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Did CONTOUR Probe Break Apart Or Disappear Into Space?

NASA artist's conception of Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft approaching one of the comets it planned to study, including Comet Encke in 2003, Comet Schwassman-Wachmann 3 in 2006 and Comet d'Arrest in 2008.
NASA artist's conception of Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR) spacecraft approaching one of the comets it planned to study, including Comet Encke in 2003, Comet Schwassman-Wachmann 3 in 2006 and Comet d'Arrest in 2008.

NASA UPDATE ON AUGUST 26, 2002:

"On Aug. 15, CONTOUR's STAR 30 solid-propellant rocket motor > was programmed to ignite at 4:49 a.m. EDT, giving CONTOUR > enough boost to escape Earth's orbit. At that time, CONTOUR > was about 140 miles above the Indian Ocean and out of radio > contact with controllers. The CONTOUR mission operations team > at APL expected to regain contact at approximately 5:35 a.m. > EDT to confirm the burn, but NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN) > antennas did not acquire a signal. > > Since then, there has been no contact with CONTOUR. Commands > pre-programmed into the spacecraft's flight computer system, > designed to instruct the spacecraft to try various alternate > methods of contacting Earth when contact is lost, also have > not worked to date. > > Images from a Spacewatch ground-based telescope at Kitt Peak, > Ariz., show three objects at the location where CONTOUR was > predicted to be, images which may indicate the spacecraft has > broken apart. Mission controllers at APL will continue > listening for signals from the spacecraft periodically until > early December, when CONTOUR will come into a more favorable > angle for receiving a signal from Earth."

August 16, 2002  Laurel, Maryland - Late this afternoon at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory (JHUAPL), Dr. Robert Farquhar, Mission Director for the Comet Nucleus Tour (CONTOUR), teleconferenced with reporters about the status of the missing CONTOUR spacecraft. CONTOUR's STAR 30 solid-propellant rocket motor was programmed to ignite at 4:49 a.m. EDT yesterday, August 15, to launch the probe out of Earth orbit onto a trajectory to study two or three comets over the next few years. At that burn time, CONTOUR was over the Indian Ocean at 140 miles (225 kilometers), too low for NASA's Deep Space Network stations to track the spacecraft during the burn. All systems seemed to be OK going into the burn, but 45 minutes later when the JHUAPL mission operations team tried to regain contact with the probe, no signal was received.

 

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The “Bloop” in the Ocean

Spectrogram of an unidentified deep ocean sound, referred to as "Bloop." The bloop sound was repeatedly recorded during the summer of 1997 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. The sound rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km. It yields a general location near 50oS; 100oW (far off the west coast of southern South America). The origin of the sound is unknown. A recording of the bloop sound can be heard, sped up 16 times, at: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/sound01/sound01.html
Spectrogram of an unidentified deep ocean sound, referred to as "Bloop." The bloop sound was repeatedly recorded during the summer of 1997 on the Equatorial Pacific Ocean autonomous hydrophone array. The sound rises rapidly in frequency over about one minute and was of sufficient amplitude to be heard on multiple sensors, at a range of over 5,000 km. It yields a general location near 50oS; 100oW (far off the west coast of southern South America). The origin of the sound is unknown. A recording of the bloop sound can be heard, sped up 16 times, at: http://oceanexplorer.noaa.gov/explorations/sound01/sound01.html

June 30, 2002  Woods Hole, Massachusetts - The June 13, 2002 issue of New Scientist featured an article by reporter John von Radowitz in London about an underwater sound deep in the ocean recorded in 1997 by NOAA scientists that remains unidentified. The "Bloop" was detected and recorded from an array of underwater hydrophones (microphones) originally set up by the U. S. Navy in the 1960s to track Soviet submarines. The listening technology is distributed in a deep ocean level known as the "sound layer" which marine animals such as whales and human technology such as submarines use for long-range communication.

The SOund SUrveillance System, or SOSUS, consists of bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays connected by undersea communication cables to facilities on shore. Illustration courtesy Naval Research Laborator
The SOund SUrveillance System, or SOSUS, consists of bottom-mounted hydrophone arrays connected by undersea communication cables to facilities on shore. Illustration courtesy Naval Research Laboratory.

The "Bloop" was detected by hydrophones up to 4,800 kilometers apart (2,983 miles). That is a long distance for a single sound to be heard. Thus, speculation began about what the "Bloop" might be. The New Scientist article stated that the great distance it covered "meant it had to be much louder than any recognized animal noise, including that produced by the largest whales."

Recently, NOAA scientist Chris Fox who originally recorded the "Bloop," sent one recording to Dr. Phil Lobel, a marine biologist at the Woods Hole Laboratory in Massachusetts and a Professor of Marine Biology at Boston University. Dr. Lobel studies underwater sounds made by fish and other marine animals. I asked him what he thought the Bloop could be.

 

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Mile and A Half Diameter Asteroid 2002 NT7 Might Impact Earth in 2019

"We are talking about a global disaster of apocalyptic dimensions if an asteroid that size were to hit us."­

Benny Peiser, Ph.D., Liverpool John Moores University, U. K.

Asteroid 2002 NT7 currently tops the Impact Risk list of NASA/JPL's Near-Earth Object Program because current calculations place it crossing the earth's orbital path on or about February 1, 2019, or other possible later dates. NASA says, "While this prediction is of scientific interest, the probability of impact is not large enough to warrant public concern."
Asteroid 2002 NT7 currently tops the Impact Risk list of NASA/JPL's Near-Earth Object Program because current calculations place it crossing the earth's orbital path on or about February 1, 2019, or other possible later dates. NASA says, "While this prediction is of scientific interest, the probability of impact is not large enough to warrant public concern."

July 25, 2002  Liverpool, England - The newly discovered potential threat to the earth in another seventeen years is known by scientists as "Asteroid 2002 NT7." It was discovered on July 9, 2002 by researchers from M.I.T. (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) and the Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) project funded by the United States Air Force and NASA. The goal of the LINEAR program is to demonstrate the application of technology, originally developed for the surveillance of earth orbiting satellites, to the problem of detecting and cataloging Near Earth Asteroids (also referred to as Near Earth Objects, or NEOs) that threaten the Earth.

 

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Strange Stem Anomalies in New Dutch Crop Circles

July 24, 2002  The Netherlands - Robert Boerman of the Dutch Crop Circle Archive called me tonight to report that two more circles have arrived in a Groote Keeten, northern Holland field that have a lot of twisted and bent seed heads, expulsion holes in the growth nodes and nodes that are cracked. He sent me some very good photographs tonight so I could see and compare them to similar anomalous stems from Avebury, Wiltshire and Whitefish, Montana in 1999. I'll begin with the historic background of the "somatic developmental abnormalities," named by W. C. Levengood, the Michigan biophysicist who has studied plants and soil from crop formations since the early 1990s.

1) Whitefish, Montana:

Wheat from Whitefish, Montana, formation found August 6, 1999. Somatic developmental abnormality in looping and twisted stem between first growth node and wheat head similar to formation in Avebury, Wiltshire, England. Photograph © 1999 by biophysicist, W. C. Levengood.
Wheat from Whitefish, Montana, formation found August 6, 1999. Somatic developmental abnormality in looping and twisted stem between first growth node and wheat head similar to formation in Avebury, Wiltshire, England.Photograph © 1999 by biophysicist, W. C. Levengood.

 

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Mysterious, Buzzing Light in Tehachapi, California

Tehachapi, California, the residence of Neil Browning since 1991, about 50 miles from Edward AFB. In that Mojave Desert and Tehachapi Mountains region, many people have reported hearing strange underground sounds, seeing unidentified triangles and other aerial craft, and even non-human entities. Rumors have long persisted that the area has underground installations, but no one specifies who operates them.
Tehachapi, California, the residence of Neil Browning since 1991, about 50 miles from Edward AFB. In that Mojave Desert and Tehachapi Mountains region, many people have reported hearing strange underground sounds, seeing unidentified triangles and other aerial craft, and even non-human entities. Rumors have long persisted that the area has underground installations, but no one specifies who operates them.

July 23, 2002  Tehachapi, California ­ Last week I received an e-mail from 41-year-old Neil Browning of Tehachapi, California. Neil worked his entire U.S. Air Force career as a mechanic on airplanes until he retired as an E-7 in 1999. Then he took a position with the USAF Civil Service at Edwards AFB as an F-16 fighter aircraft crew chief. Neil Browning has lived in the same house in Tehachapi that he purchased in 1991. Between 1995 to 1999 he was on assignment in Korea and Luke AFB, Arizona and rented the house until he retired and moved back in full time.

Neil Browning's house in Tehachapi, California west of Edwards Air Force Base where he works as an F-16 crew chief. His car is parked in front of the garage where the buzzing light encounter took place around 12:15 a.m. PDT on July 11, 2002. At the right beyond the fence is the trailer that Neil retreated to in fear after the encounter with the light in the garage. Photograph taken on July 23, 2002 by Neil Browning.
Neil Browning's house in Tehachapi, California west of Edwards Air Force Base where he works as an F-16 crew chief. His car is parked in front of the garage where the buzzing light encounter took place around 12:15 a.m. PDT on July 11, 2002. At the right beyond the fence is the trailer that Neil retreated to in fear after the encounter with the light in the garage. Photograph taken on July 23, 2002 by Neil Browning.

 

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Extinctions of Earth Life Are Accelerating Rapidly

Our blue planet seen from space, courtesy NASA.
Our blue planet seen from space, courtesy NASA.

July 20, 2002  Corvallis, Oregon ­ A study by the World Wildlife Fund (WWF) was released this month which says that at the current rate of extinctions in 350 mammals, birds, reptiles and fish studied by scientists, in the middle of the 21st century, the oceans will be empty of marine life, forests will be gone and 25% of the world's mammal species could be extinct. Human over-population will have polluted water everywhere.

 

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Unusual Animal Deaths and Aerial Lights Persist in Argentina

Young calf owned by Camilo Lisiardo in Rufino, Cordoba Province, Argentina found dead and mutilated on July 1, 2002. Its jaw flesh was thoroughly removed. Photograph © 2002 by El Diario de la Republica. Strange lights continue to be reported in areas of mutilated animals, such as the one on the right videotaped on July 10, 2002 in Villarrica, Chile. Video frame © 2002 by Alberto Sandoval.
Young calf owned by Camilo Lisiardo in Rufino, Cordoba Province, Argentina found dead and mutilated on July 1, 2002. Its jaw flesh was thoroughly removed. Photograph © 2002 by El Diario de la Republica. Strange lights continue to be reported in areas of mutilated animals, such as the one on the right videotaped on July 10, 2002 in Villarrica, Chile. Video frame © 2002 by Alberto Sandoval.
Yellow areas indicate concentrations of animal deaths that are now estimated to number well over 300 since april 2002.
Yellow areas indicate concentrations of animal deaths that are now estimated to number well over 300 since april 2002.

July 19, 2002  La Pampa Province, Argentina ­ Argentina's recent federal government assertion that red-nosed mice, Oxymycterus rufus, are the culprits in the country's wave of animal mutilations has not stopped the unusual animal deaths. On July 1, rancher Camilo Lisiardo near Rufino in Cordoba Province west of Buenos Aires, found one of his calves (sex not specified) lying on its left side, dead. The right jaw was stripped of all muscle tissue, so cleanly the bone looked like it had laid in the sun for weeks. Its tongue and right eye had been cut out, a 4 centimeter-diameter circle of hide was excised around the naval, and the rectum was cored out.

 

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More Crop Formations in Holland and Germany

Three circles on left were investigated by Bert Janssen on July 8, 2002 in a wheat field near Ubachsberg, Holland. While there, Bert discovered the more complicated three rings on right which the farmer says appeared between 10 and 11 p.m. on July 3, 2002. Diagrams © 2002 by Robert Boerman, Dutch Crop Circle Archive.
Three circles on top were investigated by Bert Janssen on July 8, 2002 in a wheat field near Ubachsberg, Holland. While there, Bert discovered the more complicated three rings on the bottom which the farmer says appeared between 10 and 11 p.m. on July 3, 2002. Diagrams © 2002 by Robert Boerman, Dutch Crop Circle Archive.

July 13, 2002  Ubachsberg, Holland ­ On July 8, 2002, Robert Boerman and Bert Janssen of the Netherlands learned about a formation of three circles in Ubachsberg. Bert went to the wheat field and measured the diameter of the largest circle to be 11.80 meters; the smallest was 6.8 meters. He noted that many plants were standing straight up among the downed plants and showed no signs of damage on the stalks as might have occurred if boots, boards and other mechanical devices had flattened the circles.

 

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New Crop Formation in England

West Overton wheat field, formation reported July 9, 2002. Each circle at corners of triangle about 30 feet in diameter. Side lengths of triangle about 50 feet. Aerial photograph © 2002 by Steve Alexander. Also, see http://www.cropcircleconnector.com.
West Overton wheat field, formation reported July 9, 2002. Each circle at corners of triangle about 30 feet in diameter. Side lengths of triangle about 50 feet. Aerial photograph © 2002 by Steve Alexander. Also, see http://www.cropcircleconnector.com.

 

July 12, 2002  West Overton, Wiltshire, England -­ At noon time on Tuesday, July 9, Charles and Frances Mallett at The Silent Circle Cafe in Cherhill, Wiltshire, received a phone call about a new crop formation in West Overton, not far from the double spiraled serpents discovered on June 23, 2002. It had been raining for several days. Fields were full of mud and not conducive for pranksters, so the Malletts immediately drove out to see the condition of the plants while still fresh. I talked with Charles the next day, July 10, about his impressions.

 

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