

http://youtu.be/jUZu7RivhoQ

More shots of Maserati finish






Chelyabinsk, Russia Meteor

New information provided by a worldwide network of sensors has allowed scientists to refine their estimates for the size of the object that entered that atmosphere and disintegrated in the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, at 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15).

The estimated size of the object, prior to entering Earth's atmosphere, has been revised upward from 49 feet (15 meters) to 55 feet (17 meters), and its estimated mass has increased from 7,000 to 10,000 tons. Also, the estimate for energy released during the event has increased by 30 kilotons to nearly 500 kilotons of energy released. These new estimates were generated using new data that had been collected by five additional infrasound stations located around the world – the first recording of the event being in Alaska, over 6,500 kilometers away from Chelyabinsk. The infrasound data indicates that the event, from atmospheric entry to the meteor's airborne disintegration took 32.5 seconds. The calculations using the infrasound data were performed by Peter Brown at the University of Western Ontario, Canada. 

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "When you have a fireball of this size we would expect a large number of meteorites to reach the surface and in this case there were probably some large ones."

The trajectory of the Russia meteor was significantly different than the trajectory of the asteroid 2012 DA14, which hours later made its flyby of Earth, making it a completely unrelated object. The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia.


Preliminary information indicates that a meteor in Chelyabinsk, Russia, is not related to asteroid 2012 DA14, which flew by Earth safely.
The Russia meteor is the largest reported since 1908, when a meteor hit Tunguska, Siberia. The meteor entered the atmosphere at about 40,000 mph (18 kilometers per second). The impact time was 7:20:26 p.m. PST, or 10:20:26 p.m. EST on Feb. 14 (3:20:26 UTC on Feb. 15), and the energy released by the impact was in the hundreds of kilotons.





Based on the duration of the event, it was a very shallow entry. It was larger than the meteor over Indonesia on Oct. 8, 2009. Measurements are still coming in, and a more precise measure of the energy may be available later. The size of the object before hitting the atmosphere was about 49 feet (15 meters) and had a mass of about 7,000 tons.
The meteor, which was about one-third the diameter of asteroid 2012 DA14, was brighter than the sun. Its trail was visible for about 30 seconds, so it was a grazing impact through the atmosphere.
It is important to note that this estimate is preliminary, and may be revised as more data is obtained.


Scientists have found more than 50 tiny fragments of the meteor, and preliminary tests are turning up information about its contents. However, local residents seem more interested in the black market value of the fragments. As they search for their own pieces of the meteor, sales offers already are filling the Internet, and police are warning all purchasers to prepare for possible fraud.

The meteor – which injured nearly 1,500 people and caused widespread property damage in Chelyabinsk city on Friday. Health officials said 46 of the injured remain hospitalized.

Viktor Grokhovsky, who led the expedition from Urals Federal University, said Monday that 53 fragments of the meteor have been plucked from the ice-covered Chebarkul Lake. He said they are less than a centimeter (half an inch) in size, about 10 percent iron, and belong to the chondrite type, the most common variation of meteorites found on Earth. Friday's meteor left a six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) hole in the ice covering the lake. Divers inspecting it have found nothing at the bottom, but Grokhovsky said a fragment as large as 50-60 centimeters (20-24 inches) could eventually be found there.

Meanwhile, workers in the city remained busy replacing acres of windows shattered by a powerful shockwave caused by the meteor's strike, the power equivalent to more than 30 Hiroshima bombs. The local governor estimated the damage at 1 billion rubles ($33 million) and said he hopes the federal government will provide at least half that amount.

Asteroid 2012 DA14


Asteroid 2012 DA14 as Seen from Siding Spring, Australia.

Maserati record!!! 47 day


Flag-waving Italians cheered a revered sailor as he slipped into Pier 39 around noon Saturday, setting a record for sailing from New York to San Francisco.

The finish line..
Giovanni Soldini, internationally known for his feats of endurance at sea, skippered the eight-member Maserati around Cape Horn at the tip of South America in 47 days, 2 hours and 33 minutes. He bested the 1998 monohull record set by a French sailor by 10 days and took claim of the Clipper Challenger's Cup.
Once docked, the 70-foot sailboat was swarmed by adoring fans, many of whom have monitored Soldini's latest maritime conquest via the Internet as closely as a World Cup match.

"We are filled with pride and emotion," said Italian consul general Mauro Battocchi. "We need good heroes, and he is a true Italian hero today." The 13,225-mile voyage is considered one of the most difficult hauls in sailing, particularly maneuvering the mercurial winds and sea at Cape Horn. The late Tom Blackaller, a Bay Area sailor, compared the feat to climbing Everest or swimming the English Channel.
After Soldini emerged from the Maserati he said in halting English that the journey around Cape Horn was mild.

"You can pass if the sea lets you pass," Soldini said. "Otherwise, you don't pass. We were able to pass."
Soldini has completed two solo around-the-world races and competed in more than 30 trans-Atlantic races. He once rescued a fellow racer from certain death after her boat capsized in rough seas 1,900 miles west of Cape Horn.

Soldini said it was the first time he set foot in San Francisco, and he planned to stay for two months before he raced from Los Angeles to Honolulu. "Let's get to know San Francisco," he said. Alessandro Bocchio of Napa, who brought family and friends to Pier 39, got a chance to shake hands and take pictures with the famous sailor.

Bocchio said his 55-year-old mother was watching live coverage of the event from her home in Northern Italy and texted him, "Soldini has arrived in San Francisco!" "It's a big deal for us," Bocchio said. "And that the previous record was set by a Frenchman makes it even better."

February 15, 2013

Flux Ropes on the Sun


This is an image of magnetic loops on the sun, captured by NASA's Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO). It has been processed to highlight the edges of each loop to make the structure more clear.

A series of loops such as this is known as a flux rope, and these lie at the heart of eruptions on the sun known as coronal mass ejections (CMEs.) This is the first time scientists were able to discern the timing of a flux rope's formation.

Two years of the Blog...

This is the second anniversary of the Blog. Hope it has been interesting. Written more some weeks, less others, had good times and bad. Life goes up and down and I have tried to write the good. But sometimes the bad finds a way in.

Maserati almost there.......

Almost!!!! Almost!!!!
Maybe tonight or tomorrow the record will be broken. 46 days, 10 days faster than the current record. It helped to have a good weather window going around the horn and not getting stuck in the doldrums, but it has been a great run none the less.

Meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia


A meteor streaked across the sky and exploded over Russia's Ural Mountains with the power of an atomic bomb Friday, its sonic blasts shattering countless windows and injuring nearly 1,000 people.
Contrail and residue from the meteor
The spectacle deeply frightened many Russians, with some elderly women declaring that the world was coming to an end.

The meteor — estimated to be about 10 tons — entered the Earth's atmosphere at a hypersonic speed of at least 54,000 kph (33,000 mph) and shattered into pieces about 30-50 kilometers (18-32 miles) above the ground, the Russian Academy of Sciences said in a statement.
Amateur video broadcast on Russian television showed an object speeding across the sky about 9:20 a.m. local time, just after sunrise, leaving a thick white contrail and an intense flash.
The meteor released several kilotons of energy above the Chelyabinsk region, the science academy said. The shock wave blew in an estimated 100,000 square meters (more than 1 million square feet) of glass, according to city officials.
"There was panic. People had no idea what was happening," said Sergey Hametov, a resident of Chelyabinsk, a city of 1 million about 1,500 kilometers (930 miles) east of Moscow.
"We saw a big burst of light, then went outside to see what it was and we heard a really loud, thundering sound," he told The Associated Press by telephone.

The meteor hit less than a day before Asteroid 2012DA14 is to make the closest recorded pass of an asteroid to the Earth — about 17,150 miles (28,000 kilometers). But the European Space Agency in a tweet said its experts had determined there was no connection — just cosmic coincidence.

Contrail 
The Interior Ministry said 985 people sought medical care after the shock wave and 44 of them were hospitalized. Most of the injuries were caused by flying glass, it said.
There was no immediate word on any deaths or anyone struck by space fragments.
Meteors typically cause sizeable sonic booms when they enter the atmosphere because they are traveling so much faster than the speed of sound. Injuries on the scale reported Friday, however, are extraordinarily rare.
"I went to see what that flash in the sky was about," recalled resident Marat Lobkovsky. "And then the window glass shattered, bouncing back on me. My beard was cut open, but not deep. They patched me up, it's OK now." Another resident, Valya Kazakov, said some elderly women in his neighborhood started crying out that the world was ending.

Lessons had just started at Chelyabinsk schools when the meteor exploded, and officials said 204 schoolchildren were among those injured.

Large fireball in the sky as the meteor explodes
Yekaterina Melikhova, a high school student whose nose was bloody and whose upper lip was covered with a bandage, said she was in her geography class when they saw a bright light outside.

"After the flash, nothing happened for about three minutes. Then we rushed outdoors. I was not alone, I was there with Katya. The door was made of glass, a shock wave made it hit us," she said.

Russian television ran footage of athletes at a city sports arena who were showered by shards of glass from huge windows. Some of them were still bleeding. City officials said 3,000 buildings in the city were damaged by the shock wave, including a zinc factory where part of the roof collapsed.

The vast implosion of glass windows exposed many residents to the bitter cold as temperatures in the city hovered around minus 9 Celsius (15.8 Fahrenheit).
The regional governor immediately urged any workers who can pane windows to rush to the area to help out. Some fragments fell in a reservoir outside the town of Chebarkul, the regional governor's office said, according to the ITAR-Tass. A six-meter-wide (20-foot-wide) crater was found in the same area, which could come from space fragments striking the ground, the news agency cited military spokesman Yaroslavl Roshchupkin as saying.

Small pieces of space debris — usually parts of comets or asteroids — that are on a collision course with the Earth are called meteoroids. They become meteors when they enter the Earth's atmosphere. Most meteors burn up in the atmosphere, but if they survive the frictional heating and strike the surface of the Earth they are called meteorites.
The site of Friday's spectacular show is about 5,000 kilometers (3,000 miles) west of Tunguska, which 1908 was the site of the largest recorded explosion of a space object plunging to Earth. That blast, attributed to a comet or asteroid fragment, is generally estimated to have been about 10 megatons; it leveled some 80 million trees.

Scientists believe that a far larger meteorite strike on what today is Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula may have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs about 66 million years ago. According to that theory, the impact would have thrown up vast amounts of dust that blanketed the sky for decades and altered the climate on Earth

The panic and confusion that followed Friday's meteorite crash quickly gave way to Chelyabinsk residents' entrepreneurial instincts. Several people smashed in the windows of their houses in the hopes of pretending they were broken by the meteorite and receiving compensation, RIA Novosti news agency reported.

Asteroid DA14: Later today


Like trailers for the coming attraction, new images show asteroid 2012 DA14 on its way to a record-close approach to Earth on Feb. 15. One image, taken by amateur astronomer Dave Herald of Murrumbateman, Australia, on Feb. 13, shows the asteroid as a tiny white dot in the field of view. Another set of animated images, obtained by the Faulkes Telescope South in Siding Springs, Australia, on Feb. 14, and animated by the Remanzacco Observatory in Italy, shows the asteroid as a bright spot moving across the night sky.

These are some of many images that may be taken of the asteroid during its close - but safe - encounter with Earth. It will be observed by numerous optical observatories worldwide in an attempt to determine its rough shape, spin rate and composition. NASA scientists will use NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar, located in California's Mojave Desert, to take radar images of the asteroid to determine its precise size and shape on Feb. 16, 18, 19 and 20. The NASA Near Earth Object Observation (NEOO) Program will continue to track the asteroid and predict its future orbit.

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is about 150 feet (45 meters) in diameter. It is expected to fly about 17,200 miles (27,000 kilometers) above Earth's surface at the time of closest approach, which is about 11:25 a.m. PST (2:25 p.m. EST) on Feb. 15. This distance is well away from Earth and the swarm of low Earth-orbiting satellites, including the International Space Station, but it is inside the belt of satellites in geostationary orbit (about 22,200 miles, or 35,800 kilometers, above Earth's surface.) The flyby of 2012 DA14 is the closest-ever predicted approach to Earth for an object this large.
The NASA Near Earth Object Observation (NEOO) Program detects and tracks asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using ground- and space-based telescopes. The network of projects supported by this program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and plots their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.