News Briefs

Asteroid passing Earth January 29

Scientists at NASA are reporting that an asteroid several football fields in length will pass by Earth at 3:33 a.m. on January 29. The closest distance it will be is one-and-a-half times the distance to the moon. It should be easily visible to modest-sized telescopes. “This will be the closest approach by a known asteroid of this size or larger until 2027,” according to Don Yeomans, the manager of the Near Earth Object Program Office in California. There is no chance of it impacting Earth in the near future. If an asteroid of this size did hit Earth (most likely the ocean), it would cause a devastating tsunami. If it hit the ground, it would create a crater that is approximately three miles in diameter, but would not be devastating to the entire planet.

New spaceship unveiled by Virgin Galactic

The billionaire Richard Branson and an aerospace designer revealed their model for SpaceShipTwo on Thursday. They hope that it will be able to take rich tourists on joyrides through suborbital space. The ship is currently under construction in the Mojave Desert. They also revealed the plane that will carry the spaceship into the sky and release it to continue the rest of its flight. SpaceShipTwo can carry up to six passengers and two crew members. Passengers would get the chance to have almost five minutes of zero-gravity time before returning to the ground. To date, almost 200 passengers from 30 countries have already made reservations by spending $200,000 per person.

Google could make waves at FCC auction

An auction for the federal airwaves that are being freed up by televisions moving to high definition signals began Thursday. It’s expected to bring people better wireless broadband services. The Federal Communications Commission is auctioning the last airwave rights for the foreseeable future. Google, AT&T, and Verizon are all major contenders for the spectrum, and Google has already managed to convince the FCC to put stipulations on the way the airwaves can be used. The company has also formed a coalition with Sprint and T-Mobile so that they will not have to worry about building their own network. The auction will last six to eight weeks and all bidding will be anonymous.