Space and Astronomy News

Friday, March 15, 2013

Celebrated Keck Telescopes Seek Funding on 20th Anniversary

A celebration of the W.M. Keck Observatory's 20th anniversary this week will also include a plea for more money to keep the iconic telescopes running in the next year.

'We're a little concerned because of what's going on in Washington,' said Debbie Godwin, director of advancement for Keck's foundation.

Roughly $6.5 million, more than a quarter of the Keck Observatory's annual budget, comes from the U.S. National Science Foundation, but that could change due to across-the-board federal cuts coming under the sequestration process, Godwin said.

Half of the Hawaiian observatory's $23 million budget comes from the University of California and the California Institute of Technology. Representatives from each institution sit on Keck's board of directors. [10 Amazing Keck Discoveries]

It's not the universities but rather the philanthropists that Keck hopes will fill the shortfall. Normally, the observatory's minders 'would really be over the moon if we received $5 million of philanthropy a year,' Godwin said.

But this year, she said, they'll really have to step that up. Godwin added that the directors are optimistic the 20th anniversary celebrations will convince philanthropists to be generous.

'We are hoping that this anniversary will put a clarion call that says this is something of value in our world,' she said.

Larger telescopes coming

At 20 years old, Keck is an invaluable tool for hunting down exoplanets, exploring galaxies on the edge of the universe and occasionally snapping pictures of moons and planets in Earth's own solar system.

The twin telescopes, each with 32-foot (10 meter) diameters, are the largest optical scopes around. They boast an extensive legacy of discovery, ranging from co-discovering methane on Mars to charting the acceleration of the universe.

Competition is fierce for observing time at Keck, with a typical research project receiving a couple of nights annually. Last year, the telescopes generated 315 research papers - almost a paper for every observing night of the year, Godwin pointed out.

Look 10-20 years further down the line, though, and Keck will be a small telescope amid newer and larger observatories.

For example, the European Extremely Large Telescope in Chile should come online around 2022. Its 129-foot (39.3 meter) mirror will be more than four times the size of one Keck telescope.

Godwin anticipates demand for Keck will begin to fade around then, but that decreased traffic will be a boon to astronomers now jostling for observing time.

Instead of brief runs, interested scientists may be able to use the telescope for days at a time. Astronomers could do complementary runs to the Thirty Meter Telescope, a giant observatory planned for Hawaii. This scope will observe in wavelengths ranging from the ultraviolet to the mid-infrared and could come online as early as 2020. [The 10 Biggest Telescopes on Earth]

'We'll not be obsolete for many decades,' Godwin said.

Future-proofing

Like any technological marvel, Keck has to keep innovating to stay near the top of the game. The telescopes each use a laser-guided system that allows them to focus their mirrors properly on distant targets, correcting for distortions in the atmosphere.

In 2015, the observatory plans to put in a new laser system for the Keck II telescope. It's the first instrument entirely funded by private philanthropy.

Coinciding with the anniversary, Keck's foundation will also launch fundraising for the cosmic web imager. This spectrograph instrument would probe the structure of the universe.

While that instrument is still on the drawing board, Keck's foundation hopes to have it online within five years. Construction will require about $1 million from private donors.

Since the dates that new instruments will come online are not guaranteed, the staff working on the observatories sometimes need to adapt the older ones to new uses.

One example comes from studies of the field of ultra-faint galaxies, a collection of hobbit-like galaxies scattered around the Milky Way that are the least luminous ones known. However, they also contain the most dark matter, a mysterious substance that makes up most of the matter in the universe.

Keck's existing spectrograph was not designed to pick up these objects, as nobody knew the dim galaxies existed, said Yale University astronomer Marla Geha. That spectrograph does, however, perfectly balance the needs of adequate resolution and light collection to pick up these wispy objects.

Geha, who was observing at Keck while SPACE.com spoke with her Tuesday (March 12), said she is currently using the telescope to peer at stars in these galaxies and measure the stellar chemistries.

'These stars are some of the oldest stars we know in the universe, and [contain] the least amount of metals,' she said. The oldest stars tend to have fewer metals, since heavier elements were formed in supernova explosions, which took place later in the universe when stars aged and died.

The ultra-faint galaxies 'probably formed all those stars within the first billion years of the universe,' Geha added. The galaxies 'are really quite old, and there's no other galaxy out there that has quite as old stars.'

Adaptive observatory

The staff at Keck also lets astronomers try new techniques, allowing them to make discoveries that would not have been possible when using the hardware in its existing configuration, said astronomer Adam Kraus.

Kraus, who is a Hubble Fellow at Harvard University, praised Keck's 'adaptive optics' system, which adjusts the mirror to correct for turbulence in the atmosphere, producing sharper images.

However, adaptive optics can sometimes create ghost images of the star. That's not ideal for finding alien planets.

Last year, Kraus and his collaborators put an aperture mask in the light path of one of the Keck telescopes. The mask, punched with holes, allowed light to pass through several smaller paths.

'It lets us ferret out these remaining imperfections,' Kraus said. That makes it easier to see exoplanets under certain conditions, such as if they are bright and close to the star.

In this case, Kraus and his team made a major discovery: spotting an alien planet being born in a dusty disc around its star. No one had ever seen a planet in the process of formation before.

'It's a very nimble and flexible observatory,' he said.

Follow Elizabeth Howell @howellspace. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

Lowell Observatory Launches Crowdsourcing Campaign to Restore Classic Telescope

An historic telescope could be on its way to an upgrade.

The Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff, Ariz., launched a two-month-long 'crowdfunding' campaign Wednesday (March 13) to help raise money to restore its vintage Clark Telescope.

Now designated a National Historic Landmark, the 24-inch refracting telescope was once used to map the moon, study Mars and observe the expanding cosmos .

'The telescope was built in 1896 and it hasn't been completely taken apart since 1897,' Kevin Schindler, the outreach manager for Lowell said.

Officials with the observatory are hoping to raise at least $256,718 to help keep the telescope in working order.

For the past 20 years, the Clark Telescope has been used as a tool for public outreach, not research, Schindler said. More than 1 million people have looked through the eyepiece of the telescope to observe various celestial bodies in the night sky, he added.

All that wear and tear, however, has left the telescope in bad health.

'It's really getting to the critical point,' Schindler said. 'We don't want it to get any worse. If we're going to close it, we want to have a plan in place.'

Today, when the telescope is pointed at one particular object in the sky, it does not stay in place, Schindler added. Although officials at the observatory are hoping to restore the telescope back to working order, they are not interesting in modernizing it.

Both the dome and the telescope need work, Shindler said, but they do not want to change its 'historic flavor.' The kitchen chair on the observing ladder used by the observatory's namesake astronomer Percival Lowell and other quirky objects were added to the telescope throughout the years will remain in place.

In all, the renovation is expected to take about nine months from start to finish.

Officials at Lowell picked Wednesday as the kickoff date for a variety of reasons, Schindler said. March 13 would have been Lowell's 158th birthday, and it was also the anniversary of the announcement that marked the discovery of Pluto in 1930. Uranus was found on the same day in 1781 as well.

As of the writing of this story, the campaign has raised more than $5,870. For more information on the Clark Telescope project, visit the Restore the Clark IndieGoGo website.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Queen Elizabeth II Congratulates 1st Canadian Space Station Commander

If becoming the first Canadian commander of the International Space Station weren't exciting enough by itself, Chris Hadfield now has the best wishes of Queen Elizabeth II to go along with it.

The queen - who reigns over the United Kingdom and 15 other Commonwealth realms, including Canada - offered her congratulations to Hadfield, who took charge of the orbiting lab's new Expedition 35 today (March 13).

'I am pleased to transmit my personal best wishes, and those of all Canadians, to Colonel Christopher Hadfield as he takes command of the International Space Station on Wednesday,' Queen Elizabeth II said in a statement. 'Our thoughts and best wishes are with him and the entire crew, as are our prayers for an eventual safe return to family, friends and fellow Canadians.'

Hadfield assumed command of the orbiting lab from NASA astronaut Kevin Ford during a ceremony this afternoon.

'Thank you very much for giving me the keys to the family car,' Hadfield said during the ceremony, which featured the playing of 'O Canada' in his honor. 'We're going to put some miles on it, but we'll bring it back in good shape.'

Ford and Russian cosmonauts Evgeny Tarelkin and Oleg Novitskiy will head home to Earth Friday (March 15) - one day later than planned due to bad weather at their landing site - marking the official end of the station's Expedition 34 and the start of Expedition 35.

Hadfield, NASA astronaut Tom Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko will have the station to themselves until March 28, when three new crewmembers will arrive aboard a Russian Soyuz spacecraft.

Hadfield is the first citizen of a Commonwealth nation - the group of 54 countries that have maintained ties after the British Empire came to an end - to hold the space station's keys. He's just the second-ever commander who is neither a NASA astronaut nor a Russian cosmonaut. (Belgian spaceflyer Frank De Winne led Expedition 21 in 2009).

The guitar-strumming Hadfield had already made a mark on the space station before taking charge. Shortly after arriving in December, he played the first original song ever recorded on the space station. And in February, Hadfield performed a duet with Barenaked Ladies singer Ed Robertson, a fellow Canadian, who did his part from Earth.

Follow Mike Wall on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.

Thursday, March 14, 2013

Space Station Crew's Landing Delayed by 'Horrible' Earth Weather

An American astronaut and two Russian cosmonauts are stuck in space for one more day after freezing rain and fog on Earth prevented them from landing in Central Asia on Thursday (March 14), NASA officials say.

The foul weather, which one Russian space agency official described simply as 'horrible,' means NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin had to delay their return from the International Space Station for at least 24 hours. The three men have been living in space for 141 days and were preparing to enter their Soyuz spacecraft for a landing on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan tonight.

'We are waving off landing,' NASA spokesperson Rob Navias said during live mission commentary. 'No Soyuz landing tonight.'

The rain and fog in Kazakhstan is not a threat to the Soyuz spacecraft and crew, Navias said. But the recovery helicopters essential for retrieving the astronauts after landing would not be able to make it to their staging grounds for the landing because of bad weather conditions. [See photos of the Expedition 34 space station mission]

'I talked to our colleagues in Kazakhstan last night and the weather is really horrible, and a decision was made not to risk, and we suggest that we delay the landing.' chief Russian flight director Vlademir Solovyev said through a translator on NASA TV.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin were originally scheduled to undock their Russian-built Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft at the International Space Station tonight at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT), with an expected landing of 11:56 p.m. EDT (0356 GMT).

Landing is now scheduled to occur on Friday (March 15) at 11:06 p.m. EDT (0206 March 16 GMT), NASA officials said.

This is not the first time weather has affected a Soyuz spacecraft's landing. In 2009, another Soyuz craft had its return to Earth delayed by a day because snowy conditions on the ground made the landing potentially unsafe.

Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin have spent nearly five months on board the station. The mission is Ford's second spaceflight and the first trip to space for Novitskiy and Tarelkin.

When Ford and his two crewmates depart the station, three other spaceflyers - Canadian astronaut Chris Hadfield, Russian Roman Romanenko and American Tom Marshburn - will remain aboard orbiting lab to await a new set of crewmembers.

That new crew will launch on March 28 to ferry cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy to the space station.

NASA has relied on Russia's Soyuz crafts ferry astronauts between the Earth's surface and orbit since the retirement of the agency's shuttle program in 2011. Officials with the space agency hope to instead depend on privately built unmanned and crewed spacecraft to bring people and cargo to and from the space station.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebookand Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Giant Alien Planet in Supersized Solar System May Solve Mystery

The glowing atmosphere of a strangely giant alien world could help solve mysteries of not just how it formed, but how our own solar system arose, scientists say.

The exoplanet discovery comes from the most detailed look yet at the alien planets around the distant star HR 8799, which lies about 130 light-years from Earth. The HR 8799 system is home to four giant planets orbiting a relatively young, 30-million-year-old star, with each planet far larger than any world found in Earth's solar system.

The planets orbiting HR 8799 weigh in at between five to 10 times the mass of Jupiter and are still glowing with the heat of their formation, allowing researchers to directly image them.

'It's the only system in which multiple planets can individually be seen,' said study co-author Bruce Macintosh, an astronomer at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory in California.

The planetary system resembles a scaled-up version of our solar system, suggesting there may be smaller Earth-size planets closer in, although the researchers currently have not yet seen any.

It even 'has something that kind of looks like maybe an asteroid belt interior to the closest giant planet like we have in our solar system, and something that maybe you can refer to as an Oort cloud analog out beyond the most distant gas giant' - that is, a cloud of icy comets, said study lead author Quinn Konopacky, an astronomer at the University of Toronto. [Alien Planet Quiz: Are You an Exoplanet Expert?]

Exoplanet's atmosphere revealed

The astronomers concentrated on one of the star's visible planets, named HR 8799c, a colossal gas giant about seven times the mass of Jupiter. It circles the star HR 8799 at a range comparable to Pluto's distance from the sun.

The birth of such a massive planet at such a great distance from its parent star conflicts with the two popular models of planetary formation. In the multistep process known as core accretion, gas slowly accumulates onto a planetary core, while the mechanism known as gravitational instability involves the simultaneous creation of a planet's interior and atmosphere.

'In the traditional core accretion model of planet formation, it is difficult to form planets as large as the HR 8799 planets at such large distances from their parent star,' Konopacky told SPACE.com. 'Typically, in this model, objects the size of Jupiter or larger must form much closer to their parent star. This is for several reasons, but has a lot to do with there being less material at large distances from the star that can form planets.'

'In the gravitational instability method of formation, it is possible to form big planets at large distances, usually because they invoke a much more massive disc of material,' Konopacky added. 'But the model generally predicts that there should be many more massive objects orbiting lots of other stars at these distances, and these kinds of objects have not been discovered in surveys [of many stars for exoplanets].'

To help solve this mystery, the scientists analyzed the glow from HR 8799c using a high-resolution imaging spectrograph called OSIRIS at the Keck Observatory in Hawaii. Molecules in atmospheres can absorb light, resulting in patterns known as spectra that allow scientists to identify what they are.

HR8799c is both fairly bright and located a fair distance from its star, helping the researchers acquire this spectral data for the most detailed examination yet of the atmosphere of a Jupiter-like planet beyond the solar system. [Birth of Giant Planet Seen? (Artist Animation)]

'The most exciting part of this result is that we were able to make these observations of an exoplanet atmosphere with this level of detail, much more than I even imagined was possible,' Konopacky said. 'We have broken the light from the planet down to such a fine level of detail that the chemical fingerprints of the molecules in the atmosphere are breathtakingly sharp and distinct. This is important because it requires data of this quality to truly probe the makeup of a planetary atmosphere, and in turn, say something about how the planet formed.'

Missing methane: a clue

The scientists detected water and carbon monoxide in the exoplanet's atmosphere, but not methane.

The lack of methane 'tells us that there must be mixing between the different layers of the atmosphere, much like a lava lamp swirls material up and down,' Konopacky said. 'Since methane is a sensitive molecule, it can be destroyed when it gets mixed into the deeper, hotter parts of the atmosphere. This mixing tells us about the atmospheric conditions in young Jupiter-like planets.'

In addition, although the researchers see a lot of water vapor in the atmosphere of HR 8799c, 'we actually detect slightly less than we would have expected if the planet had the same composition as its host star,' Konopacky said. 'This tells us that the planet has a slightly elevated amount of carbon compared to oxygen.' [Types of Alien Planets Explained (Infographic)]

This high ratio of carbon to oxygen is a clue regarding the exoplanet's formation. The researchers suggest that grains of water ice condensed in the disc of matter surrounding HR 8799 that gave rise to the planets orbiting the star. Oxygen inside the ice depleted any other oxygen for the formation of HR 8799c.

'These ice grains stuck together to make bigger ice chunks, a few kilometers across, that kept colliding and building up the planet's solid core,' Konopacky said. 'The atmosphere came later - from gas that the planet attracted after it got big enough. By the time that happened, some of the ice grains were gone and the gas didn't have as much water in it.'

How planets are born

These findings imply that a planet-building mechanism known as core accretion led to the formation of HR 8799c, 'much in the same way we think the planets in our own solar system formed,' Konopacky said. The exoplanet's core arose first, and the atmosphere came afterward.

'These results represent a first step in finding direct evidence about how planets form, which in general, is a difficult thing to do observationally,' Konopacky said. 'It is really exciting that we have these tantalizing suggestions that this extrasolar system that looks like our own solar system in so many ways may have formed in the same way.'

Researchers are now tinkering with existing models of core accretion to see how planets might form via the process at great distances from their stars. For instance, there may be more matter at the outer edges of the protoplanetary discs of matter around stars that give rise to planets than before thought, or perhaps solid matter could stick together and form planetary cores easier or faster than previously suspected.

'By further refining the core accretion model of formation to explain the HR 8799 planets, we may be able to learn more about the formation of planetary systems in general, including our own solar system,' Konopacky said.

'We would also like to discover more planets through direct imaging that can be studied at this level of detail,' Konopacky added. 'We work on a new instrument called the Gemini Planet Imager that is designed to do just this. It will arrive at the Gemini South Telescope in Chile this year, and discover new planets that are both smaller than the HR 8799 planets and closer to their parent star.'

Konopacky and her colleagues Travis Barman, Bruce Macintosh and Christian Marois detailed their findings online March 14 in the journal Science.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

Space Station Astronauts Returning to Earth Tonight: How to Watch Online

Three astronauts are scheduled to return to Earth today (March 14) after 141 days on board the International Space Station.

NASA astronaut Kevin Ford and Russian cosmonauts Oleg Novitskiy and Evgeny Tarelkin's will board a Russian Soyuz spacecraft tonight at 5:15 EDT (2115 GMT) after a brief farewell ceremony, and are expected to land at 11:57 p.m. EDT (0357 GMT), touching down on the frigid steppes of Kazakhstan in Central Asia.

You can watch the landing live on SPACE.com courtesy of NASA. The space agency will begin broadcasting the farewell ceremony at 4:45 p.m. EDT (2045 GMT) on its NASA TV channel and webcast. The Soyuz TMA-06M spacecraft returning Ford, Novitskiy and Tarelkin home will undock from the space station at 8:30 p.m. EDT (0030 GMT).

On Wednesday, the departing station crew held a brief change of command ceremony with the three spaceflyers remaining behind the space station, marking the end of Expedition 34 mission and the official beginning the Expedition 35 increment. During the ceremony, Ford - who commanded the Expedition 34 crew - handed control of the space station to Canadian Space Agency astronaut Chris Hadfield.

'It's not a competition,' Ford said of the culture on the International Space Station. 'It's about 15 of the most affluent countries on the planet coming together and doing something for the future.'

The Expedition 34 mission is Ford's second career spaceflight and the first mission for both Tarelkin and Novitskiy. [See photos of the Expedition 34 space station mission]

'I tell you, they are like brothers to me. They say they consider me their 'papa,' and I'm not sure how to take that,' Ford joked of Novitskiy and Tarelkin.

In honor of Hadfield's new rank as the first Canadian space station commander, Expedition 34 commander Ford played the Canadian national anthem during the command change ceremony.

'Chris brings his super, super special talents to the table,' Ford said of the new commander. 'He is a uniquely talented person on the planet and now a uniquely talented person off the planet.'

Hadfield and his crewmates - NASA astronaut Thomas Marshburn and Russian cosmonaut Roman Romanenko - won't be on their own for long. Three more spaceflyers will replace the Earth-bound Ford, Tarelkin and Novitskiy later this month, bringing the space station crew back up to its full six-person size.

Cosmonauts Pavel Vinogradov, Alexander Misurkin and NASA astronaut Chris Cassidy are due to launch toward the International Space Station on March 28 and arrive at the orbiting lab the same day. The flight will mark the first time a Soyuz space capsule has launched a station crew and arrived at the orbiting lab in one day.

Russia's Federal Space Agency has proven the one-day flight profile during unmanned Progress cargo ship deliveries to the space station.

Since the retirement of NASA's space shuttle program in 2011, the space agency has relied on Russia's Soyuz spacecraft to transport astronauts to and from the space station. The U.S. space agency plans to rely on new privately built unmanned and crewed spacecraft to ferry astronauts and cargo to the space station.

The $100 billion International Space Station was constructed by space agencies representing the United States, Russia, Europe, Japan and Canada. Assembly began in 1998, and rotating crews of astronauts have continuously occupied the space station since 2000.

Follow Miriam Kramer @mirikramer and Google+. Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook and Google+. Original article on SPACE.com.

NASA Fireball Website Launches with New Russian Meteor Explosion Details

NASA has launched a new website to share details of meteor explosion events as recorded by U.S. military sensors on secretive spacecraft, kicking off the project with new details of last month's fireball over Chelyabinsk, Russia.

The new 'Fireball and Bolide Reports' website, overseen by NASA's Near-Earth Object Program, debuted Friday (March 1) with its first entry: a table with a chronological data summary of the Russian meteor explosion of Feb. 15 gleaned from U.S. Government sensor data. Scientists are calling the event a 'superbolide,' taken from the term 'bolide' typically used for fireballs created by meteors.

Sharing the information publicly is part of a renewed collaboration between the U.S. military and the scientific community.

'And what better way to kick this site off than the Chelyabinsk superbolide . the most energetic recognized-fireball event since Tunguska in 1908,' said Don Yeomans, a senior research scientist at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. He is also manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at JPL.

'This website is meant to be the vehicle for future reports of fireballs/bolides as seen by U.S. government sensors,' Yeomans told SPACE.com. 'This is the first posting of its kind on this site. Future data on bright fireballs will be added to this table. We won't capture every fireball event . only the unusually bright ones,' he said.

'I consider this a major step forward since these fireball events are by far the most frequent impactors into the Earth's atmosphere,' Yeomans said. 'And these reports will go a long way toward defining the annual flux of small Earth impactors.' [Russian Meteor Explosion Explained (Infographic)]

New Russian meteor details

The Feb. 15 Russian meteor event is the first entry on this new site, and it provides the following information about the fireball:

Time of maximum brightness:
03:20:33 GMT on Feb. 15

Geographic location of maximum brightness:
Latitude: 54.8 deg. N
Longitude: 61.1 deg. E

Altitude of maximum brightness:
23.3 km (14.5 miles)

Velocity at peak brightness:
18.6 km/s (11.6 miles/s)

Approximate total radiated energy of fireball:
3.75 x 1014 Joules. This is the equivalent of about 90 kilotons of TNT explosives, but it does not represent the total impact energy, which is several times larger than the observed total radiated energy.

Approximate total impact energy of the fireball in kilotons of TNT explosives (the energy parameter usually quoted for a fireball):
440 kilotons.

New fireball agreement

This public release of government detector data was made possible by a newly signed memorandum of agreement (MOA) between NASA's Science Mission Directorate and Headquarters Air Force Space Command Air, Space and Cyberspace Operations Directorate.

The MOA was signed on Jan. 18, said Capt. Chris Sukach, spokesperson for U.S. Air Force Space Command at Peterson Air Force Base in Colorado. For security reasons, the actual MOA is classified, she told SPACE.com.

As a result of the agreement, Sukach said, NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Program is receiving information on bolide/fireball events based on analysis of data collected by U.S. Government sensors.

'Data on the recent Chelyabinsk event has been released,' Sukach said.

Sukach added that when Air Force Space Command receives data on bolide events, it pushes that data to the NASA Near Earth Object Office. 'From then on, it is a NASA-owned process, but our understanding is NASA distributes the information via the publically-accessible Near Earth Object Office website to assist the scientific community's investigation of bolides,' she said.

Relatively small asteroid

According to Don Yeomans and Paul Chodas, also of the NASA/JPL Near-Earth Object Program office, the Russian fireball was technically a 'superbolide' that was observed on the morning of Feb. 15 in the skies near Chelyabinsk, Russia.

The object was a relatively small asteroid, approximately 55 to 65 feet (17 to 20 meters) in size. As it roared through the Earth's atmosphere at high speed and a shallow angle, the asteroid released a huge amount of energy. The object broke apart at high altitude, producing a shower of pieces of various sizes that fell to the ground as meteorites. [Russian Meteor Fragments Found (Video)]

'The fireball was observed not only by video cameras and low-frequency infrasound detectors, but also by U.S. Government sensors,' Yeomans and Chodas said. 'As a result, the details of the impact have become clearer. There is no connection between the Russian fireball event and the close approach of asteroid 2012 DA14, which occurred just over 16 hours later.'

Congress wants to know about NEOs

Congressional action on NEOs for this year, spurred in part by the Russian event, was initially slated kick off on March 6 during a House subcommittee hearing, but the meeting was postponed due to weather concerns. The meeting is now scheduled for Tuesday, March 19.

The full committee of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology is expected to hold a multi-panel hearing on 'Threats from Space: a Review of U.S. Government Efforts to Track and Mitigate Asteroids and Meteors.'

Slated to testify on one panel is John Holdren, White House science officer; General William Shelton, commander of the U.S. Air Force Space Command; and Charles Bolden, NASA's chief.

More info: NASA's Fireball and Bolide Reports website.

Leonard David has been reporting on the space industry for more than five decades. He is former director of research for the National Commission on Space and a past editor-in-chief of the National Space Society's Ad Astra and Space World magazines. He has written for SPACE.com since 1999.

Follow us @Spacedotcom, Facebook or Google+. Originally published on SPACE.com.