Happy landings...

The NEAR Shoemaker probe landed a few minutes ago on asteroid 433 Eros. While the landing, almost 200 million miles from Earth, was severe enough to disrupt the transmission of the last image taken by the probe as it approached the surface, it did not result in the immediate loss of the probe, which was an entirely feasible scenario.


This 30 KB JPG image (sorry) was the last taken by NEAR Shoemaker of asteroid 433 Eros. It was shot from an altitude of about 420 feet and shows a 20-foot wide piece of real estate below the probe. The streaky lines at the bottom indicate loss of signal as the spacecraft touched down on the asteroid.

Way cool!

Cheers...

Virus city...

I have recently noticed a sharp increase (up from zero) in the number of viruses I've been getting as I fetch mail using my Windows-based notebook computer. Is this somehow associated with sweeps month?

Seriously, is it just me, or are viruses becoming as ubiquitous as spam on the Internet?

Cheers...