11-29-2006, 07:08 AM
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Too lazy to set a custom title
Join Date: Jul 2002
Posts: 40,377
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Quote:
MIAMI.- The U.S. space agency Nasa evokes Hollywood in effort to avoid catastrophe in a mission that would bridge gap between moon and Mars
It?s the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs.
So to save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph. It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified.
Though the proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.
Nasa?s Chris McKay, of the Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com: ``There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send serious equipment to an asteroid.?
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http://www.dominicantoday.com/app/article.aspx?id=19846
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