Asteroid-mining company Deep Space Industries has just announced plans to launch a fleet of "FireFly" spacecraft as soon as 2015. Their mission? Find asteroids, rich with valuable metals, that could aid in humanity's colonization of space.
It will be interesting to see if Deep Space succeeds in mining asteroids. I think it's a great idea, but I would like to know how long they project it will take to mine materials and bring them back to Earth.
The devastating event took place on our planet many millions of years ago, but researchers are only now beginning to discover what happened. In a remote part of Central Australia, the two pieces of asteroid left what geophysicists say is the largest impact zone ever found on Earth, spreading over an area 400 kilometers (250 miles) wide.
Researchers are unable to find sediment layers in rocks that match debris from this time zone, which they were able to do for the asteroid that is theorized to wipe out the dinosaurs.