Those big oval-shaped tanks store fuel for the test bed's thrusters, one set of which guide its altitude/landing. For the tests here on Earth, an additional thruster offsets gravity so the others function as they would on the moon.

NASA is developing a flight mission to travel to the lunar poles, but also designing the landers to set down on the moon's mid-regions. To build-out the program, Marshall partnered with John Hopkins University's Applied Physics Lab, and the Von Braun Center for Science and Innovation.

Given the recent discovery of water molecules on the moon, I'm thinking they're gonna keep getting funding. Very cool. [NASA via The Huntsville Times]

Here's the deal: NASA was supposed to be tracking at least 90 percent of all potentially dangerous asteroids by 2020 under the Near Earth Object Program. This was mandated by Congress some time ago. Right now, they are on track to detect 90 percent of all asteroids .6 miles wide this year. However, that leaves a giant amount of other objects that, while not as big, are potentially lethal too. Rocks that can take out the entire West Coast of the United States, for example (hey better Brian and jason, than Matt, John, and I, ok?)

Well, guess what? Congress isn't giving money to NASA to properly fund the program, so they are not going to meet deadlines. And when I say deadline, I also mean lines that can make all of us dead.

In other words, if tomorrow an asteroid hits New York, I will know exactly who is to blame. Of course, we can also blame the euromorons, the Japanese, and every other developed nation who can help in preventing the total or partial annihilation of humankind. Shortsighted morons, some humans are. [CNN]

The Sydney Morning Herald says that if it had been headed toward a populated part of the world, we would have had 24 hours to act and evacuate. Sky and Telescope says that it was about twice the altitude of our communications satellites.

To put it into perspective, here's io9's list of scariest asteroid attacks on Earth, not including this one.

It would have looked somewhat similar to this, the great daylight fireball of 1972. How do we know that wasn't Kal-El? [SMH and Nasa - Image credit to the original artist, Discovery News]

There is a case to be made that dark, dormant comets are a significant but largely unseen hazard.

That's University of Cardiff's Professor Bill Napier talking to New Scientist magazine. Dark comets almost don't reflect any light from the sun because all the ice around them is gone, leaving only a dark organic ball of organic crap. There are a whooping 3,000 of them around, but only 25 have been detected.

Professor Napier's fellow Zarkov Dr David Asher at the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland agrees, so does Southwest Research Institute comet expert Clark Chapman. One example: In 1983 the comet IRAS-Araki-Alcock-with only 1 percent of its surface reflecting Sun's light-passed Earth at only five million kilometers, which is the closest encounter in 200 years.

So let's recapitulate here. We have Apophis, a doomsday unknown asteroid that like Pink Floyd, the Large Hadron Collider, Al Gore's overheating pants, Woz dancing with the stars,and now Dark Comets.

Thank you Mr. Scientists-not-named-Zarkov. You gave me yet another reason not to do my homework, get drunk, and have sex until I drop dead this weekend. [Daily Mail]

Oh, who are we kidding? You have a crappy office job (whether you make a lot of money or not) that doesn't allow you to sit around and play video games in your underwear all day. And nothing about these $25 polyester gaming ties can change that.

But you know what works? Sneak a DS into your desk drawer and take really long bathroom breaks. [Amazon via OhGizmo!]

The meteor—or comet fragment—was only a few tens of meters in diameter, according to modern estimates based on its 15 megatons energy blast. This 3D simulation, however, shows what something like Apophis will do if it hit Earth. I saw a while ago on the web, but now it is available in glorious HD, so you can see all the gritty-nitty detail of good old planet Earth getting completely obliterated.

Kind of helps putting things in perspective. NASA and the rest of the world better get up to speed on their anti-asteroid alert and destroy system, I don't care what they say about weaponizing space.

The fact is that these things are very real, and they are lurking out there. So with that in mind, keep your list of things before I die handy. You never know what awaits for us in 2009. [YouTube—Thanks Louise]

Usually, the computer plays automatically & it keeps time. But, it also has a tilt-sensor so you can aim the ship by moving your wrist around. It's not done yet, but it will have buttons for firing and engine-thrust. Maybe mind control will be next ;-)

Seriously, someone should really get this thing into mass production. [Boing Boing]

First of all, understand that Schweickart loves NASA. The agency put him in orbit around Earth, after all, but he believes its cash-strapped later years might have led the agency—under immense pressure from Washington—to endorse a program with an ulterior motive: put nuclear weapons in space.

To remedy that situation, Schweickart's group, the B612 Foundation, intends to "use gentler tactics" to observe and eventually deflect asteroids. It's totally make love, not intergalactic war, man.

These new methods include using more powerful telescopes as they come online throughout this century to ID targets ASAP, as well as unmanned spacecraft and probes. Most asteroids could be redirected easily by rear-ending or towing them with these craft, Schweickart said.

In his lecture Schweickart compared Earth's citizens to a blindfolded hitter in a batting cage. We know the pain is coming, but we have no way of knowing when. One day we will, and people like Schweickart hope we'll be ready to react with the most effective means possible. According to him, that means no nukes. Will Smith and Jeff Goldblum will simply have to find another way to kill the aliens. [Wired]

The House of Representatives just passed bill H.R. 6063, directing NASA to come up with plans for a cheap mission to send a craft to the Apophis asteroid to attach a tracking device. Apophis is on route to come closer to Earth than geostational satellites in 2029, and if it smacked into the planet we'd be a little bit screwed.

In addition to paying close attention to Apophis, the bill requires the Director of the White House's Office of Science and Technology Policy to come up with a policy for notifying Federal agencies and other emergency response groups of an impending near-Earth object threat. Hopefully they'll come up with better plans than whatever it is they have enacted for natural disasters now, because their track record doesn't really inspire confidence. [KurzweilAI]

The asteroid in question is the Apophosis. If it runs into one or more of the earth's 40,000 satellites as its path brings it closest to our planet on April 13, 2029, the collision could be enough to alter its trajectory and send a 200-billion-ton ball of iron and iridium our way in 2036. The impact would be followed by tsunamis that would destroy coastal and inland areas around the Atlantic Ocean. To top this disaster-movie situation off, a thick layer of dust would blanket the Earth.

So how did NASA get it wrong? Perhaps they did not take into account the possibility of that trajectory-changing first collision—either that or they forgot to carry a digit somewhere, because 450 and 45,000 do look vaguely similar. I am guessing that young Nico's project, "Apophis — The Killer Astroid" won the regional science competition that it was entered into. [Yahoo! News]

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Priced at $130 and available at Fossil.com, this blast from the past, which isn't playable, unfortunately, will truly allow me to wear my geek stink on, or near, my sleeve.