Nobody knows from what satellite or spacecraft this exactly came from, but the RAF's Defence Flying Complaints Investigation Team says that it definitely came from space. They say that its heavy mass indicates that it has been up in a decaying orbit for a decade or more.

Great. As if we didn't have enough with all that space junk risking the life of astronauts up there. [Daily Mail]

Heather Storey's small car was hit by a tow truck. She would've survived the accident if her laptop had not been lying in the backseat, according to investigators. When she was hit by the truck, the laptop flew forward and crashed into the back of her head and neck, ultimately killing her.

I always put my laptop in a bag on the floor, but mostly because I want the seat space to store other crap, which could just as easily fly around and make bad things happen if I was hit. It's a sad reminder you should always secure gadgets and stuff in your car, whether it's a laptop or a heavy book. [CBC Image: Meera Bains/CBC, Thanks Alex]

They weren't as lucky as the Hudson waterlanding passengers, but close enough. Apparently, the place was about to land when it all happened, according to passengers and witnesses on the ground:

We felt something odd was going on. The plane spun out of control and then we landed with a thud in a field and saw one of the engines break off. Everything happened so quickly within a few seconds, so we didn't even have time to panic.

While landing in a normal fashion, a situation such as an air hole took place and the airplane went out of control and crashed. Everything took place in a matter of 3-5 seconds. We landed on a field. The pilot had announced that the plane would land at the Schipol Airport in 15 minutes. We crashed after 7-8 minutes following the pilot's announcement.

Looking at the photos and the vide, it's amazing that there was no fire and only five were dead. Early witnesses reports point to the possibility of the plane stalling just when it was about to touchdown. [Telegraph UK and Times Online]

The launch used a Taurus XL rocket, a small, cheap launch vehicle that has been successfully launched six times before today's failure. Trouble emerged in the final stage of orbital placement, when the rocket's fairing (the housing surrounding the satellite payload) failed to separate completely, which rendered the craft too heavy to reach orbit.

Did the last few hundred brain-dead global warming deniers sabotage this launch?? No, they're not smart enough. Here's hoping a similar mission can get back up on its feet soon. [NASA]

The airplane was a Q400 Bombardier aircraft that was flying from Newark to Buffalo Niagra. It crashed into a suburban home at around 10pm, just ten miles from the airport in Buffalo. The reason for the crash is not yet known.

Update: A reader tipped us off that the Q400 had been previously banned in Scandinavia, after two crashes involving the plane - one in Lithuania and one in Denmark. In those cases, the landing gear had allegedly corroded. [AP]

"We knew this was going to happen eventually," Johnson Space Center orbital debris scientist Mark Matney told reporters, in what I imagine was the most Onion-esque quote from a NASA scientist this year.

One of the crafts was a 1,235-lb Iridium communications satellite sent up in 1997, and the other was a 1-ton Russian satellite launched in 1993 that was presumed to be nonfunctioning—and out of control. NASA is pinning the blame on the Russians.

They still don't know how many pieces of debris were generated from this event, nor were they clear on how it would impact the ISS that's floating at about half that orbital height. There's a shuttle mission scheduled for Feb. 22, which may be delayed.

Previous collisions have involved discarded pieces and parts, apparently. This is the first time that two whole satellites have pulled off a no-loser chicken tourney. [AP]

Stuff like this happens when you build space ships in your garage. [discovery]

I did not realise until about 40 minutes later, on my way back to work, that they jet had actually crashed... barely missing the local high school.

So even while losing the life of two people was tragic, the high school escaped unscathed. Another witness said that the F/A-18D Hornet "spiralled out of control, just like out of Top Gun" before hitting the heavily-populated University City area at around 12:00am local time.

Right now, there are no details about what was the cause of the catastrophe. The pilot was injured after landing in a tree. He was later moved to the Balboa Naval Hospital, according to an official military spokesperson.

* In case your 80s culture is rusty, Air Station Miramar was featured in Top Gun. [BBC News via Huffington Post]

The Moon Impact Probe (MIP), one of the 11 payloads of Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft, successfully hit the lunar surface today at 20:31 hrs (8:31 pm) IST. This is the first Indian built object to reach the surface of the moon. The point of MIP’s impact was near the Moon’s South Polar Region. It may be recalled that the modern Indian space programme was initiated in 1962 when Pandit Jawaharlal Nehru was the Prime Minister of India.

Weighing 34 kg at the time of its launch onboard Chandrayaan-1, the box shaped MIP carried three instruments – a video imaging system, a radar altimeter and a mass spectrometer. The video imaging system was intended to take the pictures of the moon’s surface as MIP approached it. The radar altimeter was included to measure the rate of descent of the probe to the lunar surface. Such instruments are necessary for future lunar soft landing missions. And, the mass spectrometer was for studying the extremely thin lunar atmosphere.

MIP’s 25 minute journey to the lunar surface began with its separation from Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft at 20:06 hrs (8:06 pm) IST. This was followed by a series of automatic operations that began with the firing of its spin up rockets after achieving a safe distance of separation from Chandrayaan-1. Later, the probe slowed down with the firing of its retro rocket and started its rapid descent towards the moon’s surface. Information from the its instruments was radioed to Chandrayaan-1 by MIP. The spacecraft recorded this in its onboard memory for later readout. Finally, the probe had a hard landing on the lunar surface that terminated its functioning.

The Moon Impact Probe hit the moon last November 14 at 20:31 IST near the Moon's South Polar Region. [ISRO]

It happened in a frozen bay a few miles near the base. The rescue job was extremely difficult, as the documentation and video obtained under the US Freedom of Information Act show. It took months for the government to collect thousands of pieces from the B-52—scattered all around the bay—plus 500 million gallons of ice, some of it radioactive.

For a while it was just a giant recovery operation, but then the real problems started. After trying to make sense of all the pieces they were able to gather, they discovered that something was missing. The new documents reveal that they were only able to find three out of the four nuclear bombs on board the plane. The possible reason: "Something melted through ice such as burning primary or secondary".

Nevertheless, the government said all four weapons were destroyed and everything was ok. Meanwhile, in April the US government sent a Star III submarine to find the bomb, making the Danish government believe it was a "survey of bottom under the impact point":

Fact that this operation includes search for object or missing weapon part is to be treated as confidential NOFORN [not to be disclosed to any foreign country]. For discussion with Danes, this operation should be referred to as a survey repeat survey of bottom under impact point.

The search was finally abandoned. According to William H Chambers, a former nuclear weapons designer at Los Alamos: "There was disappointment in what you might call a failure to return all of the components. It would be very difficult for anyone else to recover classified pieces if we couldn't find them." There you go, people. If you are ever attacked by a 45-foot high shrimp, remember to call Mr. Chambers and tell him that, apparently, our new crustacean overlords didn't find it so difficult. [BBC News]

Concert on September 2nd (5:27 in):

Concert on August 20th (1:04 in):

[Amy Randazzo's Flickr and the NIN Hotline]

Update: Oh and check out delays for airports around the country. As you can see from the image above, delays of 16 to 45 minutes are hitting flights EVERYWHERE.

Head to Popular Mechanics to see the official timeline of the crash. [Popular Mechanics]

[Ares via Danger Room]

The B-2 Spirit follows the same ideas pioneered by John Knudsen Northrop, who founded Northrop to pursue his flying wing designs, and the Nazi Horten Ho-IX, one of the most advanced planes at its time, designed by the Horten brothers.

The Ho-IX, also called Gotha Go 229 or Ho 229, took off for the first time in 1944 and was the only plane to meet Luftwaffe's chief, frustrated transvestite and absolute nutter Hermann Göring 1000-1000-1000 performance standards: the Horten was capable of transporting 1,000 kilograms of bombs (2,200 lb) over 1,000 kilometers (620 miles) at 1,000 kilometers an hour.

Fortunately, it never reached production and most airframes were destroyed by US forces to avoid the Soviets getting their paws all over them. The U.S. VIII Corps of General Patton's Third Army captured one, however, and its low-drag, no-unnecessary surfaces live now in the B-2.

Unlike the experimental Horten and the flying wing designs that Northrop designed in the 40s (like 1948's Northrop YB-49, a jet-based variation of the 1946's YB-35 strategic bomber) the Spirit became fully operational.

The B-2 bombers are amazingly efficient: like its 20 sister vessels still in service, the Air Vehicle-12 Spirit of Kansas was capable of delivering both conventional and nuclear bombs to any target around the world in a few hours, with just one refueling. Powered by four General Electric F118-GE-100 turbofans capable of 17,300 pounds of thrust each, the aircraft can reach 410 knots (470mph) at a maximum altitude of 50,000 feet.

Another advantage of its simple design —coupled with its radar-absorbing coating, called Alternate High-Frequency Material—is that their radar profile is extremely low. Coupled with its operational altitude, this make them extremely hard to detect and shoot down. That's the reason why this crash, with no known reasons yet, is so exceptional. That and the effect of watching $1.2 billion dollars disappearing in an crater in a concrete runway.

According to the Air Force, an investigation is currently under way about why the Spirit of Kansas went to Oz at Guam. But don't worry, taxpayers, I'm sure you will get a cool 3D simulation of how it all happened from the Wizard in Chief, General Dorothy and Commander Toto, at the Pentagon. [Military.com, Ho-XI at Wikipedia, Jack Northrop at Wikipedia, Air Force — Main photo by Bobbi Garcia for the AFFTC]

Looking at this video it seems that the F-15s are quite formidable machines, even while the USAF investigation is pointing at Boeing's responsibility for a "faulty manufacturing process" that led to the failure of the long structural beams (longerons) that keep the fuselage together.

"The accident investigation board president (Wignall) found, by clear and convincing evidence, the cause of this accident was a failure of the upper right longeron, a critical support structure in the F-15C aircraft," the report says.

About 20 minutes after takeoff from an airfield near St. Louis on Nov. 2, the forward fuselage of Maj. Stephen Stilwell's $42 million F-15C Eagle shook violently and then broke apart 18,000 feet above the ground. Stilwell, his left shoulder dislocated and his left arm shattered, barely had time to safely eject as pieces of his aircraft tumbled from the sky over the Missouri countryside.

More troubling, however, are the results of a parallel examination finding as many as 163 of the workhorse aircraft also have flawed support beams, or longerons. The aircraft remain grounded as the Air Force continues to search for how serious the problem is and whether extensive, costly repairs are needed. Another 19 of the aircraft have yet to be inspected and also remain grounded.

Nearly 260 of the A through D model F-15s, first fielded in the mid-1970s, were returned to flight status Tuesday following fleet-wide inspections.

[Defense Tech and Military.com]

Although we still doubt such a crash would be survivable, this demo certainly changes our opinion of the safety of the diminutive Smartcar. We saw these cars all over the place on a recent trip to Montréal, and thought they looked way-cool, gadgety and almost toy-like. You might be seeing such cars around the United States sometime next year, and you can reserve a 2008 Smart fortwo now for $99. [SmartUSA, via New Launches]