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NASA Super Guppy jet makes rare stop in Mesa

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NASAs enormous Super Guppy cargo plane made a rare visit to Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport on Dec. 10.(Photo: Parker Leavitt/The Republic)

With a size and body more reminiscent of a whale than a tiny aquarium fish, NASA's Super Guppy plane made a rare stop at Phoenix-Mesa Gateway Airport on Dec. 10, drawing a crowd of spectators and photographers.

The massive, oddly-shaped cargo plane touched down in Mesa for about an hour on its way from Long Beach, Calif. The plane was carrying a "large wing part" headed to Langley Field in Virginia, airport officials said.

"This is absolutely amazing," San Tan Valley resident Kristen Young said shortly after the aircraft landed at around 11:30 a.m. "It's huge. I wasn't expecting it to be this big."

Young and several other moms from the Queen Creek Stroller Strides club brought their toddlers to the airport for an up-close glimpse of the plane. The group often visits the the airport for picnics while watching planes come in.

NASA's Guppy planes were developed in 1962 and played an instrumental role in support of the agency's Apollo program, which took the first humans to the moon in 1969.

The Super Guppy that landed at Gateway Airport is the last of its kind still in use, while several others are on display around the world. This was the plane's second visit to Mesa in the last 20 years, having also landed here last March.

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Une tude de la Nasa met en garde contre la chute de l’Empire occidental -NASA- TacticalFM – Video

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Une tude de la Nasa met en garde contre la chute de l #39;Empire occidental -NASA- TacticalFM
mission "les chevaliers de l #39;info" du 21/03/2014 http://tacticalfm.com/ Articles: http://www.rtbf.be/info/societe/detail_une-etude-de-la-nasa-met-en-garde-contre-la-chute-de-l-empire-occidental?...

By: Jironi desBdR

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Une tude de la Nasa met en garde contre la chute de l'Empire occidental -NASA- TacticalFM - Video

24 Oras: Nasa 2,000 evacuees, nahatiran ng relief goods ng GMA Kapuso Foundation – Video

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24 Oras: Nasa 2,000 evacuees, nahatiran ng relief goods ng GMA Kapuso Foundation
24 Oras is GMA Network #39;s flagship newscast, anchored by Mike Enriquez and Mel Tiangco. It airs on GMA-7 Mondays to Fridays at 6:30 PM (PHL Time) and on weekends at 5:30 PM. For more videos...

By: GMA News and Public Affairs

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24 Oras: Nasa 2,000 evacuees, nahatiran ng relief goods ng GMA Kapuso Foundation - Video

NASA: Asteroid 2014 UR116 nothing to worry about

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WASHINGTON, Dec. 9 (UPI) -- NASA issued a statement Monday insisting that newly identified asteroid 2014 UR116 isn't an immediate threat to Earth. In the wake of the asteroid's discovery, ominous new reports (mostly from Russian media sources) suggested the mountain-sized rock could potentially collide with Earth during one of its triennial flybys.

"While this approximately 400-meter sized asteroid has a three year orbital period around the sun and returns to the Earth's neighborhood periodically, it does not represent a threat because its orbital path does not pass sufficiently close to the Earth's orbit," NASA officials wrote in their released statement.

According to NASA, Tim Spahr, the director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, used data collected from an Near Earth Object with a similar orbit to project UR116's future trajectory. His number crunching confirmed the false alarm.

"These computations rule out this object as an impact threat to Earth (or any other planet) for at least the next 150 years," officials with NASA' Near Earth Object (NEO) Program concluded.

Last week, a group of scientists and citizen-astronomers -- including former Queen guitarist Brain May, who has a PhD in astrophysics -- encouraged a stronger push for experimental asteroid-location and deflection technologies.

"Nasa has done a very good job of finding the very largest objects, the ones that would destroy the human race," Ed Lu, a former astronaut who thrice crewed the International Space Station, told the Financial Times. "It's the ones that would destroy a city or hit the economy for a couple of hundred years that are the problem."

NASA isn't completely ignoring the warnings from these vocal scientists. It is currently hosting a competition for crowd-sourced asteroid detection algorithms, and it has entertained some ideas on how to potentially deflect an asteroid on a collision course with planet Earth.

2014 United Press International, Inc. All Rights Reserved. Any reproduction, republication, redistribution and/or modification of any UPI content is expressly prohibited without UPI's prior written consent.

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NASA Photos Show New Signs Of A Lake On Mars

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A simulated image shows a lake in the large Gale Crater on Mars, with streams of water flowing into it. NASA researchers believe a lake deposited enough sediment in the crater to form a mountain, Mount Sharp. NASA hide caption

A simulated image shows a lake in the large Gale Crater on Mars, with streams of water flowing into it. NASA researchers believe a lake deposited enough sediment in the crater to form a mountain, Mount Sharp.

Signs of water currents and sediments are seen in the latest photos NASA's Curiosity rover sent home from Mars, the space agency said Monday. The images suggest "ancient Mars maintained a climate that could have produced long-lasting lakes," NASA says.

In the huge Gale Crater where Curiosity has been exploring, the water and sediment flow might have been massive enough to build a mountain the 3-mile-high Mount Sharp NASA researchers say. But they acknowledge that they're still working to solve the mystery of how the mountain formed in a crater.

"If our hypothesis for Mount Sharp holds up, it challenges the notion that warm and wet conditions were transient, local or only underground on Mars," said Curiosity deputy project scientist Ashwin Vasavada of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena. "A more radical explanation is that Mars' ancient, thicker atmosphere raised temperatures above freezing globally, but so far we don't know how the atmosphere did that."

NASA says "cross-bedding" in the layers of this Martian rock is proof that water moved on Mars, leaving waves or ripples of loose sediment. The image is from a site at Mount Sharp that NASA calls "Whale Rock." NASA hide caption

NASA says "cross-bedding" in the layers of this Martian rock is proof that water moved on Mars, leaving waves or ripples of loose sediment. The image is from a site at Mount Sharp that NASA calls "Whale Rock."

This isn't the first time NASA has announced signs of water at Gale Crater.

One year ago, NASA analysts saw sedimentary rocks that led them to believe the Martian lake had held freshwater.

And back in 2012, the space agency said images taken by Curiosity showed gravel-like rocks that were smoothed by water and pushed into the shape of an alluvial fan.

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Navy returns NASA's Orion after test flight

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Published December 09, 2014

This Dec. 5, 2014 image provided by NASA shows NASA's Orion spacecraft after splash down as it awaits the U.S. Navy's USS Anchorage in the Pacific ocean.(The Associated Press)

SAN DIEGO NASA's new Orion spacecraft returned to dry land in Southern California after a test flight that ended with a plunge into the Pacific Ocean.

A Navy ship, the USS Anchorage, delivered the capsule to Naval Base San Diego and unloaded the 11-foot-tall cone around 10 p.m. Monday.

Orion made an unmanned flight Friday that carried it 3,600 miles above Earth to test the spacecraft's systems before it carries astronauts on deep space missions. During re-entry into the atmosphere, the spacecraft endured speeds of 20,000 mph and temperatures near 4,000 degrees Fahrenheit.

It parachuted into the ocean about 600 miles southwest of San Diego, where the ship picked it up.

NASA and contractor Lockheed Martin Corp. assisted in Orion's recovery.

The spacecraft may one day carry astronauts to Mars, but its next trip will be on a truck that will carry it back to Cape Canaveral, Florida, in time for Christmas.

The next Orion flight, also unmanned, is four years away, and crewed flights at least seven years away given present budget constraints. But the Orion team spread across the country and on the ocean, is hoping Friday's triumphant splashdown will pick up the momentum.

During the flight test, all 11 parachutes deployed and onboard computers withstood the intense radiation of the Van Allen belts surrounding Earth. Everything meant to jettison away did so as Orion soared into space. It landed just a mile from its projected spot off Mexico's Baja Peninsula.

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Navy returns NASA's Orion after test flight


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