A lareg meteorites entered the atmosphere near the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia. The sonic boom from the meteorite shattered glass and caused other damage. As many as 400 people have been injured!

This is the most significant meteorite impact on earth since the Tunguska event in 1908. Some fragments of the meteorite struck a nearby reservoir.

Injuries on this scale from a meteorite are truly unprecedented. Even during the Tunguska event, it was unclear how many or if indeed any people on the ground were injured, because of the remoteness of the location. The scale of damage from this meteorite was more likely caused by the proximity of the impact to a large city than the size of the object itself.

It is common to say "you are more likely to be injured by a meteorite than..." as a metaphor for some absurdly improbably event. Statistically speaking, that may no longer be an accurate statement. Hopefully, there have been few serious injuries.

Not every cloud has a silver lining, but in this case, this event may influence public opinion to favor renewed support for space exploration, especially of the near earth asteroids. The idea that meteorite impacts are in any way a serious daily threat is still preposterous, but if it swings public support in favor of space exploration, the end result can only be good

Crazy you say?  Crazy is as Crazy does.  Wait that didn’t come out quite the way I expected.

The company Mars One [http://mars-one.com/en/] is proposing to have a one way mission to Mars.  With repeated launches to follow and more castaways sent to Mars.

Mars One is … a not-for-profit foundation whose primary goal is to take humanity to Mars. The first four astronauts are planned to land on Mars in 2023, with four additional crew members arriving every two years thereafter.

Since the launch of its website in June 2012, Mars One has enjoyed a profound, international following. With more than 850,000 unique visitors to the website, Mars One has received thousands of emails. Among those emails were more than one thousand requests from individuals that want to go to Mars--well before the launch of the Astronaut Selection Program.

http://mars-one.com/en/mars-one-news/330-mars-one-now-a-not-for-profit-foundation

Now whether or not they actually pull off the proposed feet, that is another matter entirely.

Astronomers at announced yesterday the discovery of an earth mass planet that orbits Alpha Centauri B once every 3.2 days. The discovery was made using extremely precise velocity measurements with the HARPS instrument. This is without a doubt the most important scientific discovery of the century.

The new planet, designated Alpha Centauri B b will be one of the first exoplanet to be visited by a spacecraft from earth. It may take a few hundred years, but we will get there.

It’s not a very earthlike planet, with the exception of its mass. And, this does not bode well for the discovery of an earth like solar system. But, Alpha Centauri B is likely to have other planets, and if there are they will be low mass planets, because a Jupiter like planet orbiting relatively close to the star would have been discovered easily by HARPS. So there may be other low mass planets, maybe even an earth like planet in an earth like orbit.

It is entirely possible, even likely, that Alpha Centauri has a habitable planet. And if it does, although this is pure speculation, if current scientific theories of the origin of life on earth are correct, there should be life there too. There may very well be life on a yet undiscovered planet orbiting Alpha Centauri.

Note the engine implosion and debris at the 1:30 mark.

Great article on the importance of how the vehicle dealt with losing the engine at Popular Science: http://www.popularmechanics.com/science/space/rockets/why-the-engine-failure-could-be-good-news-for-spacex-13520351

Hints of an epic discovery may have leaked from CERN ahead of a scheduled press release tomorrow. A video was discovered that has since been password protected describing a discovery of a particle that fits the Higgs boson. The particle is approximately 120 GeV, decays into two photons, and has been observed with sufficient certainty to announce a discovery.

Official sources at CERN can only say wait for the official press release tomorrow. For one thing, results from ATLAS and CMS data need to be compared side by side. Both teams are respecting a news embargo until tomorrow’s announcement at 3AM ET.

Breaking update: The experimental results from CMS are being presented live now, it's official, they have found Higgs at 125 GeV!

Shortly after opening the hatch on the SpaceX Dragon capsule, flight engineer Don Pettit observed the capsule has that “new car small.” Later, he compared the successful docking of Dragon to pounding in the famous golden spike which completed the transcontinental railroad and opened the western frontier to settlers.

This moment very much symbolizes the opening of the space frontier to further exploration, exploitation of resources, and eventually settlement. SpaceX should be very proud of what they have achieved. The immediate accomplishment is that this mission validates the ability of SpaceX to deliver on their contract with NASA to supply cargo missions to ISS. And , of course, everyone is anticipating a future human rated version of Dragon and Falcon which will be able to bring astronauts to and from ISS at a substantially lower cost than $63 million per seat, which is what the per seat cost is for Soyez.

SpaceX also has some exciting potential for international customers too. India’s lunar program has been impeded by launch difficulties with their GSLV heavy launch vehicle, forcing them to consider missions that use smaller but more reliable launch vehicles. China’s ambitious space program has also encountered delays. Shenzhou 9 has been delauyed from May to June or July, and it appears that Shenzhou 10 has been cancelled as a result of these delays.

Obviously, building and launching rockets successfully is not easy. It would be wonderful to see China, India, or other international space programs consider using commercial launch services from SpaceX. NASA has wisely contracted with SpaceX to provide $1.6 billion in cargo services to ISS.

Keep up the good work SpaceX, and don’t forget the new car smell!

Fantastic job SpaceX!

"Houston, Station, it looks like we've got us a dragon by the tail," NASA astronaut Don Pettit said, while applause rang out in Mission Control back in Houston.

http://www.space.com/15874-private-dragon-capsule-space-station-arrival.html

So you say you want to use your ROKU TV as a media server.  Fine, that isn’t something it does out of the box.  You need to go and get RoksBox (http://roksbox.com/home/)

Well to make your Roksbox media server work you have to set up your directory structure in the way it wants with a parent directory named Media and three child directories named: Photos, Music and Videos.

OK then.  If you are like me then the first two are already set up but the third is not.  All those videos you took with your camera are in your photos directory and, well, you don’t want to have move them by hand and then convert them by hand.

Powershell to the rescue.

I wrote a neat little script that will go through the directory tree in your photos directory, find the video files, copy them to a new directory under Videos and convert them to the appropriate format.

First thing you need to do is to download Handbrake (http://handbrake.fr/) this will be to tool used to convert the files.

Follow these instructions to get the code needed to call Handbrake and convert from the script.  - http://perfp.wordpress.com/2010/08/25/mass-converting-video-files-using-powershell-and-handbrake/

Essentially you are looking for the one line that looks like this:

"C:\Program Files (x86)\Handbrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe" -i $file -t 1 -c 1 -o $destname -f mp4 - -strict -anamorphic -e x264 -q 20 -a 1 -E faac -6 dpl2 -R 48 -B 160 -D 0.0 -x ref=2:bframes=2:subq=6:mixed -refs =0:weightb=0:8x8dct=0:trellis=0 -v 1

You’ll also need to make sure that your Powershell prompt is elevated.  If your reading this, then I’m gonna assume you can run that down and figure it out on your own.

Here's the script.

$StartRunDateFrom = Get-Date "01/01/2012"
$rootpath = "E:\Photos\*"
$BaseNewDir = "E:\Videos\"
$FoundMovie = $false
$ExtensionArray=".3gp",".mov",".mpg",".mpeg",".wmv",".avi"
$NewFullName = ""

#loop
through directories under root foreach($folder in Get-Childitem $rootpath)
{ #Check to see if it is within the date range if($folder.lastwritetime
–gt $StartRunDateFrom) { foreach($file in Get-Childitem $folder) { foreach ($filetype
in $ExtensionArray) { #find one match and then break if
($file.fullname -like "*" + $filetype) { $FoundMovie = $true break } } } #if
we found a movie if($FoundMovie) { #Get current child
path from root echo("booya: " + $folder.name) $CopyToDir = $BaseNewDir + $folder.name #Create
new folder location in videos directory new-item -path $CopyToDir -type directory
-force | out-null #copy files foreach($file in Get-Childitem
$folder) { foreach ($filetype in $ExtensionArray) { if ($file.fullname -like "*" +
$filetype) { $FileNameNoExtension = [system.io.path]::GetFilenameWithoutExtension($file.name) #The
file name at the end of the process $NewNewFullName = $CopyToDir + "\" + $FileNameNoExtension
+ ".mp4" #if the file doesn't exist, copy and convert if
(!(test-path $NewNewFullName)) { & "C:\Program Files\Handbrake\HandBrakeCLI.exe"
-i $file.fullname -t 1 -c 1 –o 


$NewNewFullName -f mp4 -4 --strict-anamorphic -e x264 -q 20 --vfr -a 1 -E faac 


-B 160 -6 dpl2 -R Auto -D 0 --gain=0 --audio-copy-mask none --audio-fallback 


ffac3 -x ref=1:weightp=1:subq=2:rc-lookahead=10:trellis=0:8x8dct=0 --verbose=1 } }
} } } #end if#reset variables $FoundMovie
= $false } } #end loop

Copy it and save it as FileMovieCopier.ps1.  Set your root paths appropriately, set you date start variable correctly.  Run it.

Fantastic!

Here is the full launch video.  During the middle section it’s a bit like watching a bunsen burner in a dark room, so here are the key points in the video that you can jump to.

1:13 - Liftoff of Falcon 9 / Dragon.
4:19 - Main engine cutoff.
10:51 - Second engine cutoff.
11:19 - Dragon spacecraft separation.
12:52 - Solar array deployment.

Next stop the IIS!