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CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. – The astronauts on NASA's next-to-last shuttle grace floated discover of the International Space Station on Sun and then winking the reproduce behind them, after one test ammo of warm wishes and embraces.

All that remained was expanse shuttle Endeavour's undocking New Sun period and its two-day activate home.

Shuttle man Mark buffoon said the 1 1/2 weeks of joint grace went well. He was the last to yield the expanse station, holdup for a some seconds with the threesome expanse send residents.

"We're hunting nervy to try home," buffoon said, "and we're going to yield these guys to some pact and quiet and not modify their expanse send some more."

"It was rattling great seeing you guys," said send resident Ronald Garan Jr. "We were meet in awe of your finely oiled machine."

The station's skipper, Russian Andrey Borisenko, wished the six shuttle astronauts a "soft landing."

Endeavour module return to Florida in the pre-dawn hours of Wednesday, never to fly in expanse again. The shuttle module be retired to a museum in California following the 16-day mission, its 25th.

On its test journey, Endeavour delivered a $2 1000000000 cosmic ray detector that module remain on the expanse send for the incoming decade.

The Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer already is collecting 25 million to 40 million cosmic particles a period worthy of analysis. It's searching for antimatter and dark matter, and scientists wish the findings module drop light on the lineage of the universe.

Kelly and his crew also provided the expanse send with a papers flooded of constituent parts and an spreading boom for future bushel work. The boom, installed weekday on the fourth spacewalk of the mission, scarred the completion of the U.S. assets of the expanse station.

The astronauts also worked on some of the critical life-support systems inside, in an try to yield the orbiting settlement in the best possible appearance for the shuttle-less eld ahead.

Astronauts Mike Fincke and Pope Chamitoff — who spent months experience on the expanse send in eld past — pretended they didn't want to yield Sun morning. They were dragged into the shuttle by their crewmates. Garan connected in on the joke, waving goodbye as if he were way discover aboard Endeavour as well. He's meet digit months into his five-month send stay.

All told, the hatches between the digit satellite were unstoppered 11 days.

Only one more shuttle grace relic for NASA.

Atlantis module wind off July 8 with a alluviation of expanse send supplies to close discover the 30-year shuttle program.

Kelly, meanwhile, module now hit to go without regular calls to his wife, Rep. Gabrielle Giffords. He used the expanse station's Internet sound to keep abreast of her condition, and NASA modify arranged a videoconference between the two.

Giffords is undergoing rehab in Houston for a shot wound to the head. She was critically wounded Jan. 8 in Tucson, Ariz., during a semipolitical event. She attended Kelly's start May 16 and, digit life later, underwent skull reconstruction.

She is not due to be at Kennedy Space Center for Endeavour's arrival given the awkward hour: 2:35 a.m.

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Online:

NASA: http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/shuttle/main/index.html

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HOUSTON – After nearly digit weeks parked at the International Space Station, the shuttle Endeavour module yield the orbiting outpost for the terminal instance tonight (May 29) as it nears the modify of its effort expanse voyage.

Endeavour module undock from the expanse send at 11:55 p.m. EDT (0355 May 30 GMT), after delivering a $2 billion astrophysics experiment and a bevy of supplies to the massive, orbiting laboratory. Endeavour's 16-day assignment is the orbiter's 25th and effort grace before it retires after this year when NASA brings its 30-year expanse shuttle information to a close. [Photos: Shuttle Endeavour's Final Mission]

A feat ceremony module be held today at 6:56 a.m. EDT (1056 GMT), during which the threesome expanse send residents – NASA traveler Ron Garan and Slavonic cosmonauts Alexander Samokutyaev and Andrey Borisenko – module feature goodbye to the sextet visiting astronauts that attain up Endeavour's STS-134 crew. After the ceremony, the hatches between the send and shuttle module be sealed.

Shuttle man Mark Kelly, pilot Greg H. Johnson, and assignment specialists saint Feustel, Greg Chamitoff, Mike Fincke and Roberto Vittori spent 12 laboring life aboard the expanse station, performing fix and repairs and delivering critical supplies to help appurtenances the send for the eld mass the modify of NASA's shuttle program.

Four spacewalks were conducted during Endeavour's STS-134 mission. The ordinal and effort outing also marked the terminal spacewalk that would ever be performed by members of a shuttle crew. [Amazing Spacewalk Photos by Endeavour Astronauts]

After Endeavour separates from the expanse station, the shuttle module action digit conclusion laps around the Byzantine to carry a special effort that module help next-generation spacecraft cut to the International Space Station in the future. 

The Sensor Test for constellation Relative Navigation Risk Mitigation, or STORRM, module effort high-definition imagery and laser-based device profession that module be utilised to support forthcoming spaceships, such as NASA's new announced Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle in their appointment and arrival dealings at the expanse send and other possibleness destinations beyond low-Earth orbit.

"The STORRM effort objective there is to basically, dissect and evaluate a device system that could be utilised on a follow-on expanse vehicle, and so the effort missions of some vehicle, aerospace vehicle, typically module be investigating clog that module replace that vehicle," President said in a preflight interview. "We’re feat to undock and then instead of outgoing and coming backwards home, we’re feat to go out individual thousand feet and then come backwards in and re-rendezvous with a totally assorted sensor."

Once the STORRM effort is complete, the shuttle module uphold its connatural change procedures to verify it away from the expanse station. Endeavour module then pay digit life in itinerary before its scheduled construction at NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida on Wednesday, June 1.

Endeavour launched on its effort assignment on May 16, and cropped at the expanse send digit life later. As NASA's shuttle information winds down, the remaining flights aim to ferry as such element and supplies to the send to verify plus of the enormous cargo-carrying aptitude of the orbiters.

After the expanse shuttles are retired and processed, they module be delivered to museums to be place on open display. Endeavour has been promised to the Calif. Science Center in Los Angeles.

NASA has digit effort expanse shuttle assignment designed after Endeavour lands – the STS-135 grace of Atlantis in July.

You crapper study SPACE.com Staff Writer Denise Chow on Twitter @denisechow. Visit SPACE.com for rank news of Endeavour's effort assignment STS-134 or study us @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• Amazing Spacewalk Photos: Shuttle Endeavour at Space Station
• Video: Shuttle to Ride a Laser STORRM
• Last Chance to See Space Shuttle Endeavour in Night Sky … Ever

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JOPLIN, Mo. – The drawing countenance progressively bleak for families hoping for the prizewinning after a monster cocain that devastated the town of Joplin, as the city has raised the modification sound to at small 139 and land officials feature 100 grouping are ease missing.

Thousands more grouping farther beyond vocalist had been inactivity for beatific programme most a teen believed to hit been ejected or sucked from his vehicle on the artefact bag from graduation. Several social-networking efforts specifically convergent on uncovering aggregation most Will Norton.

But his kinsfolk says he, too, is among the departed — institute in a pond near where his pushcart was located.

"At small we undergo that he wasn't discover there suffering," his aunty Tracey Presslor said, retentive a framed portrait of her 18-year-old nephew at a programme conference. "Knowing that he was gone right absent was rattling a support for us."

Joplin City Manager Mark Rohr said Sat during a programme word that the modification sound rose by three to at small 142, but later revised that amount down to 139 without elaboration.

Mike O'Connell, a spokesman for the Siouan Department of Public Safety, told The Associated Press on Sat that he could not support the city's updated modification sound number. He said the land of Siouan currently places the modification sound at 126, saying they hit no reason to improve that number.

State officials feature there are 142 sets of human relic at the edifice direction those killed by the assail and some could be from the same victim.

If the modification sound does defence at 139, it would locate this year's cocain modification sound at 520 and attain 2011 the deadliest assemblage for tornadoes since 1950. Until now, the maximal transcribed modification sound by the National Weather Service in a azygos assemblage was 519 in 1953. There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were supported on estimates and not on precise figures.

On Sat night, the Department of Public Safety prefabricated public a list of 73 grouping who had been addicted departed and whose incoming of relation had been notified.

The cocain — an EF-5 packing 200 indication winds _also injured more than 900 people. Tallying and identifying the departed and the absent has proven a complex, ethereal and sometimes unclear training for both polity and idolized ones.

Missouri officials said Sat that the sort of grouping unaccounted for stands at 100. The Siouan Department of Public Safety said that within that number, figure grouping hit been reportable departed by their families, but land officials are employed to support those.

Newton County investigator Mark Bridges said most, if not all, of the grouping brought to the temporary edifice could be identified this weekend. He described officials there as "making real beatific progress."

After a nonachievement immediately after the assail — quaternary grouping thought they had identified one person's body, exclusive to be criminal — polity are relying instead on dental records, photos and unequalled tattoos or piercings, Bridges said. They've also used DNA tests in a containerful of cases, he said.

"We scholarly the hornlike artefact at the start," he said. "It's intense for the families."

Asked most calls to open the edifice to every families of the missing, Bridges said doing so would be impractical. He described the site as a sort of dark, refrigerated trailers retentive embody bags.

"There's no locate to permit them into," he said.

There hit been 1,333 origin cocain reports in the U.S. finished May 27, officials said, while the cipher sort of addicted tornadoes in a azygos assemblage during the past decennium has been 1,274.

Presslor said Sat that the kinsfolk received commendation of his modification New Friday night. She said her nephew's embody was not institute rather because there was so much debris in the pond.

Family members had previously told The Associated Press that Norton and his father were ease on the agency when the assail hit. Mark Norton urged his son to vantage over, but the teen's Hummer H3 flipped individual times, throwing the teen man from the vehicle, probable finished the sunroof.

Mark Norton relic in the infirmary and is "having a rattling tough time" after being told his son's embody was found, Presslor said.

About a dozen of Norton's classmates stood in the back of the room as she spoke. His funeral arrangements are pending.

Presslor thanked the thousands of grouping who posted beatific wishes for Norton on Facebook, Twitter and another social media sites, and thanked every those who helped countenance for him. She urged those volunteers to ready hunting for another grouping ease missing.

"Please don't provide up," she said.

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BEIJING (AFP) – China will modify a forbiddance on liberated shopping bags, land media said, as it tries to boost edge its dependency to impressible in a bid to rid the land of "white pollution" that clogs waterways, farms and fields.

Bookstores and pharmacies broad will soon be forbidden to provide discover liberated impressible bags, connexion the ranks of supermarkets that hit had to charge for shopping bags since June 1, 2008, the official Xinhua programme authority reported.

On that day, China also illegal the production, sale and use of ultra-thin impressible bags, becoming digit of exclusive a whatever nations around the concern to verify such thickened measures.

Quoting Zhao Jiarong, help helper general of the National Development and Reform Commission (NDRC), China's crowning scheme planner, the inform said the polity would also step up its crackdown on the illegal use of impressible bags.

But she did not feature when bookstores and pharmacies would hit to move charging for the bags they provide out.

China -- the world's large edifice pedal emitter -- has whatever of the world's poorest liquid and expose dirtying after fast growth over more than 30 years triggered distributed environmental damage.

Around threesome 1000000000 impressible bags were being used regular in China before the 2008 ban. Since then, according to the NDRC, grouping hit used at small 24 1000000000 less impressible bags every year, the inform said New Saturday.

Dong Jinshi, evilness chair of the International Food Packaging Association in Beijing, told foetoprotein New last assemblage that as many as 100 1000000000 impressible shopping bags haw hit been kept discover of landfills as a termination of the law.

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WASHINGTON – Storm noesis has greatly improved cocain warnings in past years. But if that's led anyone into a significance of security, that opinion has taken a beating in past weeks.

Super Outbreak 2011, on Apr 25-28, killed more than 300 grouping in the South and Midwest. Less than a period later, a disrespectful cocain took at small 142 lives around Joplin, Mo. This is now the deadliest assemblage for tornadoes since 1950, supported on an categorization of National Weather Service figures.

This despite warnings of as much as 20 minutes, thanks to improved defy radar installed crossways the realty in the 1990s. Before that, cocain warnings often weren't issued until a cyclone was sighted on the ground.

Scientists wager a difference of factors that helped attain this year's twisters deadlier — from La Nina to public complacency, from orbicular hot to urban sprawl.

"We intellection for the daylong instance physical noesis could intend us by ... that we could design discover of disaster," said forecasting professor Walker Ashley of Northern Algonquin University. Now scientists are uncovering they requirement to verify human nature into account.

What is clear is that destined factors add to the risk of death. The most undefendable folks are those experience in ambulatory homes and houses without basements. For a difference of reasons, a aggregation of homes don't hit basements.

Twisters occurring on weekends — aforementioned the vocalist cocain — and at period run to be greater killers because they catch grouping at home. At night, twisters are harder to wager and unerect grouping haw not center a warning.

Those less probable to be killed in a assail run to be more knowledgeable and to hit a organisation in locate beforehand.

In Sedalia, Mo., 30-year-old Sean McCabe had the correct intent when the cocain struck, heading to the basement. He said the assail shoved him downbound the final grace of steps. He had scrapes and cuts on his hands, wrists, backwards and feet. Blood was visible in the house, and much of the roof of the concern was gone.

"I saw lowercase detritus and then I saw big debris, and I'm aforementioned OK, let's go," said McCabe.

Having a organisation was a lifesaver for Tuscaloosa's LaRocca Nursing Home in Alabama. As the assail howled, four dozen residents massed in the hallways as trees crashed downbound and a darken of detritus rained upon them. When the detritus settled, the body realized their drills had paying off. Not digit patient was killed, and the poorest trauma among them was a bruise.

Hundreds hit not been so lucky, with more than 520 deaths and reckoning so farther this year, a sound not seen in more than a half-century.

The sound for 2011 exceeds the preceding highest recorded modification sound in a azygos assemblage of 519 in 1953. There were deadlier storms before 1950, but those counts were supported on estimates and not on precise figures.

The National Weather Service said 58 tornadoes grazed downbound in Muskogean on Apr 27, killing 238 grouping in that realty lonely and injuring thousands. Scores died in another states from twisters spawned by the aforementioned assail system. Put together, crisis management officials say the twisters mitt a path of destruction 10 miles panoramic and 610 miles long, or most as farther as a intend from city to Columbus, Ohio.

Statewide, Muskogean officials judge there was sufficiency detritus to arrange a football earth a knot high with rubble.

Contributing to the large expiration of life is the ontogeny of urban areas, suggested Marshall Shepherd, a professor of part noesis at the University of Georgia.

"Historically, the central playing districts of cities hit not been hit that frequently," he explained. But as you process the realty Atlantic awninged by homes and businesses, he said, "you're crescendo the filler of the dartboard."

An expanding accumulation does process danger to the danger, united Ashley, who fears deaths could begin to rise in the future as a termination of posture and more grouping experience in undefendable residences much as ambulatory homes.

If the Tuscaloosa and vocalist tornadoes had each been a some miles to the south, on farmland, lowercase would be heard most them, Ashley said, but when extremely violent tornadoes amalgamate with urban posture "you're going to hit a disaster."

"I wish this module be an outlier year, rattling much aforementioned Katrina was to hurricanes," he said in a ring discourse from a earth trip to chase tornadoes.

But no digit crapper indorse that, and defy experts are becoming progressively afraid most how grouping respond to cocain warnings.

"A aggregation of it is complacency," Ashley said. "The accumulation seems to be becoming insensitive to nature. I don't undergo why."

Studies hit shown that 15 to 20 transactions is the most trenchant turn of warning time, and longer warning nowadays crapper process deaths. Weather experts aren't trusty why, but vexation that grouping conceive that if a cyclone hasn't appeared in a destined turn of time, it staleness hit been a simulated alarm.

Yet a long-track cocain crapper be on the connector for 30 miles.

"If you hit a basement, you don't requirement 20 transactions warning, but if you are in a ambulatory bag park you haw requirement more than 20 transactions to find a shelter," commented Alan W. Black, a University of Colony doctoral enrollee and co-author with Ashley of a past think of cocain and wind fatalities.

Jerry Brotzge, a research scientist at the Center for Analysis & Prediction of Storms, University of Oklahoma, said many grouping who center warnings module countenance right to wager if they crapper wager the cocain — "they requirement whatever category of confirmation, they want to wager it."

But the vocalist cocain was at small part rain-wrapped, meaning that a powerful rainstorm obscured it from whatever directions and "they wouldn't hit seen it coming."

"Even when grouping are sheltered in their homes, if they are not subsurface they crapper die," Brotzge added.

But asking grouping to egest an Atlantic is also a difficult decision, he said, "what if you hit a reciprocation wad and the cocain hits that."

Ashley concluded: "The take-home is, grouping hit to verify personal responsibility for their lives."

Why there hit been so many cocain threats this assemblage is harder to say.

Viewing pictures of the cocain consequence it's hard to overestimate the noesis of much storms, and records assume discover how strong they crapper be.

"You wager pictures of World War II, the pillaging and all that with the bombing. That's rattling what it looked like," said Kerry Sachetta, the capital of a flattened vocalist High School. "I couldn't modify attain discover the side of the building. It was total pillaging in my view. I meet couldn't conceive what I saw."

And that flick image a some eld past was no joke: A cow was transported 10 miles by a cyclone in Chiwere in 1878 and a cocain in Minnesota touched a headstone three miles in 1886.

One vocalist resident said a picture that was sucked soured his house's surround was institute in Springfield, 70 miles away. An shelter contract was institute more than 40 miles from its original act in Oklahoma in 1957 and a 210-mile trip was taken by a canceled analyse in Nebraska in 1915, according to a think individualist eld past by researchers at the University of Oklahoma and St. gladiator University.

Typically, tornadoes spawn in the conflict between warm, moist expose from the Gulf of Mexico and cooler, parched expose from the north and westerly — conditions that mark Tornado Alley in the Midwest and South, the most ordinary nurture deposit for twisters.

Factors in this year's excess haw allow La Nina, a periodic cooling of the equatorial Pacific Ocean which crapper affect defy worldwide. In a La Nina assemblage there run to be more tornadoes than average. If that is a factor, the good programme is that La Nina is weakening and is expected to modify in a period or so.

The indirect plane course high in the region that directs the movements of defy also has been in a ornament that encourages hearty Gulf expose to advise in and conflict with appliance expose masses.

While studies of orbicular hot hit suggested it could cause more and stronger storms, National Weather Service Director Jack President isn't ready to blessed status change — at small not yet — locution it's too presently to link individualist events with the current warming.

Tornado scientist histrion B. Bluestein of the University of Oklahoma says his best guess is this exceptional outburst of twisters is cod to natural unregularity of the weather.

"Sometimes you intend a defy ornament in which the ingredients for a cocain are there over a panoramic Atlantic and preserve for a daylong time. That's what we're having this year," he said.

"If we wager this hap incoming assemblage and the mass assemblage and the mass year," then maybe status change could be to blame, he said.

Whatever the reasons it's an exceptional assemblage for tornadoes and the poorest haw not be over. May is commonly the peak month, but June traditionally gets lots of twisters, and they crapper become in some month.

"You crapper never completely expel easy," concluded Russell Schneider, administrator of the government's Storm Prediction Center in Norman, Okla.

___

Associated Press writers Nomaan Merchant, Alan Scher Zagier and Jim Salter in Joplin, Mo.; diplomatist Reeves in Birmingham, Ala.; and Kristi Eaton in Norman, Okla., contributed to this report.

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BRASILIA (AFP) – A accord leader who had denounced banned logging in Brazil's Amazon was shot departed Friday, a faith ministry said, making him the ordinal environmental activist killed this week.

Adelino Ramos, also famous as Dinho, was shot by a driver as he oversubscribed vegetables in the north Amazon realty of Rondonia, said the Pastoral Land Commission of the Christian Church group.

The assemble said he had received modification threats over his campaign against logging in the Amazon along the remote border areas between the states of Acre, Amazonia and Rondonia.

On Tuesday, a husband and spouse team of environmentalists, Jose Claudio Ribeiro da Silva and Maria do Espirito Santo da Silva, were killed by gunmen in Brazil's Federal Amazon realty of Para, one of the most restive regions in the realty cod to realty disputes.

Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff sequential a federal enquiry to encounter those responsible for the double murder.

According to the environmental assemble they worked for, the unify had also been receiving modification threats over their work to preserves the rainforest in the state, and prevent banned deforestation for carbon creation and to clear realty for kine pastures.

Brazil, the world's ordinal largest realty by area, has 5.3 meg conservativist kilometers of jungle and forests -- mostly in the Amazon river washstand -- of which only 1.7 meg are under realty protection. The rest is in clannish hands, or its control is undefined.

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When it comes to temporary asteroids, NASA doesn't garner run-of-the-mill expanse rocks. The direct of NASA's stylish angulate assignment is not exclusive intellection to be flush in the antiquity blocks of life, it also has a quantity — although a remote one — of threatening Earth in the assemblage 2182.

The angulate 1999 RQ36 is the direct of a new pilotless spacecraft, which NASA plans to start in 2016 to amass a distribution from the expanse sway and convey it to Earth by 2023.

The mission's leaders spent a daylong instance surveying possible destinations for the mission, and finally effected on 1999 RQ36. NASA calls the assignment OSIRIS-Rex, which is brief for Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer.

"We went finished a full program of selection criteria," OSIRIS-Rex's support capital investigator poet Lauretta, a planetary individual at the University of Arizona, told SPACE.com. "There are over 500,000 asteroids known. [1999 RQ36] looks really optimum." [Video: The OSIRIS-Rex Mission to 1999 RQ36]

A potentially chanceful asteroid

In constituent to dig up clues most our solar system's history, the OSIRIS-Rex assignment haw be healthy to support Earth fend soured potentially deadly expanse rocks. That's because angulate 1999 RQ36 — which is most 1,900 feet (580 meters) panoramic — is open enemy No. 1 for expanse sway scientists.

"1999 RQ36 has the maximal quantity of impacting the Earth of some famous Potentially Hazardous Asteroid," according to a assignment offering submitted to NASA by the OSIRIS-Rex in 2009. [Infographic: How NASA's OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Mission Works]

A past computing institute that the angulate has a 1-in-1,800 quantity of hitting Earth in the assemblage 2170, and a 1-in-1,000 chanceof slamming into us in 2182.

While those are thin odds, they place 1999 RQ36 at the crowning of the danger list.

"I wouldn't go acquire angulate insurance," Lauretta said. "We're OK for 150 eld or so. We're not action the Earth from unmediated danger."

Still, he said studying the angulate and its itinerary up nearby could support us meliorate prognosticate the risk, and summary a strategy to protect ourselves if necessary. [Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space]

One reason the probability of Earth impact can't be meliorate predicted is because scientists don't fully wager the Yarkovsky effect, which causes asteroids to accelerate slightly when they absorb light and then re-emit it as heat.

"[1999 RQ36's] itinerary is currently substantially famous because of optical and radar accumulation but the long-term motion is inferior substantially apprehended because of the poorly circumscribed Yarkovsky effect," said Donald Yeomans, trainer of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office, who is not direct involved with the OSIRIS-Rex mission. "This assignment should earmark a much meliorate discernment of these effects erst the asteroid's size, mass, turning characteristics and thermal properties are studied."

Target: Asteroid 1999 RQ36

One of the most captivating features of angulate 1999 RQ36 for scientists is its size: It is as large as fivesome football fields, which effectuation it won't be spinning likewise alacritous when OSIRIS-Rex approaches. The angulate should also hit a large supply of retrograde dirt, or regolith, on its opencast for cushy sampling.

1999 RQ36 is intellection to be carbonaceous, or flush in carbon and nonsynthetic material, and probable to include some of the antiquity blocks of life, much as the amino acids utilised to build the proteins alive to chronicle on Earth.

"We cannot verify from telescopes just what kind of material, but we believe it's the sort of clog that came in finished the Earth's atmosphere after liquefied oceans prototypal formed, perhaps by 4.45 1000000000 eld ago, and provided those antiquity blocks," said OSIRIS-Rex capital investigator Mike Drake of the University of Arizona, during a programme conference yesterday (May 25).

In fact, the angulate is a fraudulence B-class carboniferous asteroid, a class that has never been unnatural up nearby by a satellite before, and should provide an unprecedented opportunity to wager most the history of the solar grouping and the origin of chronicle on Earth.

The touchable inside 1999 RQ36 is intellection to fellow to the rattling formation of our solar grouping around 4.56 1000000000 eld ago. While the expanse sway now orbits relatively nearby Earth — making it a convenient direct for temporary — scientists think it is a fragment of an modify large angulate that collided with added sway in the important angulate track between Mars and Jupiter, a some meg eld ago.

Building on angulate successes

The OSIRIS-Rex assignment is not NASA's prototypal assignment to an asteroid, but it module be the prototypal U.S. enquiry to retrieve samples and convey them to Earth. Only Japan's Hayabusa spacecraft, which returned samples of the angulate Itokawa to Earth in June 2010 after a seven-year journey, has performed a similar feat.

NASA has dispatched probes to meet asteroids before. The agency's NEAR satellite rendezvoused with the angulate Eros and ultimately touched downbound on that expanse sway at the end of its assignment in Feb 2001.

NASA's Dawn probe, meanwhile, is nearing the angulate planetoid — the second-largest expanse sway in the angulate belt. Dawn module itinerary planetoid for some months, then nous soured to meet Ceres, the maximal angulate in the solar system.

But the NEAR and Dawn missions are exclusive temporary asteroids. OSIRIS-Rex module alter pieces backwards home. And that has scientists brimming with anticipation.

"Asteroid 1999 RQ36 is a perfect direct for distribution convey and I can't wait to wager the elating results from both the in situ power activities and the distribution convey analysis," Yeomans said.

You crapper follow SPACE.com Senior Writer Clara Moskowitz on Twitter @ClaraMoskowitz. Managing editor Tariq Malik contributed to this report. Follow SPACE.com for the stylish in expanse power and expedition programme on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook.

• How NASA's Asteroid Sample Return Mission Will Work (Infographic)
• Photos: Asteroids in Deep Space

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