United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan

Earth is not prepared for the threat of hazardous rocks from space, say astronauts who helped formulate the U.N. measures

By Clara Moskowitz

When a meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in February, the world’s space agencies found out along with the rest of us, on Twitter and YouTube. That, says former astronaut Ed Lu, is unacceptable—and the United Nations agrees. Last week the General Assembly approved a set of measures that Lu and other astronauts have recommended to protect the planet from the dangers of rogue asteroids.

The U.N. plans to set up an “International Asteroid Warning Group” for member nations to share information about potentially hazardous space rocks. If astronomers detect an asteroid that poses a threat to Earth, the U.N.’s Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space will help coordinate a mission to launch a spacecraft to slam into the object and deflect it from its collision course.

Lu and other members of the Association of Space Explorers (ASE) recommended these steps to the U.N. as a first step to address at the long-neglected problem of errant space rocks. “No government in the world today has explicitly assigned the responsibility for planetary protection to any of its agencies,” ASE member Rusty Schweickart, who flew on the Apollo 9 mission in 1969, said Friday at the American Museum of Natural History. “NASA does not have an explicit responsibility to deflect an asteroid, nor does any other space agency.” The ASE advocates that each nation delegate responsibility for dealing with a potential asteroid impact to an internal agency—before the event is upon us.

The next step in defending Earth against dangerous asteroids is to find them, Lu said. “There are 100 times more asteroids out there than we have found. There are about 1 million asteroids large enough to destroy New York City or larger. Our challenge is to find these asteroids first before they find us.”
Early warning is important because it increases the chance of being able to deflect a threatening asteroid once it is found. If a spacecraft struck an asteroid 5 or 10 years before the rock was due to hit Earth, a slight orbital alternation should be enough to make it pass Earth by; if the asteroid wasn’t detected soon enough, evacuating the impact zone may be the only option available. “If we don’t find it until a year out, make yourself a nice cocktail and go out and watch,” Schweickart quipped.

The B612 Foundation, a non profit Lu founded to address the problem of asteroid impacts, is developing a privately funded infrared space telescope called Sentinel, which it hopes to launch in 2017. The telescope would begin a systematic search for hazardous near-Earth objects.

The ASE astronauts are also asking the United Nations to coordinate a practice asteroid deflection mission to test out the technologies for pushing a rock off course should the need arise. The meteor in Chelyabinsk, which injured 1,000 people but killed none, was an ideal warning shot across the bow, said American Museum of Natural History astronomer Neil deGrasse Tyson, who hosted Friday’s event—now, it’s time for Earth’s citizens to take action. Lu agreed: “Chelyabinsk was bad luck,” he said. “If we get hit again 20 years from now, that is not bad luck—that’s stupidity.”

Food stamp demand rises in Minnesota as budget shrinks

Article by: JENNIFER BROOKS

It’s the Wednesday dinner rush at the Friends in Need food shelf and a little girl stares wide-eyed at tables piled high with fresh fruits and vegetables.

“Can we have some carrots? I love carrots,” she asked a volunteer, who smiled and filled a bag for the family to add to their cart, next to donations of canned goods, cereal, milk, apples and baked goods in St. Paul Park.

More than 554,000 Minnesotans get federal food assistance — one out of every 10 people in the state. A third are children. Another quarter are elderly or disabled adults. Contrary to popular stereotypes, a majority live in families where at least one adult earns a paycheck.

This week, their food budget rests in the hands of Senate and House negotiators, who are about to begin debate on the massive farm bill that will set the budget for the federal Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program (SNAP), still commonly known to many as food stamps.

Republicans, concerned that the program has become far too expansive and expensive, are pushing for $40 billion in cuts to SNAP, which currently feeds 48 million Americans. Those cuts could push millions of people out of the program, including tens of thousands of Minnesotans.

The Minnesota Department of Human Services estimates that the eligibility changes being considered by Congress would cut 16,700 households — an estimated 32,000 people — from the food stamp program in Minnesota. That includes 17,000 children, 4,500 seniors and 4,000 single adults.
“Primarily, [SNAP is] a program of children and the elderly,” said Colleen Moriarty, executive director of the Minnesota nonprofit Hunger Solutions. “So when people talk about these ‘lazy people who won’t get a job’ or the ‘underperformers who are dragging down the economy,’ that’s why it’s so wrong and so mean-spirited. That’s really not who’s on the program.”

The amount allocated per meal by the federal program is small — an average of $1.29. By Friday, that will shrink 13.6 percent, when a temporary boost of federal stimulus runs out.

U.S. Rep. Michele Bachmann, who supports the eligibility changes, says that states must tighten income eligibility and work requirements for those applying for nutrition assistance. The Republican House reforms, she said, would preserve the program for those “most in need,” while “encouraging and incentivizing work among those who are able.” The one in seven Americans and one in 10 Minnesotans on SNAP, she said, “is far too many of us.”

The more the government cuts food assistance, the more people wind up turning to community resources like Friends in Need.

“We are seeing lots and lots of new families coming in. People who have never been to a food shelf before,” said Maureen Wilson, who runs Friends in Need with the help of 150 volunteers in a building donated by the Northern Tier Energy company. “Lots of middle-class families. It’s very, very hard to get them in the door the first time, because they’re embarrassed. They think they’re the only one out there.” Some of them, she notes, have given to the food shelf for years. “They never thought they’d have to use one.”

Since the recession, food stamp use has skyrocketed in suburban and rural counties. As of August, there were 183 percent more people on food stamps in Scott County than in 2007, before the recession hit.

SNAP use is up 165 percent in Carver County, 144 percent in Sherburne County, 132 percent in Wright and 102 percent higher in Anoka County. In the Twin Cities, where there were more people receiving aid to begin with, SNAP use jumped 77 percent in Hennepin and 71 percent in Ramsey County.

These are uneasy times for people like Roberta Hernandez of Coon Rapids, who receives $209 a month in SNAP assistance for herself and her three children, ages 7, 5 and 4. It’s not a lot of money — enough to put hamburger in the Hamburger Helper — and she supplements the food budget by visiting local churches and food shelves. She shops the sales, looking for “anything that would be cheap to make. Soups. Sandwiches. Spaghetti.”

Even so, the food budget sometimes runs short and the children have to do without extras, like a snack for school. “My children watch other kids eating their snacks at school, and sometimes I can’t pack a snack for them because I don’t have the money,” she said. “That’s hard.” Hernandez, 27, moved to Coon Rapids for the schools and the close-knit community. But finding work — particularly a job that can accommodate a child care schedule — hasn’t been easy.

“That little bit of money helps a lot,” she said. “It’s not enough, but it is a big help. I think about how it would be if I didn’t have the $200, and I really would be struggling worse than I am right now.”
Last session, a group of Minnesota lawmakers challenged one another to try to eat for a week on the average SNAP budget of $1.29 per meal. Not one of them made it.

Farm bill feud

The almost $1 trillion farm bill funds everything from agricultural subsidies to conservation programs, but the bulk of its budget — almost 80 percent — funds nutritional assistance to the states. And it’s the debate over food aid that repeatedly has derailed the bill and threatens to plunge U.S. agriculture policy back to Truman-era programs unless Congress can hammer out a compromise by the end of the year.

“Unfortunately, this has become a political issue and the solution will have to be political,” said Rep. Collin Peterson of Minnesota, the ranking Democrat on the House Agriculture Committee. He has been trying to get the Farm Bill reauthorized for the past two years.

The Senate has proposed a far more modest $4 billion cut to the SNAP program. The House split farm aid and food aid into separate bills and proposed $40 billion in SNAP cuts, spread across 10 years. Minnesota Representatives Bachmann, John Kline and Erik Paulsen support that proposal.
The conference committee tasked with bridging that multibillion-dollar gap between the House and Senate proposals includes three Minnesota Democrats: Sen. Amy Klobuchar, Peterson, and Rep. Tim Walz.

Republicans say there must be tighter controls on who can and cannot receive SNAP aid. Right now, states have the flexibility to set their own standards for who can receive food aid. The federal standard limits assistance to people living at or below 138 percent of the federal poverty line — that’s $15,415 a year for an individual; $26,344 for a family of three — but many states, including Minnesota, set the limit higher. In Minnesota, families living at 165 percent above the federal poverty level — $17,880 for a single adult; $30,216 for a family of three — are eligible for food stamps.
The House worked out a bipartisan agreement in June, only to watch it blow up on the floor when conservatives pushed the amendment that split the farm and food aid provisions.

Democrats, Peterson said, will be reluctant to agree to much more than an 8 percent cut in the SNAP budget, and would likely balk at double-digit cuts, while many House Republicans are pushing to shrink the program by at least $20 billion. “Hopefully we can figure out the political sweet spot,” he said. “We have been working on this for too darn long.”

The Democrat’s Version of Health Insurance Would Have Been Cheaper, Simpler, and More Popular (So Why Did We Enact the Republican Version and Why Are They So Upset?)

By ROBERT B. REICH,

House Majority Leader Eric Cantor says Republicans will seek to delay a requirement of the 2010 Affordable Care Act that all Americans obtain health insurance or face a tax penalty. ”With so many unanswered questions and the problems arising around this rollout, it doesn’t make any sense to impose this one percent mandate tax on the American people.”

While Republicans plot new ways to sabotage the Affordable Care Act, it’s easy to forget that for years they’ve been arguing that any comprehensive health insurance system be designed exactly like the one that officially began October 1st, glitches and all.

For as many years Democrats tried to graft healthcare onto Social Security and Medicare, and pay for it through the payroll tax. But Republicans countered that any system must be based on private insurance and paid for with a combination of subsidies for low-income purchasers and a requirement that the younger and healthier sign up.

Not surprisingly, private health insurers cheered on the Republicans while doing whatever they could to block Democrats from creating a public insurance system.

In February 1974, Republican President Richard Nixon proposed, in essence, today’s Affordable Care Act. Under Nixon’s plan all but the smallest employers would provide insurance to their workers or pay a penalty, an expanded Medicaid-type program would insure the poor, and subsidies would be provided to low-income individuals and small employers. Sound familiar?

Private insurers were delighted with the Nixon plan but Democrats preferred a system based on Social Security and Medicare, and the two sides failed to agree.

Thirty years later a Republican governor, Mitt Romney, made Nixon’s plan the law in Massachusetts. Private insurers couldn’t have been happier although many Democrats in the state had hoped for a public system.

When today’s Republicans rage against the individual mandate in the Affordable Care Act, it’s useful to recall this was their idea as well.

In 1989, Stuart M. Butler of the conservative Heritage Foundation came up with a plan that would “mandate all households to obtain adequate insurance.”

Insurance companies loved Butler’s plan so much it found its way into several bills introduced by Republican lawmakers in 1993. Among the supporters were senators Orrin Hatch, R-Utah, and Charles Grassley, R-Iowa (who now oppose the mandate under the Affordable Care Act). Newt Gingrich, who became Speaker of the House in 1995, was also a big proponent.

Romney’s heathcare plan in Massachusetts included the same mandate to purchase private insurance. “We got the idea of an individual mandate from [Newt Gingrich], and [Newt] got it from the Heritage Foundation,” said Romney, who thought the mandate “essential for bringing the health care costs down for everyone and getting everyone the health insurance they need.”

Now that the essential Republican plan for healthcare is being implemented nationally, health insurance companies are jubilant.

Last week, after the giant insurer Wellpoint raised its earnings estimates, CEO Joseph Swedish pointed to “the long-term membership growth opportunity through exchanges.” Other major health plans are equally bullish. “The emergence of public exchanges, private exchanges, Medicaid expansions … have the potential to create new opportunities for us to grow and serve in new ways,” UnitedHealth Group CEO Stephen J. Hemsley effused.

So why are today’s Republicans so upset with an Act they designed and their patrons adore? Because it’s the signature achievement of the Obama administration.

There’s a deep irony to all this. Had Democrats stuck to the original Democratic vision and built comprehensive health insurance on Social Security and Medicare, it would have been cheaper, simpler, and more widely accepted by the public. And Republicans would be hollering anyway.

Obamacare

Obamacare Rate Shock and Premium Joy: Now It's Real

BY JONATHAN COHN

The conversation about Obamacare shifted a bit over the weekend. Nobody has forgotten about the technical problems with healthcare.gov. But now critics are also focusing on something else: Reports of sharp premium increases that some individual consumers are facing. In the last few weeks, several hundred thousand Americans have received notices from their health insurance companies, effectively cancelling their existing policies. These consumers can get new policies, of course, but frequently they have to pay more for them.

The news reports are real—and not at all surprising. Obamacare is transforming one part of the existing health insurance market, in ways that will force some people to pay more than they do now. But that’s only part of the story. Many other people, quite possibly the majority of people in that market, will pay less than they do now. And even those paying more will be getting more comprehensive, more secure insurance.

If all of this sounds familiar, it should. Health policy experts spent much of the summer arguing about this very point—about the likelihood of both “rate shock” and “premium joy” and which effect matters more. The lesson of that debate (at least to me) was that journalists, politicians, and anybody else talking about this should really provide a full, nuanced picture—noting all the ways Obamacare is affecting premiums and how that will play out for people in different situations.

But that doesn't seem to be happening, except at places like Politifact. More typical is a recent study from the Heritage Foundation suggesting that most people will end up paying more. That report continues to reverberate throughout the right wing press, even though it left out half the facts.

So here’s a quick refresher on what's really happening:

1. For the vast majority of Americans, very little is changing. Most Americans get insurance either through Medicare, Medicaid, or an employer. The Affordable Care Act isn’t doing much to alter premiums or out-of-pockets of these plans, at least for the time being. The big changes are mostly taking place in the “non-group” market—that is, for individuals who buy coverage on their own rather than through an employer.

2. One of Obamacare’s primary goals is to make sure everybody has a decent health insurance policy. Under the law, every plan should include a comprehensive set of benefits and put some limits on what people pay out-of-pocket. The policies now available in the non-group market frequently don’t meet those standards. They might leave out benefits like maternity or mental health—or they might have truly exorbitant deductibles. Starting next year, insurers can’t sell new policies unless they meet Obamacare’s standards. That will tend to make insurance more expensive.

3. Another major goal of Obamacare is to make sure all people can get coverage at uniform prices, regardless of pre-existing conditions. This is known as “guaranteed issue” and “community rating.” Today insurers frequently charge higher premiums or deny coverage altogether to people with pre-existing conditions. This allows them to keep prices low for the young and the healthy. Obamacare will force insurers to abandon these practices. But if the old and the sick get to pay less, the young and the healthy will have to pay more.

4. Obamacare has already introduced some reforms to keep down the price of insurance. Some of these are designed to make medical care itself more efficient—in ways that, hopefully, will eventually reduce insurance premiums. Other reforms attempt to influence insurance prices directly, by, for example, limiting how much money insurers can siphon off for premiums and overhead. A study by the Kaiser Family Foundation suggested this provision, known as the "medical loss ratio" requirement, saved consumers about $2.1 billion in 2012.

5. Obamacare also has subsidies that offset premium increases for the majority of Americans. The value of the tax credits, which are financed by higher taxes on the wealthy and various cuts to government health care spending, varies depending on the incomes of the people receiving them. But in some cases they are worth several thousand dollars. That would be enough to wipe out any premium increases from the law’s new regulations. People making just a little above the poverty line will frequently have access to policies that cost less than $100 a month. Keep in mind that the tax credits are available upfront, when somebody buys insurance—so it’s really more like a discount on the sticker price than a tax benefit somebody collects later on.

6. Lots of people buying non-group insurance today will find they can get insurance for much, much less than they are paying today. Partly that’s because of the tax credits. But partly that’s because they’ll become eligible for Medicaid—at least in those states joining in the program’s expansion. Young adults, under the age of 26, also have the option of enrolling in their parents’ plans. And people younger than 30 will have access to special catastrophic plans that are even cheaper than other Obamacare insurance options, though they cover less.

7. These factors will mix together in different ways for different people, depending on income, place of residence, and so on. There’s lots of disagreement about how many people will pay more versus how many people will pay less. (The experts I trust most continue to say that, most likely, the majority of people will end up paying less.) But even if those paying more are a relatively tiny percentage of the population overall, they will still be a large group in raw numbers. It’s a big country! That’s why there are so many of these stories circulating right now. Of course, even those people paying more for their coverage will be paying rates that are, for the most part, comparable to the cost of insurance that employers provide to employees. They'll also be getting a level of coverage and security the old non-group market usually did not provide.

Are these trade-offs worthwhile? Is it fair to make the young, healthy, and wealthy subsidize the old, sick, and non-wealthy? Those are obviously issues about which intelligent, honest people can disagree. And right now the only way to get those all-important tax credits is through the healthcare.gov website—or call centers and paper applications that ultimately rely on the same technology. The people who stand to benefit from this transition don’t know it yet, because they aren’t able to log on and see how much they’ll save. That’s a big reason the stories of rate hikes are getting so much attention—and one more reason the federal governmetn needs to fix its website soon.

 

"Free Trade"??? Or more money for the rich???

The Trans-Pacific Partnership: A Trade Agreement for Protectionists

 

by Dean Baker

The Trans-Pacific Partnership (TPP) stands at the top of the Obama administration’s trade agenda. The argument from its supporters is that this agreement is part of the never-ending quest for freer trade. The evidence from what we know of this (still secret) pact is that the TPP has little to do with free trade. It can more accurately be described as a pact designed to increase the wealth and power of crony capitalists.

At this point, with few exceptions, formal trade barriers, such as tariffs and quotas, are not very large. If lowering or eliminating the formal barriers that remain were the main agenda of this pact, there would be relatively little interest. Rather, the purpose of the pact is to use an international trade agreement to create a regulatory structure that is much more favorable to corporate interests than they would be able to get through the domestic political process in the United States and in the other countries in the pact.

The gap between free trade and the agenda of the TPP is clearest in the case of prescription drugs. The US drug companies have a major seat at the negotiating table. They will be trying to craft rules that increase the strength of patent and related protections. The explicit purpose is to raise (as in not lower) the price of drugs in the countries signing the TPP.

Note that this goal is the opposite of what we would expect in an agreement designed to promote free trade. Instead of having drug companies at the table, we might envision that we would have representatives of consumer groups who would try to negotiate rules that could ensure safe drugs at lower prices. Instead of using a “trade” agreement to try to push drug prices in other countries up, we could actually use trade to bring the price of drugs in the United States down to the levels seen elsewhere.

Insofar as this creates problems for the model of government granted patent monopolies as the main tool for financing research, we could even look to promote methods of research financing that don’t have their origins in the medieval guild system, like patents. Everyone, including the drug companies, seems to think that the $30 billion we spend on research each year through the National Institutes of Health is extremely valuable. This suggests that there are other ways to finance research.

We could also look to have freer trade in doctors. The doctors’ lobbies have erected numerous barriers to keep qualified foreign physicians from practicing in the United States. There are enormous potential gains from eliminating these barriers. If we got the pay of doctors in the United States in line with doctors’ pay in other wealthy countries, the savings would be close to $1 trillion over the next decade. That comes to around $7,000 per household.

It is striking that we openly make deals to bring in foreign nurses to lower the pay of nurses in the United States, but can never even discuss doing the same with doctors. The potential benefits to the United States from importing doctors are certainly much larger than for importing nurses.

 In fact the potential gains from bringing in foreign physicians are so large that we could tax a portion of the earnings of foreign doctors to repay their home countries and allow them to educate two to three doctors for every one that comes to the United States. This would ensure that everyone benefits from freer trade in physicians’ services. The lack of interest in this sort of free trade likely has something to do with the fact that doctors make up a large chunk of the richest one percent.

There are many other areas where we could envision freer trade bringing real gains to the bulk of the population. However this is not what the TPP is about. The TPP is about crafting rules that will favor big business at the expense of the rest of the population in both the United States and in other countries.

For example, we can expect to see limits on the ability of national and sub-national governments to impose environmental restrictions, such as requirements that companies engaging in fracking disclose the list of chemicals they use. There may also be limits on the extent to which governments can restrict the sale of genetically modified foods, with rules on labeling. And, the TPP may prevent governments from imposing restraints on financial firms that would prevent the sort of abuses that we saw during the run-up of the housing bubble.

The world has benefited from the opening of trade over the last four decades. But this opening has been selective so that, at least in the United States, most of the gains have gone to those at the top. It is possible to design trade deals that benefit the population as a whole, but not when corporate interests are literally the negotiators at the table. Rather than being about advancing free trade, the TPP is the answer to the question: How can we make the rich richer?

Palin knows.... How to make money...

Sarah Palin follows the Donald Trump method

By James C. Moore

Sarah is selling Sarah. The former vice presidential candidate and half-term governor of Alaska is a commodity of one and a marketing machine. She has created a new politics of profit.

Palin's reanimation on the tea party stage probably means no more than the other intentions she has floated but never executed. She spent almost a year of the last presidential election cycle teasing the far right that she was going to run for president. She never did, but lots of network TV interviews and speculative articles drove up her name recognition and brand identification.

And she's not running again.

Palin is re-running the same show in her home state of Alaska by hinting that she is going to be a candidate for the U.S. Senate. She will not run though. There is too much risk of failure. She's not the near-unknown who was elected governor of Alaska and then quit 2½ years into the job. She has a profile, and she intends to use it to make money, which is one commitment she knows how to keep. Running and losing is always bad for business.

Palin is a product. Not a candidate.

Politically, Sarah Palin is an opposite gender version of Donald Trump. She makes grandiloquent statements about candidacies and a future that she knows will never transpire. Trump and Palin lack the courage to run for president but have profitably monetized the speculation about a candidacy. Trump cannot abide the notion of losing, which he knows is inevitable, and he fears what that might do to his image and revenue stream. Palin is self-aware enough to realize that she has neither the intellect nor popular support outside the increasingly unpopular tea party.

So why not make a buck?

In the detritus of the McCain-Palin presidential campaign, the second name emerged as the lead act. The first nine months after her resignation as governor, at the end of July 2009, Palin reportedly earned $12 million, including a book deal, a TV show and speaking fees that were generally more than $100,000 per appearance.

It's not hard to tell whether principle is more important than profit for the failed vice presidential candidate. The tea party has been charged $100,000 for a Palin speech, and, even as she promotes support of charities, a Toronto cancer center a few years ago paid $200,000 for her to attend a fund-raiser, and the event sold out at $200 a seat. Her politics and intelligence might be trifling, but Palin appears to have evolved a very nice business model: Raise the profile to raise the revenue, mostly for herself.

And she's back at it.

Until recently, Palin hasn't been too active, except on social media. She seems to have the entire national tea party population on her Facebook page, but the TV cameras had not been showing up when she gave her bargain-priced speeches. A love spat with Fox News that kept her off the air and then back into the network's arms has left her fans confused. Donations to Sarah PAC fell off. Why was no one paying attention?

Palinians should not fear. She has seen opportunity in the tea party and its plans to beat moderate Republicans in GOP primaries. This is a nearly risk-free approach to increased Sarah-wareness.

The candidate runs, Palin speaks and rallies the initiates. She endorses, and if the campaign fails it is the candidate's fault, not Palin's; she's moved on to help in another race. But the cameras came, reporters took notes, images were broadcast, words were published, and Palin's price went up.

Timing is critical to maximizing opportunity, of course. When the federal government shut down as a consequence of tea party obstinacy, Palin jetted off to Washington to help her ideological consort, Sen. Ted Cruz of Texas, as they crashed the "Barrycades" at the National World War II Memorial.

Those cameras and bullhorns and journalists were there. Palin had just arrived from New Jersey, where she had endorsed the hopeless tea party candidacy of Steve Lonegan, who lost, soundly, but not without Sarah getting TV time in New York.

In business school, they teach "know your customer." Palin might have attended that class because she is promising to help tea party candidates unseat GOP U.S. senators in South Carolina, Kentucky, Mississippi and Tennessee in 2014. The Sarah Promoting Sarah tour begins, however, several months ahead at the Iowa Faith and Freedom Foundation dinner on November 9.

In what is almost certainly a coincidence of timing, just three days later, Palin's new book goes on sale for the holidays. She has not written about the Constitution or her understanding of Paul Revere in the Revolutionary War; Palin, instead, is doing the much more challenging work of preventing further harm to Christmas. "Good Tidings and Great Joy: Protecting the Heart of Christmas," can already be pre-ordered. Get yours now. Or just send a check to Palin. She might not understand politics or policy, but Palin knows money.

Horsehead Nebula

The dark Horsehead Nebula and the glowing Orion Nebula are contrasting cosmic vistas. Adrift 1,500 light-years away in one of the night sky's most recognizable constellations, they appear in opposite corners of the above stunning mosaic. The familiar Horsehead nebula appears as a dark cloud, a small silhouette notched against the long red glow at the lower left. Alnitak is the easternmost star in Orion's belt and is seen as the brightest star to the left of the Horsehead. Below Alnitak is the Flame Nebula, with clouds of bright emission and dramatic dark dust lanes. The magnificent emission region, the Orion Nebula (aka M42), lies at the upper right. Immediately to its left is a prominent reflection nebula sometimes called the Running Man. Pervasive tendrils of glowing hydrogen gas are easily traced throughout the region.

NGC 7789

Found among the rich starfields of the Milky Way toward the constellation Cassiopeia, star cluster NGC 7789 lies about 8,000 light-years away. A late 18th century deep sky discovery of astronomer Caroline Lucretia Herschel, the cluster is also known as Caroline's Rose. Its suggestive appearance is created by the cluster's nestled complex of stars and voids. Now estimated to be 1.6 billion years young, the galactic or open cluster of stars also shows its age. All the stars in the cluster were likely born at the same time, but the brighter and more massive ones have more rapidly exhausted the hydrogen fuel in their cores. These have evolved from main sequence stars like the Sun into the many red giant stars shown with a yellowish cast in this lovely color composite. Using measured color and brightness, astronomers can model the mass and hence the age of the cluster stars just starting to "turn off" the main sequence and become red giants
. Over 50 light-years across, Caroline's Rose spans about half a degree (the angular size of the moon) near the center of the wide-field telescopic image.

Sungrazer

Arcing toward a fiery fate, this Sungrazer comet was recorded by the SOHO spacecraft's Large Angle Spectrometric COronagraph(LASCO) on December 23, 1996. LASCO uses an occulting disk, partially visible at the lower right, to block out the otherwise overwhelming solar disk allowing it to image the inner 8 million kilometers of the relatively faint corona. The comet is seen as its coma enters the bright equatorial solar wind region (oriented vertically). Positioned in space to continuously observe the Sun, SOHO has now been used to discover over 1,500 comets, including numerous sungrazers.

Based on their orbits, the vast majority of sungrazers are believed to belong to the Kreutz family of sungrazing comets created by successive break ups from a single large parent comet that passed very near the Sun in the twelfth century. The Great Comet of 1965, Ikeya-Seki, was also a member of the Kreutz family, coming within about 650,000 kilometers of the Sun's surface. Passing so close to the Sun, Sungrazers are subjected to destructive tidal forces along with intense solar heat. This small comet, known as the Christmas Comet SOHO 6, did not survive. Later this year, Comet ISON, potentially the brightest sungrazer in recorded history but not a Kreutz sungrazer, is expected to survive.

Orion's avionics system

NASA's first-ever deep space craft, Orion, has been powered on for the first time, marking a major milestone in the final year of preparations for flight.

Orion's avionics system was installed on the crew module and powered up for a series of systems tests at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida last week. Preliminary data indicate Orion's vehicle management computer, as well as its innovative power and data distribution system -- which use state-of-the-art networking capabilities -- performed as expected.

All of Orion's avionics systems will be put to the test during its first mission, Exploration Flight Test-1(EFT-1), targeted to launch in the fall of 2014.

"Orion will take humans farther than we've ever been before, and in just about a year we're going to send the Orion test vehicle into space," said Dan Dumbacher, NASA's deputy associate administrator for exploration systems development in Washington. "The work we're doing now, the momentum we're building, is going to carry us on our first trip to an asteroid and eventually to Mars. No other vehicle currently being built can do that, but Orion will, and EFT-1 is the first step."

Orion provides the United States an entirely new human space exploration capability -- a flexible system that can to launch crew and cargo missions, extend human presence beyond low-Earth orbit, and enable new missions of exploration throughout our solar system.

EFT-1 is a two-orbit, four-hour mission that will send Orion, uncrewed, more than 3,600 miles above the Earth's surface --15 times farther than the International Space Station. During the test, Orion will return to Earth, enduring temperatures of 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit while traveling 20,000 miles per hour, faster than any current spacecraft capable of carrying humans. The data gathered during the flight will inform design decisions, validate existing computer models and guide new approaches to space systems development. The information gathered from this test also will aid in reducing the risks and costs of subsequent Orion flights.

"It’s been an exciting ride so far, but we're really getting to the good part now," said Mark Geyer, Orion program manager. "This is where we start to see the finish line. Our team across the country has been working hard to build the hardware that goes into Orion, and now the vehicle and all our plans are coming to life."

Throughout the past year, custom-designed components have been arriving at Kennedy for installation on the spacecraft -- more than 66,000 parts so far. The crew module portion already has undergone testing to ensure it will withstand the extremes of the space environment. Preparation also continues on the service module and launch abort system that will be integrated next year with the Orion crew module for the flight test.

The completed Orion spacecraft will be installed on a Delta IV heavy rocket for EFT-1. NASA is also developing a new rocket, the Space Launch System, which will power subsequent missions into deep space, beginning with Exploration Mission-1 in 2017.