NASA Is Smarter Than Dinosaurs

NASA says the community can show humans are "smarter than the dinosaurs" by serving them situating asteroids that have the possible to end the person pursuit.
The dinosaurs were extremely killed off by an asteroid bang about 66 million years ago, and humans could one day appearance a comparable danger.
"NASA previously is functioning to discover asteroids that capacity is a menace to our planet, and while we have established 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we want to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," says deputy administrator Lori Garver.
"This grand challenge is paying attention on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with possible coercion. We will also connect public rendezvous, open modernism and citizen science to help solve this global problem."
The mission has backing from the White House, which says the hunt for killer asteroids requires an "all-hands-on-deck effort".
"The efforts of private-sector partners and our citizen scientists will augment the work NASA already is doing to improve near-Earth object detection capabilities," says Tom Kalil, deputy director for technology and innovation at the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy
NASA estimates it has only found a quarter of near-Earth asteroids larger than 100m in diameter. Those larger than about 140m could destroy an entire city, if they hit at the right angle and speed. An asteroid that exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk earlier this year, injuring hundreds, was only about 15m across.
"This is really a call to action to find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them;" says Ms Garver, adding that a successful deflection would prove "we're smarter than the dinosaurs".
NASA is also looking for ideas and in sequence on how it can achieve its other asteroid-related goal capturing one and bringing it into orbit around the moon.

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NASA finds footsteps of dinosaurs

It's now home to space scientists, but a NASA complex in Maryland was once the stomping grounds of a prehistoric dinosaur. Amateur dinosaur hunter Ray Stanford announced last week that he had discovered a rare cretaceous footprint from a nodosaur at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, likely left more than 110 million years ago.
"This is really quite a rare find," Stanford said in a video posted to NASA's website this week. "Nodosaur tracks are not often found," he added. "There are some out west and up in British Columbia and Canada, but we don't have a whole lot of them in the U.S."
Stanford told the Washington Post that the plant-eating dinosaur made the nearly 14-inch-wide imprint with his back left foot. He believes the dinosaur was running - potentially away from a predator - when it left the print. NASA scientists, excited by the discovery, have accepted Stanford's research, and will reportedly bring in more expert opinions to fully confirm the finding.
So far, the professionals seem sold. "Ray showed it to me, and I was overwhelmed," Johns Hopkins dinosaur expert and "Jurassic Park" consultant David Weishampel told the Post. "As a scientist, I'm skeptical of things like this. But it has all the detail you want. It's got foot prints and sort of a heel print that's starting to erode away."

Stanford showed off his discovery to NASA officials and local media on Friday, dusting off the print with a paintbrush to show off the detail. NASA's federal preservation officer suggested once they are able to preserve it properly, the footprint could be put on display for visitors - though that is a ways off.
"It's not something I want to make a tourist attraction at this point," she said. "We don't want people barreling down there with shovels," she added, though "ultimately, we want people to be able to see it, because it's very exciting."
In his announcement to reporters, Stanford urged more efforts toward conservation, arguing that finds like this could be under our noses all the time. "What really threw me about this one was because I found it at Goddard Space Flight Center and I love the paradox," he said.
"Space scientists walk along here, and they're walking exactly where this big bungling heavy armored dinosaur walked maybe 110 to 112 million years ago."

For more information related to dinosaurs, visit rareresource.com.