JumpStart - Space Science

Asteroids

With all the buzz and interest over the last few years about possible asteroid impacts with Earth, and in the movies Armageddon and Deep Impact, and with people all over the world turning their attention to the latest theories of the dinosaur extinction and future close-calls with asteroids- this CD-ROM is a must for for your home or school collection. Here you will find the real science behind comet and asteroid impacts on the Earth, with hundreds of beautiful photographs and illustrations from the NASA archives, as well as a full research library with over 200 pages of easily-accessible text for in-depth review. The CD-ROM captures the thoughts and ideas of the leading scientific experts in the field.
Contact ScienceMaster for information on this CD-ROM.

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Near-Earth-Objects (NEOs) are small bodies in the solar system (asteroids and short-period comets) with orbits that regularly bring them close to the Earth and which are capable of striking our planet. Those NEOs with orbits that actually intersect the Earth’s orbit are called Earth-Crossing-Objects (ECOs).

What size NEOs are dangerous?
The Earth’s atmosphere protects us from most NEOs smaller than a modest office building. From this size up to about 1 km diameter, an impacting NEO can do tremendous damage on a local scale. Above an energy of a million megatons an impact will produce severe environmental damage on a global scale. The probable consequence would be an "impact winter" with loss of crops worldwide and subsequent starvation and disease. Still larger impacts can cause mass extinctions, like the one that ended the age of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago (15 km diameter and about 100 million megatons).

Who is searching for NEOs?
Several teams of astronomers worldwide are surveying the sky with electronic cameras to find NEOs, but the total effort involves fewer than 100 people. The most productive NEO surveys in 1997-98 are: the LINEAR search program of the MIT Lincoln Lab, carried out in New Mexico with US Air Force support; the NEAT search program in Hawaii, carried out jointly by the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and the US Air Force; and the Spacewatch survey at the University of Arizona, funded by NASA and a variety of private grants.

T. Rex and the Crater of Doom
Author: Walter Alvarez
One of the great mysteries is what happened to the dinosaurs, and it has taken great detective work to give us an answer. In T. Rex and the Crater of Doom, some brilliant, not to mention determined, scientists roam the world and seek out the clues.

Rocks from Space : Meteorites and Meteorite Hunters

O. Richard Norton, Dorothy Sigler Norton
This book is packed with facts about meteorites. It’s a great starter book for the amateur skywatcher who wants to pick up the hobby. With over two hundred photos of meteorites Norton vividly describes scientific expeditions to collect samples and examine large impact craters.

Jim Scotti
Jim Scotti is a research scientist at the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory of the University of Arizona. He is an asteroid hunter with the Space Watch program observing at the top of Kitt Peak.

Courtesy NASA/Ames Web Site "Asteroid and Comet Impact Hazards"