Reported and Edited by Linda Moulton Howe
November 25, 2004 Pasadena, California - This week, NASA released this extraordinary mosaic of nine processed images of Saturn's mysterious moon, Titan. This image overlay is the most detailed view of Titan ever seen from Earth and were acquired during the Cassini spacecraft's close flyby of Titan on October 26, 2004.
November 17, 2004 Darmstadt, Germany - SMART-1 is the first space probe the European Space Agency (ESA) has ever launched to the moon. SMART stands for "Small Missions for Advanced Research in Technology." This is also the first time that ESA has tried an "electric primary propulsion in space," which is an ion engine that uses a Hall-effect thruster fueled by xenon gas and powered by solar energy. SMART-1 was launched in September 2003 with the plan to make 332 orbits around the Earth, each one going further and further until its experimental ion drive was fired at 05:24 UT, November 15, 2004, to bring the spacecraft into lunar orbit. The engine will be fired repeatedly over the next two months to lower the spacecraft into an operational orbit of 3000 x 300 kilometers by January 13, 2005.
November 11, 2004 Gallup, New Mexico - The name Roswell has become synonymous with UFOs through television shows such as The Real X-Files about a ruthless government plot to cover-up crashed discs, non-human entities and their possible alien agendas to preserve the public status quo and prevent panic.
November 3, 2004 Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada - Wesley K. Clark was born in Chicago, Illinois, in December 1944, an only child of Veneta and Benjamin Kanne. His father died and he moved with his mother to Little Rock, Arkansas. In 1954, Veneta married Victor Clark who became Wes Clark's stepfather.
1 micrometer (micron) = 1 / millionth of a meter (39.37 inches) 1 nanometer = 1 / billionth of a meter
August 21, 2004 West LaFayette, Indiana - When you enter the world of bio-nanotechnology, you are so small that if one nanometer were the size of a single pea, a regular meter of 39.37 inches would be the size of the Earth! In that nano world, virus sizes vary from 18 to 300 nanometers.
"A symbiosis of methanogenic bacteria with methanothrophic bacteria in the Martian underground can be an alternative interpretation (to geothermal) and looks more likely."
- Vittorio Formisano, Ph.D.
September 20, 2004 Ischia Island, Italy - Today at the International Mars Conference held September 19-23, by the Italian Space Agency, physicist Vittorio Formisano, Ph.D., presented results from his analysis of the Martian atmosphere in a paper entitled, "Observation of Methane, Formaldehyde and HS (hydrogen sulfide): Extant Life On Mars?" Dr. Formisano designed the Planetary Fourier Spectrometer (PFS) for placement on the European Space Agency's Mars Express Orbiter. Back on May 6, 2004, when I interviewed him for Earthfiles and radio, he said his PFS data indicated molecules of formaldehyde in the Martian atmosphere and told me, "Formaldehyde is destroyed in the Martian atmosphere within 7.5 hours. There is no way that formaldehyde can exist and remain for a long time in the Martian atmosphere. If (formaldehyde) confirmed, possibly life on Mars today, yes."
September 14, 2004 Greenbelt, Maryland - In a four-week-period from August 13 to September 16, 2004 - for the first time on record in American weather history - three major Category 3 to 5 hurricanes made landfall in the southeastern United States. Charley intensified to a Category 4 hurricane and made landfall with winds of 145 mph, and gusts that topped 180 mph in Punta Gorda which was devastated along with Port Charlotte on August 13. Charley cut a huge swath of upturned trees, downed power lines, flattened trailer homes, destroyed houses and businesses all across central Florida, including Orlando, and killed at least 27 people.
August 27, 2004 Pasadena, California - Internet rumors have circulated this year that in September 2004, an asteroid will strike Earth and cause great devastation. An asteroid is going to pass the Earth's orbit on September 29th, but there astronomers and asteroid specialists say there is no chance for a hit. The Near-Earth-Passing asteroid is called 4179 Toutatis, a very strangely-shaped rock that was first discovered by C. Pollas on January 4, 1989, at Caussols, France, on photographic plates taken on the 0.9-m Schmidt telescope by Alain Maury and Derral Mulholland during astrometric observations of Jupiter's faint satellites. Toutatis is the long streak in the image below.
