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In a few months, the orbit of a star deep in the core of the Milky Way will cause it to pass within 18.4 billion kilometers (11.4 billion miles) of the supermassive black hole at the center of the galaxy, Sagittarius A*. This event is of particular interest to physicists, as the plummeting star, S0-2, will speed up to 3 percent of the speed of light as it slingshots around its supermassive parent–a prime opportunity to test Einstein’s Theory of General Relativity.
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A newly-discovered asteroid, designated 2018 DU, made a close pass to the Earth over the weekend, coming within 280,000 kilometers (174,000 miles) of the planet on February 25. The ten-meter (33-foot) rock is the 17th known asteroid to have passed within the Moon’s orbit this year.

2018 DU wasn’t spotted until February 23, two days before its close approach, due to its small size–less than half of the size of the meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013. It was first spotted by the Virtual Telescope Project (VTP), through the Rome-based organization’s Tenagra III telescope in Arizona. Although VTP made the 10-meter size estimate, the International Astronomical Union’s Minor Planet Center says that 2018 DU could be as small as 4 meters (13 feet).
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Launched in 2000, NASA’s IMAGE (Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration) satellite was tasked with studying how Earth’s magnetosphere was affected by the solar wind, imaging plasma streams in the planet’s atmosphere from an orbit that took it 28,000 miles (45,000 kilometers) above the North Pole. NASA considered IMAGE’s initial two-year mission a success, and had approved it for a mission extension that would last until 2010, but in December 2005, the spacecraft went silent, and the space agency declared the satellite lost.
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On January 28, 1986, the space shuttle Challenger launched with America’s first civilian to be sent into space, Christa McAuliffe. McAuliffe was chosen from a list of over 11,000 applicants for NASA’s Teacher in Space Project, aimed at sending civilian educators into orbit to later relate their experience as astronauts to their terrestrial students. Tragically, Challenger was destroyed 73 seconds into her ascent, killing all seven crewmembers, including McAuliffe.
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