Astrosphere for January 18, 2007

Your space photo of the day is the recent Earth-grazing asteroid 2008 AF3, captured by RickJ. It looks like a bunch of star streaks, but if you look carefully, there’s a dot right in the middle. That’s the asteroid that missed us by 370,000 km (230,000 miles).

Are you planning to sign up for Virgin Galactic and take their stomach-churning suborbital trip? Here’s an interview on Luxury Magazine with the Head of Astronaut Sales. Tip of the helmet to Space Pragmatism for the link.

Remember yesterday’s Bad Astronomy post about not finding ET? Here’s some more non-news.

This has nothing to do with astronomy. But a rat as big as a bull? That’s just cool.

Google CEO Eric Schmidt recently gave a speech at NASA, encouraging the agency to be more open and collaborative with the public. Advice I’ve been trying to give them for years.

A charity auction is removing a trip to space as a price – too dangerous.