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A massive mile-long double asteroid linked to a one-inch meteor that streaked a fireball over Japan three years ago could threaten humanity in millions of years if it eventually breaks up, scientists wrote in a report published Monday.

“The potential breakup of the rock could be dangerous to life on Earth,” Toshihiro Kasuga, a visiting scientist at the National Astronomical Observatory of Japan and Kyoto Sangyo University, said in a release Wednesday, according to CNET. “Those resulting asteroids could hit the Earth in the next 10 million years or so.”

The findings were first reported in The Astronomical Journal Monday.

Rare mounds of a crystalline mineral have emerged above the surface of Utah’s Great Salt Lake, where they’re expected to remain just a few months before disappearing again.

Scientists think these mounds may be similar to mineral structures on Mars that could preserve traces of microbes that may have lived in the planet’s saltwater lakes billions of years ago.

Location: Manhattan, KS

NBAF - National Agor-Defense Facility

The National Bio and Agro-Defense Facility (NBAF) will be a state-of-the-art biocontainment laboratory for the study of diseases that threaten both America’s animal agricultural industry and public health. DHS S&T is building the facility to standards that fulfill the mission needs of the U.S. Department of Agriculture (USDA) which will own, manage and operate (PDF, 16 pgs., 165 KB) the NBAF once construction and commissioning activities are complete. The NBAF will strengthen our nation’s ability to conduct research, develop vaccines, diagnose emerging diseases, and train veterinarians. DHS S&T will leverage the facility as a national asset to fulfill homeland security mission needs.

The United States currently does not have a laboratory facility with maximum biocontainment (BSL-4) space to study high-consequence zoonotic diseases affecting large livestock. The NBAF will be the first laboratory facility in the U.S. to provide BSL-4 laboratories capable of housing cattle and other large livestock. The NBAF will also feature a vaccine development module. For more information about the facility and intended use of its state-of-the-art features, please visit the USDA NBAF Program website.

Two NASA astronauts are taking a spacewalk outside the International Space Station today (Jan. 15), and you can watch all the action live online.

For the first spacewalk of the year, NASA astronauts Christina Koch and Jessica Meir will spend about 6.5 hours working in the vacuum of space to continue replacing old nickel-hydrogen batteries on the station’s solar arrays with new lithium-ion batteries. The spacewalking duo began working to replace these batteries during a spacewalk together on Oct. 18, and that was the first all-woman spacewalk in history.

Space launch startup Orbex has secured a customer for its forthcoming Prime space launch vehicle: TriSept, a provider of launch integration services for both commercial and government customers. TriSept has booked the full capacity of a rideshare mission aboard an Orbex Prime rocket to take off sometime in 2022, which should work schedule-wise, provided Orbex meets its target of flying its initial missions starting next year.

Orbex is leaning on 3D printing to expedite its launch vehicle production process, while also keeping costs low. The U.K.-based company is also in the process of working on final approvals and construction of a new spaceport in Sutherland, located in the Scottish highlands, which, when complete, will be the first mainland space launch facility in Europe.

TriSept, which provides launch management and brokerage services in addition to integration for payloads loaded into the launch vehicle, has been operating in the U.S. space market for years now, and it’ll also be setting up a full-time presence in the U.K. ahead of the Sutherland spaceport’s opening later this year, at Harwell Space Campus in Oxford.