Speaking of deep space, Mitt Romney, Rick Perry and the GOP Gang of Nine debate again

There being "only" somewhere around 100 days left before the Iowa caucuses, nine Republican candidates had another debate anyway Thursday.

It seemed like the 10th debate in a week. But it was only the second.

Thaddeus McCotter, who was never in a debate, wasn't in again, as during the afternoon he quit the race that he was never really in.

The nine candidates all talked a lot. Not as much as the president. But a lot.

Sometimes two candidates talked at the same time. Like hockey refs, the moderators let them go at it.

Mitt Romney and Rick Perry discussed their books. Perry is still opposed to cancer, always will be. Michele Bachmann mentioned she's raised five biological and 23 foster children. Herman Cain, who beat cancer, was on 9-9-9 again. Gary Johnson told a dog joke he stole from Rush Limbaugh. But people laughed anyway.

Jon Huntsman has lived abroad four times but he came home each time, wiser. Newt Gingrich's huge head contains many big ideas, but he still overeats. Rick Santorum is from Pennsylvania. Ron Paul looks at least 76.

Megyn Kelly should be in every Fox News debate. Or was it Katherine Heigl?

Our running debate account is right here.

The full debate transcript is right here.

In interesting news, NASA has released new photos of fully five of Saturn's moons (see above) in one frame. The photo was taken by the Cassini spacecraft on July 29. It just arrived in the mail.

The moon on the right is Rhea. It's about 684,000 miles away, about the same distance as the 2012 election.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: NASA /JPL-Caltech /Space Science Institute.

Be aware, a 6.25-ton dead satellite could be falling in your vicinity any day

There is hardly any reason at all for anyone to worry.

However, you should be generally aware there is a 12,500-pound dead research satellite flying around the world these days, lower with each orbit.

And sometime in the next few days or maybe two weeks -- no one call tell really -- this thing the size of a school bus will hurtle into the incinerating influence of the Earth's atmosphere going thousands of miles an hour and fly apart into hundreds maybe thousands of flaming pieces.

It could be quite a fiery show, even in daytime.

Scientists estimate that much of the supersonic debris will burn up during its fall to the Earth's surface.

Which is another way of saying that not all of the plummeting metal will burn up on reentry.

Although officials say they have no way of knowing where remnants of the Upper Atmosphere Research Sateliite will land, they are predicting that 26 larger pieces of the satellite totaling 1,170 pounds, will reach the Earth's surface.

But not to worry, the largest only weighs as much as an average football lineman. Kerplumpf!

Since the dawn of the space age there have been no confirmed reports of injury from falling space debris.

With the knowledge that no one else is counting, NASA officials say there is precisely a one-in-3,200 chance of anyone being struck by said unguided missiles. Which sounds pretty remote until someone notes that's much better odds than winning the lottery.

Falling space debris is actually fairly common, about one piece a day. From Vandenberg Air Force Base, the Joint Space Operations Center tracks about 22,000 manmade objects in orbit larger than four inches (there's another half-million objects between 4 inches and .4 inches).

Don't ask how they track this stuff; they'd have to kill you. But only 1,000 of those objects are working, they say; the rest is junk, like the dead satellite.

It was placed in orbit in 1991 by space shuttle Discovery to study the ozone and upper atmosphere. Superseded by more sophisticated satellites, UARS was turned off six years ago and its propellants fired to lower its path for an eventual funeral orbit.

NASA will post more frequent updates online here as reentry hour nears. While the debris footprint is likely to be 500 miles long, where that footprint will be is unpredictable. If you come upon any debris and are still alive, NASA advises not to touch it. Instead, notify law enforcement authorities.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: NASA (the Upper Atmosphere Research Satellite just before release from the space shuttle arm of Discovery in 1991).

Ticket pic of the week: How we appear to incoming aliens

Here's what our corner of the universe looks like to any incoming aliens -- the Earth and. in the background, its only moon.

It's a unique photograph because no one has ever been in a position to take it. Actually, it's an old photograph newly released by NASA.

This photo was snapped by an outbound Voyager I back on Sept. 18, 1977.

NASA scientists ordered the craft to turn around and take it 34 years ago tomorrow, a last look at where the pioneering craft began its literally endless journey to the outer reaches of our solar system, which continues today. Both Voyager 1 and II are still in radio communication with NASA/JPL several times a week.

When today's pic of the week was taken, Voyager I was 7,250,000 miles from Earth.

Today, it is right around 11,000,000,000 miles from Earth, a distance that's grown by 1,000 miles while you read this. Track the Voyagers yourself right here.

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No, that's a little far, back up a few feet

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: NASA / Voyager I.

NASA still trying to sell that story about U.S. astronauts walking on the moon

NASA is apparently still trying to sell the story line that all those 1969-1970s grainy photos of Americans appearing to walk on the moon were genuine and not faked on a sandy sound stage in Burbank.

The space agency has just released a whole new batch of photos it claims were recently taken by a science satellite low-orbiting the moon. And, get this, NASA says these new grainy photos actually show the footprints and tire marks of long ago American visits by crews of Apollo 11, 14 and 17.

Finally, "proof."

NASA, for instance, says the photo above is not a CGI frame of the Death Star, a figment of some wine-soaked imagination north of San Francisco. It says the photo was taken Nov. 24, 1969, by an inbound Apollo space crew.

Flight controllers altered the orbit of the Lunar Reconnaisance Orbiter, which has been studying the moon's complete surface, so that its closest point to the surface was 13 miles instead of....

Gov. Chris Christie's blunt Labor Day advice

This time last week, New Jersey's Gov. Chris Christie had closed down the Atlantic City casinos over the threat of Hurricane Irene.

The last week he's been out touring the storm's damage and flooding around the Garden State.

And Saturday, oh look, the governor has gone to the beach. But not for the normal reasons.

Here just below is his video with some blunt orders for New Jerseyans -- and anyone else with a holiday weekend to celebrate.

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Remember Irene? Here comes Katia

What Hurricane Irene looks like from on top

How a hurricane becomes a political opportunity

-- Andrew Malcolm

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Remember Hurricane Irene? Well, here comes Katia

Somehow we missed Harvey and Jose. But everyone remembers Hurricane Irene last weekend.

Now, standby, here comes Katia.

Currently the tropical storm, which astronauts aboard the International Space Station caught on camera above, is gaining steam waddling its way across the Caribbean toward the southeastern United States.

So far, it's only packing winds just above 70 miles an hour, which will get your attention in a sailboat but isn't even enough to knock over a local weatherman doing a live-shot on a deserted downtown street corner.

No one's predicting this far out, of course. But draw a line ahead of the storm and up the Eastern U.S. coast.

And it's Hello, Carolinas and Virginia again.

Drawing a political line ahead of the storm after the holiday weekend and we have Jobs Plan City on tap. Gov. Jon Huntsman did his jobs plan last night. And we published it right here.

Mitt Romney will soon be releasing his job ideas, even though he famously admitted that he himself is unemployed at the moment.

And then comes the next new and improved Jobs Plan ("As Advertised on TV") from Hawaii's favorite son, the Big Kahuna in the White House.

After announcing that he intended to share his autumn jobs rhetoric with a joint session of Congress next Wednesday night without checking in with the speaker of the House of Representatives, the Real Good Talker agreed to Thursday night.

In the interests of bicameralship the unity president then dispatched an email to millions of supporters bashing and threatening both of the hosting houses.

"It's been a long time since Congress was focused on what the American people need them to be focused on," said the post-partisan president.

A Thursday night congressional speech, TV-ratings-wise, puts Obama right before kickoff kickoff of the New Orleans Saints vs Green Bay Packers, instead of against Wednesday's Reagan Library Republican debate. That's the much-anticipated first political singalong with new GOP front-runner Texas Gov. Rick Perry at a podium.

Of course, nobody wants any storm damage anywhere.

But the prospect of Barack "Photo Ops Are Good for My Health" Obama being forced to choose between suggesting billions more spending on infrastructure to a divided Congress on national TV after agreeing to cut spending, or attempting an encore of his "I'm the One Who's Supposed to Look in Charge Here" hurricane briefing by all those FEMA TV screens is most intriguing from a political stagecraft POV.

Speaking of hot air, the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration has upped its 2011 storm estimates, especially for the August through October timeframe. A normal year would see 11 named storms, six hurricanes and two biggies with winds greater than Capitol Hill, in excess of 111 miles an hour.

NOAA is now predicting up to 19 named storms, up to 10 hurricanes greater than 74 m.p.h and up to five venti systems above 111.

And BTW, for baby-naming purposes, we are safely past Gert. The next names on the 2011 storm list are Lee and Maria, unless you maybe can hold it past Ophelia for Tammy or Whitney.

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 -- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: NASA / International Space Station; NOAA (Katia tracking map): Paul J. Richards / AFP / Getty Images (Obama at FEMA headquarters, Aug. 27).

NASA ponders space station evacuation

Will the International Space Station actually be abandoned this fall after $100 billion and 10 years?

That's one of the questions being pondered by NASA and Russian space experts following last week's failure of an unmanned Russian cargo rocket. The U.S. fleet of space shuttles is retired and the Obama administration has no American alternative coming online for years.

So, dubious Russian rockets are the only means of replacing the crew.

A computer detected an anomaly in the Russian rocket's third stage Wednesday and shut down the engine prematurely after barely five minutes of flight, dooming the orbital attempt. The vehicle and nearly three tons of supplies were incinerated in reentry and the crash in Kazakhstan.

With the U.S. space shuttles decommissioned, Russian rockets remain the only means to reach the space station orbiting at about 220 miles altitude with fresh crew members.

Officials said the six-man crew on the station now is not endangered, having sufficient supplies from the last shuttle delivery of Atlantis in July to make it to the next supply mission with a European rocket in early 2012.

Two Soyuz spacecraft are docked at the station, enabling the international crew to return to Earth as their permissible limits in the weightlessness of space are reached.

However, arrival of new crew members is delayed indefinitely pending a Russian commission's investigation and resolution of last week's engine failure.

The fall's entire space schedule is now under review. And if new launches are delayed past mid-November, the huge orbiting complex could be abandoned for an indeterminate time.

Launch of new crew members in late September is almost certainly delayed as, likely, is the early September scheduled return of some orbiting crew members. If remaining crew reach their maximum stay limits before the rocket mystery is solved and new missions launched, the station could be evacuated, at least temporarily.

The space station, orbiting Earth every 90 minutes at about 17,000 mph, can be operated and maintained remotely by ground controllers. But hands-on scientific experiments would be halted.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: The International Space Station and Earth as seen from the last Atlantis flight, July 19. Credit: NASA. Rossiya 24 TV via Associated Press (Doomed Soyuz Progress supply ship launches Aug. 24 from Kazakhstan. The third-stage failed five minutes later).

Awkward! Failed Russian rocket is the replacement for retired U.S. space shuttles

A Russian rocket, hefting 6,000 pounds of supplies to the International Space Station from the Baikonur Cosmodrome in Kazakhstan, failed Wednesday, plunging the massive craft into a fiery atmospheric reentry and causing an immense explosion in a remote area of that republic.

The good news: The Soyuz craft was an unmanned space freighter and the mysterious failure was the first of its kind.

The other bad news, however, is the model is virtually identical to the third-stage rocket used to lift crew members up to the space station.

With the Obama administration's retirement last month of the final U.S. space shuttle, the only way American astronauts can reach space now is by buying seats aboard these Russian rockets, at $65 million per ride.

Thousands of Kennedy Space Center workers have already been laid off in Florida and the shuttles are being cleansed of toxic chemicals in preparation for museum display.

NASA officials said the space station's current six-member crew, including American Ron Garan and Mike Fossum, are in no immediate danger and have supplies sufficient to last them until a European cargo delivery scheduled for spring 2012.

This thanks to 9,000 pounds of supplies delivered last month by Atlantis in the shuttle program's final flight to the space station, orbiting about 220 miles altitude.

However, the rocket failure investigation by a Russian commission could take awhile, delaying any crew and supply flights indefinitely.

Four other Russian flights, two of them manned, were scheduled for 2011.

And two Russians and Garan were set to return to Earth on Sept. 8. That change will likely be delayed to keep the ISS fully staffed.

For unexplained reasons, a computer sensing some problem shut down the rocket's third-stage engine less than six minutes after launch before orbital entry Wednesday morning local time.

With insufficient speed, the craft fell back into the atmosphere, burned and crashed in a remote area near China, reportedly with an immense blast. Another third-stage Russian rocket failure last week caused an expensive communications satellite to go into an improper orbit and those model rockets to be grounded, pending an investigation.

Joe Biden was nowhere near either incident.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photos: Paolo Nespoli / ESA via NASA (U.S. space shuttle Endeavour docked at the International Space Station for the last time, May 23); Rossiya 24 TV via Associated Press (Soyuz Progress supply ship launches Aug. 24 from Kazakhstan, but the third-stage failed minutes later).

Here comes Hurricane Irene: How it looks from above

This is what a Category I hurricane looks like as it builds its winds a few days out from the American Eastern seaboard.

It's Hurricane Irene, a churning storm as wide as the distance from Pittsburgh to Chicago with winds building now to above 110 mph, making it a Category 3 storm.

Residents along the U.S. coast are preparing. It's predicted to hit the Carolinas on Saturday and move northward over the weekend, possibly ruining the Sunday dedication of the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. monument on Washington's Mall.

NASA astronaut Ron Garan aboard the International Space Station had a good view from space 220 miles above the meteorological turmoil. And here it is.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: Ron Garan / NASA.

Ticket pic of the week: Mars rover reaches crater modeled on Nevada

Nevada on a dusty day?

No.

It's Mars just the other day as captured by NASA's surviving Mars Rover Opportunity.

You may remember Opportunity was one of twin rovers successfully landed inside ingeniously inflated bouncing balls on Mars back in 2004. They were built to endure three months of extreme temperature changes and exploring on rough terrain.

The Spirit rover was shut down just in June, seven years later. And Opportunity wanders on. It has just spent three years covering about 13 miles from the Victoria crater to the 24-mile wide Endeavour crater, above, a couple of hundred feet every solar-powered day. In Earth time that's about the same elapsed period as traveling on any L.A. freeway on Thanksgiving Friday.

Opportunity will explore Endeavour's various rock formations for as long as it can. Not a bad Made in America warranty.

Speaking of Thanksgiving, just after that holiday this year the next Mars rover, the California-constructed Curiosity, will launch from Cape Canaveral for a 255-day journey to join its mechanical siblings on the Mars surface. On its 354-million-mile trip, Curiosity will be moving along at 58,000 mph.

Or 16 miles per second. Another stat unfamiliar to freeway drivers anywhere.

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-- Andrew Malcolm

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Photo: NASA /J PL-Caltech / Cornell / ASU (Mars Rover Opportunity's view of the Endeavour crater)