asteroids

LAS VEGAS--The Parrot Asteroid Android-powered car stereo is back at CES, and this time it's brought a few new family members.

First up is the Parrot Asteroid CK. This 3.2-inch-screened device installs on the vehicle's dashboard, providing Bluetooth hands-free calling, A2DP audio streaming, voice command for dialing, and digital audio playback from a connected iPod, iPhone, USB storage device, or SD card. You can Bluetooth-tether a smartphone or connect a USB 3G dongle, and the Asteroid CK can connect to the Internet to stream music from the cloud or access geolocation services. The CK does not appear … Read more

Asteroids Gunner follows the same basic gameplay as the original stand-up arcade game, but adds much more to the action. At the beginning of the game, you find yourself in an asteroid field and your job is to maneuver your ship and break up asteroids until you've cleared the area. Also like in the original, occasionally a UFO will materialize that you can shoot for bonus points. But what brings Asteroids Gunner squarely into the present day are several improvements that will keep you coming back for more. For starters, Asteroids Gunner uses a dual-stick control method with the … Read more

Asteroids Gunner was released by Atari today in the iTunes App Store, taking some cues from the company's arcade classic, Asteroids, and adding contemporary gaming mechanics that might make it a hit for iOS gamers.

When I think of the classic arcade games of old, the titles that pop into my head are games like Pac-Man, Defender, Galaga, and Asteroids, among many others. You can still find many of these games using emulation software on desktops or purchase them in newer iOS collections like Atari's Greatest Hits. But today Atari released a sequel to Asteroids (first released in 1979) called Asteroids Gunner, and it has just the right mix of action and contemporary gameplay elements to make it a must-have for those who like old arcade hits.… Read more

Adobe puts their support behind HTML 5 and ends further development of Flash on mobile browsers. Somewhere Steve Jobs is smiling. Warner Bros. takes down files they never even saw, which makes us feel great about the future of the Stop Piracy Online Act. Plus, a Rotisserie Meatball Passes Between Earth and Moon, and Siri tries to help us get a gift for mom on Christmas.

An aircraft carrier-size asteroid is scheduled to pass near Earth later today, and NASA is snapping images as it comes closer.

According to the U.S. space agency, asteroid 2005 YU55 will pass no closer than 201,700 miles from Earth, or about 85 percent of the distance between our planet and the moon. The asteroid is expected to be closest to the planet at 3:28 p.m. PT. Because of its distance from Earth, NASA doesn't expect the asteroid to have any impact on tides or tectonic plates.

Although the space rock will be at a safe … Read more

Never mind the recent spate of satellite showers. An asteroid the size of an aircraft carrier is sailing toward Earth, NASA says.

Never fear, however. The space agency says that although next week's flyby of Asteroid 2005 YU55 will bring the rock closer to our home planet than even the moon gets, the asteroid will cruise safely past, leaving in its wake not destruction but data.

The agency has already begun using radio waves to scan the 1,300-foot-wide space rock, which will get closest to Earth on Tuesday at about 3:30 p.m. PT. With antennas at its Deep Space Network at Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Planetary Radar Facility in Puerto Rico, NASA hopes to gather a wealth of detail about the asteroid's surface features, shape, dimensions, and other physical properties.… Read more

Analysis of data collected by a NASA infrared space telescope shows there are fewer near-Earth asteroids than previously believed, scientists said today.

But the majority of the nearly 20,000 bodies between 330 and 3,300 feet wide have not yet been detected and it's not yet clear whether a reduced population also means a reduced number of midsize asteroids in orbits that could pose a threat to Earth.

"We find that there are fewer near-Earth asteroids out there," said Amy Mainzer, principal investigator with NASA's NEOWISE program. "However, it's very important to note that fewer does not mean none. And there are still tens of thousands that are out there that we need to find."

Using NASA's Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer--WISE--space telescope, researchers conducted a census of near-Earth objects, or NEOs, orbiting within 120 million miles of the sun. Scanning the entire sky twice between January 2010 and February 2011, the NEOWISE project observed more than 100,000 asteroids orbiting between Mars and Jupiter and nearly 600 that pass near Earth.

"With NEOWISE, we didn't go out and find every single asteroid that's out there, but we got a good representative sample, kind of like doing a census where you take a poll of a small subset of people that you think is representative of what everybody thinks," Mainzer said. "And so, that's what we've been able to do with NEOWISE."

She said the NEOWISE data, along with surveys conducted by ground-based instruments, show that more than 90 percent of the so-called "planet busters" six-tenths of a mile across and larger have now been identified, meeting a goal set by Congress in 1998.

Previous estimates put the population of large near-Earth objects at around 1,000. The NEOWISE survey indicates the actual number is around 981, of which 911 have been detected, including all of the very large bodies like the six-mile-wide asteroid that is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. None pose any threat to Earth, at least for the next few centuries.… Read more

Remember the Parrot Asteroid that was previewed at CES 2011? It was to be the first car audio receiver to be based on Google's Android mobile operating system. Well, it's here and I got my hands on it.

Like no Android device I've ever seen Although the Asteroid is based on Android 1.5, you wouldn't be able to tell just by looking at it. The interface of the single DIN unit looks nothing like any Android device that you've likely ever seen. It's been heavily simplified and optimized for in-car use. Half of … Read more

Four years after launch from Cape Canaveral, NASA's ion-drive Dawn spacecraft is finally in orbit around the asteroid Vesta, studying the second largest body in the rubble-strewn belt between Mars and Jupiter in unprecedented detail. Pictures released today show a strangely tortured world with huge parallel grooves separating the heavily cratered northern hemisphere from smoother terrain in the south dominated by the chaotic remnants of a catastrophic impact.

"These photos have been already a great revelation to the team about what the surface is like," Christopher Russell, the mission's principal investigator, told reporters today. "We … Read more