Okay, this is just a little freaky. Re: Space camera and asteroid:

[The Backlash Cometh]

Spacecraft flies by remote asteroid, camera stops
September 06, 2008 8:51 AM EDT

DARMSTADT, Germany - The European deep space probe Rosetta successfully completed a flyby of an asteroid millions of miles from earth, but its high resolution camera stopped shortly before the closest pass, space officials said Saturday.

Rosetta caught up with the Steins asteroid, also known as Asteroid 2867, just after 8:45 p.m. (1845 GMT) Friday in the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The probe came within 500 miles (805 kilometers) of the asteroid - which turned out to be slightly larger than scientists expected.

Officials at the European Space Agency were not sure exactly what caused the camera to balk.

"The software switched off automatically," Gerhard Schwehm, the ESA mission manager and head of solar systems science operations told The Associated Press. "The camera has some software limits and we'll analyze why this happened later."

Another wide angle camera was able to take pictures and send them to the space center, Schwehm said.

At a news conference, Uwe Keller, the principal camera investigator, said despite the camera turning off about nine minutes before its closest approach, it switched back on again later and was now working well. Keller said he did not expect the camera setback to affect the rest of the mission.

http://enews.earthlink.net/article/top?guid=20080906/48c20040_3ca6_1552620080906-780113164

[glowing]

1. Huh, wonder what they're hiding in that 9mins of tape that won't ever be shon

for another 50- 100yrs.

[RC]

2. Maybe the buddies of those space in Area 51 are coming back to retrieve their own.

[alfredo]

10. Iraq's WMD's and bush arrest record.

[Canuckistanian]

3. Wouldn't be surprised if it was a strong electromagnetic field

Maybe the asteroid was composed of highly magnetized iron.

And as it was cutting through the magnetic field, electrical current was generated in the circuits.

[The Backlash Cometh]

4. The things we don't know.

[cobalt1999]

5. That's the simplest and logical conclusion

Conspiracy nuts never accept a simple conclusion when a wildly insane conspiracy is available. So, they'll be a bunch of wacko posts about that "missing 9 minutes" throughout the internet soon.

[fla nocount]

8. What's a conspiracy nut, does it grow on a shrub, a tree? n/t

[cobalt1999]

9. An impossibly hard nut that grows well when planted in the fertile soil of ignorance and fear.

Liberal doses of science can kill it.

[fla nocount]

12. Empirical science, inductive, deductive...

reasoning? How is the poor misguided and ignorant nut to achieve enlightenment? What sources are out there, government studies, LARED, Popular Mechanics?

I think that I might know the type you mean and fear that my brother might be one of them. You see, he has a casual knowledge of the physical sciences and a lifetime of experience in the observance of reactions in this 3d universe...very much relies on his five senses and gut reactions in forming his opinions on just about everything. He's been overheard making comments like. "this just doesn't seem right", or "make sense" regarding issues that us enlightened types have put to rest.

Believe me, he's no rocket scientist, yet he torments himself by not listening to the rocket scientists' informed, concrete and illumined opinions and accepting them at face value.

In fact, he's such a Luddite that after 44 years he still won't accept that Oswald was just a really good shot in spite of the learned opinion of the Warren Commission which was composed of the most "fair and balanced" assembly of non-partisan experts ever assembled.

Still, he's my brother and I love him so I hesitate to call him a nut, just ignorant and deluded.

[fla nocount]

13. This thing needs a bump I think... just for shits and giggles n/t

[DavidDvorkin]

6. Or it was a software bug

That the simulations didn't catch.

[Jamastiene]

7. That was my first thought too. n/t

[alfredo]

11. photos

http://www.sciencenews.org/view/download/id/36250/name/DIAMOND_IN_THE_SKY