Gizmorama - June 12, 2013

Good Morning,

The Solar Impulse solar plane completed its third leg of a planned five-flight trek from San Francisco to New York. I'll tell you one thing - it was definitely a daytime flight. Oh, that was terrible.

Learn about this and other interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.

Until Next Time,
Erin

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*-- Solar plane on cross-country trek lands in St. Louis --*
ST. LOUIS - The Solar Impulse solar plane landed in St. Louis early Tuesday, completing the third leg of a planned five-flight trek from San Francisco to New York. After taking off Monday morning from Dallas/Fort Worth International Airport, the aircraft landed in St. Louis after a flight of 21 hours and 21 minutes, its longest flight to date, CNET reported. After the landing the Swiss-built aircraft was moved to an inflatable hangar originally designed for a planned round-the-world flight, but brought into action after a storm caused heavy damage to the airport hangar originally reserved for Solar Impulse. "We brought the inflatable hangar to the USA for testing purposes and in fact it allowed the mission to stay on schedule," Solar Impulse co-founder Andre Borschberg said in a statement. "This exercise is now a proof of concept: rather than taking the airplane to a hangar, we have taken the hangar to the airplane." Borschberg and Solar Impulse co-founder Bertand Piccard have been alternating pilot duties on the cross-country trek. The first leg, beginning May 3 and piloted by Piccard, started from NASA's Moffett Field in the San Francisco Bay Area and ended in Phoenix; a Phoenix-to-Dallas flight with Borschberg at the controls began May 22. The long flight times of each leg meant Solar Impulse had to fly through the night; 12,000 solar cells built into the wing use sunlight to charge the batteries for night flight. A fourth flight will see the plane land in Washington, D.C., this month, while the final leg will end at JFK Airport in New York in early July.


*-- Hubble telescope spots bizarre asteroid sporting comet-like tail --*
INDIANAPOLIS - The Hubble space telescope has revealed a bizarre asteroid, U.S. astronomers say -- one trailing a tail of dust more than 600,000 miles long. The object found soaring through the asteroid belt was first thought to be a comet because of its long, well-formed tail, they said, but has been confirmed as a rare phenomenon dubbed an "active" asteroid. Its odd, X-shaped trailing debris field could be evidence the object, known as Asteroid P/2010 A2, collided head-on with another asteroid at some point in its past, while another theory holds it's breaking itself apart due to an unsustainable spin. "It's hard to pin it down," astronomer Jayadev Rajagopal, with the National Optical Astronomy Observatory, told Discovery News. "This one certainly looks like it's a collision," but there are a number of mechanisms that could explain its odd configuration, he said at the American Astronomical Society conference in Indianapolis this week. Only about 12 "active" asteroids have been observed to date, but A2 is in a class by itself, Rajagopal said. "We are watching the death of an asteroid," he said. "This is the only one which is showing the event as it is happening." How long A2 lasts -- it was discovered in January 2010 -- will depend on the size of its particles and how fast they are moving, he said. "I expect it to hang around for quite a while."

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