NASA revives mothballed spacecraft to be asteroid hunter

Computerworld - NASA is bringing a retired spacecraft back to life to search for potentially dangerous near-Earth objects.
The Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) worked from January 2010 to February 2011, hunting for and characterizing tens of thousands of asteroids throughout the solar system. Now the spacecraft, which has been in hibernation mode with most of its electronics turned off, will begin work again -- this time searching for asteroids flying precariously close to Earth, as well as for asteroids that might be suitable for study.
"The WISE mission achieved its mission's goals...," said John Grunsfeld, NASA's associate administrator for science, in a statement. "NASA is now extending that record of success, which will enhance our ability to find potentially hazardous asteroids, and support the new asteroid initiative. Reactivating WISE is an excellent example of how we are leveraging existing capabilities across the agency to achieve our goal."
Asteroids have been a key point of interest for NASA. While scientists are always on the lookout for near-Earth objects that could impact the planet, NASA announced in April that President Obama's 2014 budget request included funding for a plan to capture and redirect an asteroid into orbit around Earth so astronauts could study it.
Ultimately, the project, which is getting resistance from House Republicans, is aimed at learning more about the makeup of asteroids in an attempt to protect the Earth from devastating collisions.
NASA said Wednesday that the WISE spacecraft will be revived next month and refocused on discovering and characterizing space rocks that can be found orbiting within 28 million miles of Earth.
NASA said scientists anticipate WISE will use its 16-inch telescope and infrared cameras to discover about 150 previously unknown near-Earth objects and characterize the size, ability to reflect light and thermal properties of about 2,000 others.
While WISE was working on its initial mission between 2010 and 2011, the spacecraft made about 7,500 images daily. It made the most accurate survey to date of near-Earth objects and discovered 21 comets, more than 34,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and 135 near-Earth objects, NASA reported.

"The data collected two years ago have proven to be a gold mine...," said Lindley Johnson, NASA's WISE program executive. "It is important that we accumulate as much of this type of data as possible while the WISE spacecraft remains a viable asset."
This article, NASA revives mothballed spacecraft to be asteroid hunter, was originally published at Computerworld.com.
An artist's depiction of WISE, a NASA spacecraft, which is being brought out of retirement to hunt for asteroids. (Image: NASA)
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Sequestration Could Curtail 'Hurricane Hunter' Missions

U.S. Air Force A WC-130J "Hurricane Hunter"

U.S. Air Force

Federal furloughs caused by sequestration could ground "Hurricane Hunter" aircraft, depriving forecasters of real-time measurements of storms during what's expected to be an especially active Atlantic hurricane season.

While NOAA operates some of the Hurricane Hunters, most of the modified C-130s transports that fly into storms to gather vital information on their position, strength and direction are flown by the Air Force Reserve's 53rd Weather Reconnaissance Squadron. The unit is part of the larger 403rd Wing based in Biloxi, Miss.

The Vice Commander of the 403rd, Col. Craig La Fave, told Miami TV affiliate WPLG that, "while NOAA is exempt of the furloughs, we are not."

La Fave explains that the 53rd could probably juggle work schedules to cover missions — including data monitoring personnel — for one hurricane at a time, "possibly not two, and almost certainly not a three-storm scenario."

Brian McNoldy, a senior research associate at the University of Miami's Rosenstiel School of Marine and Atmospheric Science, writing for the The Washington Post's Capital Weather Gang says that "Under the crunch of three storms threatening land (it has happened), there may not be enough resources to carry out the missions."

He notes that along with vacancies left at National Hurricane Center due to a sequestion-related hiring freeze:

"Not having aircraft data for a storm near land could have a very real and very negative effect on the accuracy of forecasts. To emphasize just how critical these aircraft missions are, Max Mayfield, a former NHC director and hurricane expert at TV affiliate WPLG in Miami, said he hopes the hurricane specialists at NHC 'never have to make a forecast and issue watches and warnings on a significant tropical cyclone threatening land areas without aircraft reconnaissance.'"

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Om Nom Nom: T. Rex Was, Indeed, A Voracious Hunter

Mind The Teeth: Fossils indicate that Tyrannosaurus rex was an active hunter, in addition to being a scavenger. And in Jurassic Park, it also had a sweet tooth for lawyers.

Universal Pictures/Getty Images

Tyrannosaurus rex is perhaps one of the most famous animals to have ever roamed the Earth. This huge, fierce meat-eater has graced Hollywood films as the perpetual villain, and it has played a notorious role in the science community that studies it, too.

Despite its vicious depiction in pop culture, paleobiologists have debated the feeding behavior of T. rex over the past 100 years, ever since the first evidence of the animal was discovered in the early 1900s. Some scientists have a bone to pick with the tyrant king's predatory reputation, and have suggested the dinosaur was actually a scavenger — more like a vulture when it came to whetting its appetite.

“ Bones fossilize really well, but unfortunately behavior really doesn't.

- Greg Erickson, professor anatomy and vertebrate paleobiology, Florida State University

But results from a recent discovery might settle this debate. Writing in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, University of Kansas paleontologist David Burnham and one of his graduate students report a strange-looking fossil with something buried between two tail bones from a duck-billed, plant-eating dinosaur called the hadrosaur.

After they scanned it with a medical imaging machine, they figured out it was a tooth.

"Once we realized it was a tooth, we looked at each other and said, 'Wouldn't it just be great if it was a T. rex?' " Burnham says.

As luck would have it, it really was a tyrannosaur tooth. T. rex teeth are very distinctive: They're sharp, serrated and long. Some scientists call them "lethal bananas."

Burnham and his team were excited because this tooth that was stuck in a portion of tailbone might have been the piece of evidence they needed. "We'd finally be able to put the nail in the coffin for the scavenger theory."

A T. rex tooth in the tail doesn't prove the dinosaur actually killed the hadrosaur. Maybe the hadrosaur was already dead and the T. Rex just found it, chowed down on the carcass, and broke off a tooth. But in this case, the hadrosaur's bone had fused around the T. rex tooth, a sign that the wound had healed. So apparently the hadrosaur survived an attack and got away, with a tooth stuck in its tail.

"It's the bullet from the smoking gun," Burnham says. "Here you have attempted murder, and here we are able to identify the perpetrator." Another damning piece of evidence, Burnham notes, is that the wound is on the tail, which is typical of where predators bring down running prey.

A mangled piece of proof like the hadrosaur bone isn't easy to come by, says Greg Erickson, a professor of anatomy and vertebrate paleontology at Florida State University.

"Bones fossilize really well, but unfortunately behavior doesn't," he says.

That might be why proof of T. rex's eating habits has been so difficult to pin down, and why scientists are somewhat in the dark when it comes to definitively pegging T. rex as a strict predator.

The real T. rex may have been a more complicated animal than the one depicted in Hollywood films like Jurassic Park. Like most predators today, the dinosaur was probably both predator and scavenger.

"So what T. rex did more of is really the key, and to me this debate is not solved," Erickson says. "From this, all we can say is, yes, T. rex acted like a predator. We have cases where there are hundreds, sometimes thousands of duck-billed dinosaurs that died, and these animals were clearly fed upon by tyrannosaurs. We find tooth marks and shed teeth among the skeletons."

This all might seem to be an academic debate, but there is a real-world reason why scientists want to know what T. rex ate and when. Knowing more about the T. rex appetite might help explain the prehistoric food chain from millions of years ago, and how one big dinosaur influenced it.

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