Both nations have signed a letter of intent to build a “complex of facilities for experimental research on the surface and/or orbit of the moon,” announced the Russian space agency Roskosmos Tuesday, adding that the program that the program be open to “all interested states and international partners.”
By Milan Sime Martinic
About Earth’s New Little Moon
After putting in its time, an asteroid called “Asteroid 2016 HO3” has now been confirmed by NASA to be a permanent resident in the Earth’s gravitational field.
The asteroid was discovered earlier this year by University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, but it has been a “stable quasi-satellite” for almost 100 years.
Asteroid 2016 HO3 is between 120 and 300 feet in diameter (40-100 meters). The asteroid poses no threat of hitting the Earth, and will never come closer than 14 million kilometers (9 million miles) from our planet.
(For point of comparison, the average distance to the moon is less than 400,000 km.
Asteroid 2016 HO3 orbits the Earth somewhat similarly to our regular moon, but in an uneven pattern in which the rock drifts ahead of the Earth for a couple years as both orbit the sun, before the Earth’s gravity pulls the rock back and it falls behind the Earth for a few years. The relationship between the Earth and the asteroid has been likened to a dance.
Image: Paul Chodas, NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory
This javascript-based visual representation of the Earth spinning in space was developed and shared on the website CodePen by programmer Eric J Nesser.
Holding down the mouse left-click button while scrolling will zoom or change the viewing angle of the representation of the Earth.
See the Pen Earth WebGL Demo by Eric J Nesser (@enesser) on CodePen.
From the International Space Station’s 400 km perch, astronauts like New Jerseyite Scott Kelly have been taking impressive photos of the world over the past almost two decades of the ISS’s use.
Kelly, the current Commander of the Year Long Mission aboard the ISS, has been tweeting his photos to his followers for the duration.
Here are some of the best shots from the space above the Great White North, Canada:
Want to try to guess them? The photographs show:
1. North Vancouver Island and Rocky Mountains
2. Vancouver from above
3. Aurora over Calgary
4. Aurora over Saskatchewan
5. Great Lakes near Salte Ste. Marie
6. North of Georgian Bay, Ontario
7. Montreal from above
8. Quebec City from above
All images NASA
This collection of photographs was taken by the cameras of the International Space Station from it’s orbit at 319 nautical kilometers (172 miles) from the Earth’s surface. Can you guess what some of these cities are, or even the countries they belong to?
We’ll make it more interesting: This first set of cities are all from the Americas, and they progress from northernmost southwards.
Did you guess any of them? You’ll have to click through to the next set of cities to find out the answers to this set!
Continue: What The World’s Capital Cities Look Like From Space, Part 2