CONTACT INFORMATION and AFFILIATION

Impact Field Studies Group
ISFG Field Research Member-ASIA Since 2005
http://web.eps.utk.edu/~faculty/ifsg.htm

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IYA 2009 International Year of Astronomy





















Astronomers Without Borders
Regional Coordinator- Southeast Asia Since 2008

Japan Chapter: Japan Planetary Data- Japan Sky Watch
Astronomers Without Borders is dedicated to fostering understanding and goodwill across national and cultural boundaries by creating relationships through the universal appeal of astronomy. Astronomers Without Borders projects promote sharing. Sharing resources. Sharing knowledge. Sharing inspiration. All through a common interest in something basic and universal. Sharing the sky.
http://www.astronomerswithoutborders.org/

------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------- Planetary Data Japan- Japan Sky Watch
For More Information Contact:
Dirk Ross @ drtanukiATgmail.com

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IMCA

International Meteorite Collectors Association

Member #5677

Since 2000

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Cross-Links:

Meteorobs · Amateur Meteor Astronomy

http://tech.groups.yahoo.com/group/meteorobs/

Institut de Mecanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephemerides-France

http://www.imcce.fr/imcce.php?lang=en (english version)

Polish Fireball Network

http://www.pkim.org/

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Site Counter-ClusterMap

(Click to View World CLUSTER MAP)

updated 29AUG09 7SEP09

Meteorite News 31MAR09

Team Finds Riches in Meteorite Treasure Hunt
(PhysOrg.com) -- Just before dawn on Oct. 7, 2008, an SUV-sized asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded harmlessly over the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan. Scientists expected the asteroid, called 2008 TC3, had blown to dust in the resulting high-altitude fireball.PhysOrg - 2 hours, 59 minutes ago

Fireball streaks over Alberta, Saskatchewan
Roland Dechesne had just left his acreage home south of Calgary on Tuesday morning, when he spotted something unusual in the sky.Daily Herald - Mar 31 2:42 PM

Fireball leaves 'great glow' in Alberta sky
Some early risers in Alberta got a glimpse of a fireball streaking across the sky Tuesday morning.CBC via Yahoo! Canada News - Mar 31 12:46 PM

Residents in Alberta and Saskatchewan spot brilliant fireball in morning sky
CALGARY - People in Alberta and Saskatchewan spotted a brilliant green fireball streak across the sky early Tuesday morning.The Canadian Press via Yahoo! Canada News - Mar 31 11:32 AM

Fireball over Alberta 31MAR09

31MAR09 Meteor/Meteorite News
Albertans claim to have seen 'great glow' in the sky
Some early risers in Alberta have called CBC News, claiming they saw a spectacular flash in the sky that could have been a meteor.CBC Saskatchewan - 34 minutes ago

Southern Albertans claim to have seen 'great glow' in the sky
Several early morning risers in southern Alberta are calling CBC News, claiming they saw a spectacular flash in the sky that could have been a meteor.CBC via Yahoo! Canada News - 2 hours, 2 minutes ago

Unknown object lights up Calgary's sky 31MAR09

Unknown object lights up Calgary's sky
Calgary Herald
March 31, 2009 9:35 AMComments (16)

Calgarians up in the early morning hours Tuesday say they saw an unknown, bright object fly across the city's sky.
The object appeared at around 6:30 a.m., according to witnesses reports. One account said the object was travelling roughly in a north-to-south direction east of the downtown core.
It is unclear at this point what the object was.
A Calgary police duty inspector said at about 7:44 a.m. that his department has not received any calls on the object.
One witness, Donna Thompson, described what she saw as "a meteor breaking up" in an e-mail sent to the Herald.
Thompson, who said she was driving on Highway 2 southbound between Olds and Calgary, said she saw the object at about 6:33 a.m. east of the highway. The flash lasted for about two seconds, Thompson said in her e-mail, before dispersing "like fireworks going off."

Did you see the mysterious object? Send us your pics or comments!
hottips@theherald.canwest.com
© Copyright (c) The Calgary Herald
http://www.calgaryherald.com/Unknown+object+lights+Calgary/1447767/story.html

Fireball streaks across the morning sky

Fireball streaks across the morning sky
660NEWS Radio Calgary, Alberta
Dominic Terry & Alicia Hope-Ross Tuesday, March 31st, 2009 8:30 am
A fireball cruised over our city this morning, surprising early-morning commuters.
Our 660News line has been inundated with callers saying they saw a fireball streak across the sky.
Callers tell us the bright green, yellow and blue streak beamed across the heavens, and then broke apart into six or seven pieces, before disappearing.

The fireball apparently streaked from east to west across, and lit up the sky for about ten seconds.

The last time a meteorite lit up the sky was in November, when a massive space rock came through our atmosphere. Researchers later found fragments of the debris in northwestern Saskatchewan.
http://www.660news.com/more.jsp?content=20090331_102033_5444

East Coast Event--USAF: 'Bright light' not man-made object 31MAR09

USAF: 'Bright light' not man-made object
March 31, 2009 - 4:50am
Kristi King, wtop.com

WASHINGTON - The flashing lights and booming sounds that were attributed to a piece of orbiting space junk (29MAR) were not the result of a man-made object, according to the United States Air Force. ...
More: http://wtop.com/?nid=600&sid=1636442

East Coast Event NOT A ROCKET 31MAR09

NOT A ROCKET
by Dr. Tony Phillips
SpaceWeather.com 31MAR09

News reports that a Russian rocket fell over the US mid-Atlantic coast on Sunday evening, March 29th, are probably incorrect. A spent Russian rocket booster did reenter Earth's atmosphere on March 29th, but apparently not over the USA. According to data published by US Strategic Command, the reentry occurred near Taiwan (24° N, 125° E) at 11:57 p.m. EDT. So what were those lights in the sky over Maryland and Virginia two hours earlier? Eyewitness accounts of the Atlantic Coast fireball are consistent with a meteoritic bolide--a random asteroid hitting Earth's atmosphere and exploding in flight.
http://www.spaceweather.com/

East Coast Event May have been Space Junk 30MAR09

Soyuz-FG rocket booster AP/NASA photo, Bill Ingalls

Blame 'space junk' for those flashes and booms
March 30, 2009 - 11:45am
WASHINGTON - The flashing lights and booming sounds that astounded people up and down the East Coast Sunday night...
(read more)...http://wtop.com/?nid=25&sid=1636442

WAVY TV Newsroom-Emails about The Mystery in the Sky 30MAR09

Emails about The Mystery in the Sky
Updated: Monday, 30 Mar 2009, 8:49 AM EDT Published : Monday, 30 Mar 2009, 7:32 AM EDT
HAMPTON ROADS, Va.

- Emails received by the WAVY TV Newsroom:
9:51 p.m. - Jamie in Virginia Beach: boom heard at 9:42 pm; shook the house
9:55 p.m. - ...(Read More):
http://www.wavy.com/dpp/news/local_wavy_emails_about_the_mystery_in_the_sky_20090330

Mysterious light in sky, loud explosion rattles nerves in Hampton Roads 30MAR09

Mysterious light in sky, loud explosion rattles nerves in Hampton Roads
07:38 AM EDT on Monday, March 30, 2009
13 TVNEWS
(VIRGINIA BEACH) - Emergency crews fanned out across the city looking for whatever caused a loud explosion Sunday night.
At around 9:45 (29MAR09) 911 dispatchers started receiving calls... (Read More and Video)http://www.wvec.com/news/topstories/stories/wvec_local_32909_strange_light.838d22a9.html

Night sky phenomenon remains unexplained 30MAR09

Night sky phenomenon remains unexplained (29MAR09)
Richmond Times Dispatch
By Bill Mckelway
Published: March 30, 2009

No one's sure what caused last evening's flashes in the sky. The National Weather Service said today it has seen no evidence of any naturally occurring phenomenon to explain reports of a bright flash of light in eastern Virginia, Maryland and North Carolina.... (More)http://www.timesdispatch.com/rtd/news/local/article/BOOM30_20090329-234409/244022/

Streaking lights, explosions reported Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border 29MAR09

By Patrick Wilson
The Virginian-Pilot© March 30, 2009

Were they meteors? A comet? UFOs?
People from Maryland to Hampton Roads heard loud explosions and saw brilliant, streaking lights in the sky Sunday night.
There was no immediate explanation, the National Weather Service office in Wakefield said. The Virginia Beach 911 center had numerous calls waiting just before 10 p.m., a supervisor said.
The Weather Service said reports were made from Dorchester County, Md., to the Virginia/North Carolina border. People said they saw a streak in the sky and heard an explosion.
“It was orange, like a fireball,” said Steve Wagner, who lives in the Great Bridge area of Chesapeake and said what he saw was too close to be a shooting star. Wagner was outside cooking with family when he saw the streak. He said he went inside when his daughter called, then heard an explosion that sounded like thunder.
Chris Wamsley, a meteorologist with the National Weather Service’s Wakefield office, said there could be various causes of the explosions and lights. A team of people is looking into what happened, he said.
Lindsey Hosek of the Great Neck area of Virginia Beach was jogging along the water with her dog when the sky lit up, she said.
“The bright light at first terrified me because I thought somebody was shining a light on me, and then I saw it, and I was in complete awe because it was so beautiful,” she said.
Then she saw something that looked like a comet moving low toward the ground; it was blue in front followed by orange and appeared to be the shape and size of a refrigerator.
“It was just so low. It was like where a bird should be,” she said. “It was definitely heading downward.”
She was on the phone with a friend a minute later when she heard an explosion.
Kenneth Martin of Chesapeake’s South Norfolk neighborhood said he saw what appeared to be lightning, then the sky turned blue.
Then, he said, a white ball of fire shot close to the ground and appeared to burn out. He said he’s sure it was a meteor.
“It was so vivid in the sky, blinking,” he said. “It was the strangest thing I’ve ever seen.”
No damage was reported, the Weather Service said.

Patrick Wilson, (757) 446-2957, patrick.wilson@pilotonline.com

"Stars of Asia" Workshop of Asian Star Legends 30MAR09

An upcoming workshop on Asian myths/legends about stars will be held from 11 to 13 May, 2009 in Mitaka, Tokyo.
http://www-irc.mtk.nao.ac.jp/~webadm/StarsofAsia_E/index.php?workshop
The "Stars of Asia" workshop aims to bring, report and recognize good myths/legends related to the stars and universe from Asian countries/regions. This is an important milestone of the IYA 2009 Asian collaborative project "Stars of Asia".
Our final target is to publish attractive books of Myths and Legends about Stars and the Universe of Asia for children, people, and teachers in Asia and the world. For this purpose, we will nominate one member of the Editorial Board from each country/region during the WS. The first Editorial Board meeting will be held in the afternoon of May 13 (Wed).

The WS will be held in the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan (NAOJ) headquarters campus, Large Seminer Room: 2-21-1, Osawa, Mitaka, Tokyo, Japan 181-8588.
Location: West boundary of Tokyo city, takes about 1 hour from Tokyo Station by train and bus, or 2 hours from Narita International Airport by limousine or trains. You can see the access route here.

Registration 　
Please access the following web page and fill the form.
http://spreadsheets.google.com/viewform?key=pOH0AtAkr9Egd4acSW1OlGA&t=3552819128023078789

After you fill the registration form, please click the last button of the form to send your registration. You are supposed to get an acceptance
e-mail from the workshop secretary within a couple days.

If you don't receive the e-mail, please e-mail to irc@nao.ac.jp.
If you send several registration forms at the same time by mistake, only the latest one will be accepted.
If you have any questions, please send e-mail to irc@nao.ac.jp
Fumi YOSHIDA: Workshop secretary, NAOJ.

Hopper the Meteorite Dog-A Hillsboro collector adds a tale of a meteorite-hunting hound to his stock 29MAR09

A Hillsboro collector adds a tale of a meteorite-hunting hound to his stock
Sunday, March 29, 2009
The Oregonian

On Feb. 15 in Austin, Texas, runners struggled through the streets, midmarathon. A news cameraman covering the race happened to catch a fireball streaking through the sky.
The first news reports said a plane had crashed. A helicopter was dispatched to the site.
But there was no plane.
In Hillsboro, Rob Wesel thought he knew exactly what had happened: A meteoroid had streaked to Earth, scattering fragments -- or meteorites -- over Texas farmland.
(continued): http://www.oregonlive.com/news/oregonian/margie_boule/index.ssf?/base/living/1238027117161870.xml&coll=7

Time to Solidify an Ocean of Magma -Lunar Study 29MAR09

Time to Solidify an Ocean of Magma
25MAR09
--- A small mineral grain places limits on how long it took the lunar magma ocean to solidify.

Written by G. Jeffrey Taylor
Hawai‘i Institute of Geophysics and Planetology
Cosmochemists are reasonably sure that a global ocean of magma surrounded the Moon when it formed. This was a monumentally important event in lunar history, forming the primary feldspar-rich crust of the lunar highlands and setting the stage for subsequent melting inside the Moon to make additional crustal rocks. Numerous questions remain about the complex array of processes that could have operated in such a huge amount of magma, and about how long it took to solidify the magma ocean. Alex Nemchin and colleagues at Curtin University of Technology (Australia), Westfäilische Wilhelms-Universität (Münster, Germany), and the Johnson Space Center (Houston, Texas, USA) dated a half-millimeter grain of the mineral zircon (ZrSiO4) in an impact melt breccia from the Apollo 17 landing site. They used an ion microprobe to measure the concentrations of lead and uranium isotopes in the crystal, finding that one portion of the grain recorded an age of 4.417 ± 0.006 billion years. Because zircon does not crystallize until more than 95% of the magma ocean has crystallized, this age effectively marks the end of magma ocean crystallization. Magma ocean cooling and crystallization began soon after the Moon-forming giant impact. Other isotopic studies show that this monumental event occurred 4.517 billion years ago. Thus, the difference between the two ages means that the magma ocean took 100 million years to solidify.

Reference:

Nemchin, A., Timms, N., Pidgeon, R., Geisler, T., Reddy, S., and Meyer, C. (2009) Timing of Crystallization of the Lunar Magma Ocean Constrained by the Oldest Zircon. Nature Geoscience, 25 January 2009: doi: 10.1038/NGEO417.

MORE with photos: http://www.psrd.hawaii.edu/Mar09/magmaOceanSolidification.html

Meteorite News 27MAR09

Meteorite hunters in town, seek both witnesses and fallen objects
The Augusta Chronicle Fri, 27 Mar 2009 10:32 AM PDT
An Atlanta meteorite hunter was in Augusta on Friday searching for remnants of a meteorite believed to have caused an early morning sonic boom and fireball sighting on March 20.

Meteorite Hunters Closing In On Georgia Fireball, Reward Upped To $20,000
WJBF-TV Augusta Fri, 27 Mar 2009 09:00 AM PDT
According to an e-mail from meteorite hunter David Pitt, meteorite hunters are in the CSRA looking for the supposed meteorite that cause last Friday morningâs loud boom. They believe the meteorite came to rest in the Augusta area.

California Bolide 26MAR09

Bolide over California 26MAR09
Photo by Larry Stange- YCSentinel

Moments ago... as I was observing the Orion Nebula through my SN8/LXD (8") Shmidt-Neutonian, I saw a white flash that lit up the aperature of the scope. Upon looking up toward Orion I saw a persistant trail lasting about 2 seconds and quite long (~7 degrees.). I summoned wife to watch telescope while checking the Sentinel camera to see if it got it too. It did! A SLOW and nice Bolide with a double explosion and apparent fragmentation products clearly evident however small they are. The Fireball was heading toward the Nebula but did not quite reach it from my location 35 miles North of Sacramento.

Event Date & Time: 20090326_2108:54 PDT
Duration: 3 seconds.
Double detonation with an eye visible train a full 3 seconds after
Start Azimuth: 213 Deg., End Azimuth: 233 Deg. True North.
Start Elevation: 47 Deg., End Elevation: 32 Deg.
Second image(scaled) shows where telescope was pointed on M42.
It was only a couple of degrees elevation from the 2nd detonation point. With an 8" F4 telescope at 65X, no eye damage would have occured but only one eye would have been useful for night vision the rest of the night. :-)

Click "fit to screen" or "Double size" when Q-Time movie is playing for better detail.


http://www.geocities.com/stange34@sbcglobal.net/YEAR2.html



click latest event & scroll to bottom.

Larry Stange- YCSentinel

2008 TC3, Almahata Sitta meteorite came from F-class asteroid 26MAR09

http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?id=asteroid-meteorite-sudan-fireball

Rock Science: First Meteorites Recovered on Earth from an Asteroid Tracked in Space Fragments in the Sudanese desert make up an "asteroid trifecta":
discovery, prediction and recovery By John Matson Scientific American March 25, 2009

Last October, asteroid monitors at the Catalina Sky Survey at the University of Arizona in Tucson picked up a small object on an immediate collision course with Earth. The asteroid was too small to present a real threat - just a few meters across, it stood little chance of penetrating the atmosphere intact. Indeed, it exploded in astratospheric fireball over northern Sudan less than 24 hours later - anevent witnessed by people on the ground as well as the pilots of a KLM airliner- conforming well to astronomer's predictions for its trajectory. But the asteroid, dubbed 2008 TC3, was nonetheless a momentous discovery: Among the countless small objects that strike Earth's atmosphere every year, none had ever been detected and tracked before it impacted. Now the Sudan bolide has yielded yet another first:

Researchers report in Nature today
<http://www.nature.com/nature/journal/v458/n7237/full/nature07920.html>that they have recovered 47 meteorites from the object in the Nubian Desert. And lead author Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., says that another search completed earlier this month, after the paper was submitted, has upped the meteorite count to about 280.
Astronomer Donald Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Programoffice <http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/> at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory inPasadena, Calif., calls 2008 TC3 "a perfect asteroid trifecta,"referring to "pre-impact discovery, successful impact prediction, and successful sample return." (Yeomans did not contribute to the recovery research, but his office played a leading role in tracking the asteroid's entry <http://www.cfa.harvard.edu/mpec/K08/K08T50.html>.)

The find allows astronomers to connect the chemical composition of the meteorite to its orbit and reflectance in the sky during tracking. "The holy grail of asteroid science is to uniquely link a specific meteorite and its detailed composition to a specific asteroid type," Yeomans says."And that has now been done without an expensive sample-return mission. "This object, which the study's authors call Almahata Sitta (Arabic for Station Six, a train station in the desert where eyewitnesses saw the fireball and that served as the researchers' base camp), appears to belong to a rare class of bodies called F-class asteroids, which constitute just 1.3 percent of all asteroids. Chemically speaking, Almahata Sitta is a meteorite whose specific composition is unique among meteorite collections. It is a fragile, porous ureilite (a relatively rare kind of olivine- and pyroxene-bearing meteorite)containing graphite and nanodiamonds, among other materials. Its fragility, Jenniskens says, helps explain why it broke apart so high in the atmosphere. With the benefit of the object's rarity as an F-class body and its orbit, tracked backward through time, the researchers established a possible link to a larger F-class asteroid, the 1.6-mile-(2.6-kilometer-) diameter 1998 KU2, which may have originated from the same parent body as Almahata Sitta."The orbit of the asteroid, by just tracking it for 20 hours, is 10,000times better than anything you can get from just observing a fireball Jenniskens says. "What's neat about this is that the big asteroid allows you to extend back in time the evolutionary history." He notes that scientists might be able to pinpoint the specific region of the asteroid belt that 2008 TC3 came from with more F-class asteroids from the same parent body. Even the brief amount of time 2008 TC3 was tracked provided an excellent lead on where to look- and the desert surface provided an ideal surface for turning up the dark fragments. "The entry trajectory was very precisely known," Jenniskens says. The first samples were found in early December by a 45-person search team from the University of Khartoum. (Three scientists from that university and one from the University of Juba in Sudan are among the co-authors of the study.) "We had many eyes and hands," Jenniskens says, trying "to find these."

“Sirente crater”, Italy impact origin disputed 26MAR09

An article in journal of Geophysical Research disputes the origin of the what has been called the “Sirente crater”.The paper discussing this theory is:
Speranza, F., I. Nicolosi, N. Ricchetti, G. Etiope, P. Rochette, L. Sagnotti, R. De Ritis, and M. Chiappini (2009), The “Sirente crater field,” Italy, revisited. Journal of Geophysical Research. vol. 114, B03103, doi:10.1029/2008JB005759
http://www.agu.org/pubs/crossref/2009/2008JB005759.shtml

They concluded:
“Our data show that the Sirente crater and the minor depressions are simply the results of human activity and karstic processes, respectively.”
An article that discusses this paper is:
Bondre, N., 2009, Geomorphology: Crater or not? Nature Geoscience. vol 2, no. 3, p. 166.

TOC at
http://www.nature.com/ngeo/journal/v2/n3/index.html

PDF file at
http://www.tulane.edu/~kmstraub/Publications/Abrams_09/News_and_Views_09.pdf

Source: Paul H.

2008 TC3 classified as a Ureilite 26MAR09

Carnegie Institution of WashingtonWashington, D.C.
Contact:Douglas Rumble, 202-478-8990
March 25, 2009

Asteroid Impact Helps Trace Meteorite Origins

The car-sized asteroid that exploded above the Nubian Desert last October was small compared to the dinosaur-killing, civilization-ending objects that still orbit the sun. But that didn't stop it from having a huge impact among scientists. This was the first instance of an asteroid spotted in space before falling to Earth. Researchers rushed to collect the resulting meteorite debris, and a new paper in Nature reports on this first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses of its fragments."Any number of meteorites have been observed as fireballs and smoking meteor trails as they come through the atmosphere," says Douglas Rumble of the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory, a co-author of the paper."It's been happening for years. But to actually see this object before it gets to the Earth's atmosphere and then to follow it in -- that's the unique thing."The chemical compositions of asteroids can be studied from Earth by analyzing the spectra of sunlight reflected from their surfaces. This provides enough information to divide asteroids into broad categories, butdoes not yield detailed information on their compositions. On the otherhand, meteorites recovered on Earth can be analyzed directly for chemical composition, but researchers generally have no direct information on what type of asteroid they came from.The asteroid, known as 2008 TC3, was first sighted October 6, 2008, by telescopes of the automated Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson Arizona. Numerous observatories followed its trajectory and took spectrographic measurements before it disappeared into the Earth's shadow the following day. A recovery team led by Peter Jenniskens of the SETI Institute in California and Muawia Shaddad of the University of Khartoum then searched for meteorites along the projected approach path in northern Sudan. They recovered 47 fragments, one of which was selected for preliminary analysisby laboratories, including the Carnegie Institution's Geophysical Laboratory."This asteroid was made of a particularly fragile material that caused it to explode at a high 37 kilometer altitude, before it was significantly slowed down, so that the few surviving fragments scattered over a large area,"explains Jenniskens, the lead author of the Nature paper. "The recovered meteorites were unlike anything in our meteorite collections up to that point."Carnegie's Andrew Steele studied the meteorite's carbon content, which showed signs that at some point in its past the meteorite had been subjected to very high temperatures. "Without a doubt, of all the meteorites that we've ever studied, the carbon in this one has been cooked to the greatest extent," says Steele. "Very cooked, graphite-like carbon is the main constituent of the carbon in this meteorite." Another form of carbon Steele found in the meteorite, nanodiamonds, may give clues as to whether the heating was caused by impacts on the parent asteroid, or by some other process. Oxygen isotopes in the meteorite give other information about its parent body. Each source of meteorites in the solar system, including planets such as Mars, has a distinctive signature of the three isotopes 16O, 17O, and18O. This signature can be recognized even when other variables, such as chemical composition or rock type, differ. "Oxygen isotopes represent the single most decisive measurement in determining the parental or family groupings of meteorites," says Rumble who performed the analysis. According to Rumble's analysis, 2008 TC3 falls into a category of very rare meteorites called ureilites, all of which may have originally come from the same parent body. "Where that is, we don't know," says Rumble. But because astronomers took spectral measurements of 2008 TC3 before it hit the Earth,and can compare those measurements with the laboratory analyses, scientists will be better able to recognize ureilite asteroids in space. One known asteroid with a similar spectrum, the 2.6 kilometer-sized asteroid 1998 KU2, has already been identified by researchers as a possible source for 2008 TC3. Rumble's work was funded by NASA Cosmochemistry grant NNX07AI48G. Steele was supported by NASA's Sample Return Laboratory Instruments and Data Analysis Program (SRLIDAP) , NASA's Astrobiology Science and Technology for Exploring Planets (ASTEP) program , and the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI).

IMAGE CAPTION:[http://www.ciw.edu/sites/www.ciw.edu/files/news/PRRumbleSteeleAsteroid-ImageAMedforWeb.jpg(31KB)]

This fragment of Asteroid 2008 TC3 provided scientists with the first-ever opportunity to calibrate telescopic observations of a known asteroid with laboratory analyses.