On Friday, Phobos-Grunt was moving around the Earth at an altitude that varied between 177km (perigee) and 224km (apogee).

BBC: Video tracks stricken Mars probe

Dragon's rendezvous systems had never been tested before in the harsh conditions of space, with the station and the capsule racing around the Earth in tandem at about 17, 000 miles an hour.

WSJ: SpaceX Craft Rehearses Moves

This afternoon, NASA estimated that the CMEs will collide with Earth at around 1:25 AM EST on the morning of March 8.

FORBES: NASA Reports That Solar Flares Could Disrupt Power, Communications

This was actually launched in 1998, but it followed a complicated fuel-saving orbit that sent it around the sun and back to Earth, to be slung towards Mars at the same time as the other missions took off.

ECONOMIST: The current crop of Mars missions has got off to a bad start

The other way of doing things is for the company to retrieve smaller asteroids, put them into orbit around Earth or the moon, and then dissect them at its leisure.

ECONOMIST: Mining asteroids: Going platinum | The

"That's why we're coming together on the Mall and standing in solidarity with millions of people at thousands of Earth Day events around the world, " Rogers said in a statement on the Earth Day web site.

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Wellington Mayor Celia Wade-Brown revealed that the city will be officially renamed "The Middle of Middle Earth" for three weeks around the premiere, to reflect its position at the heart of New Zealand's film industry, which now employs more than 3, 000 people.

BBC: Hobbit premiere to take place in 'Middle Earth'

In their paper, the co-authors argue that gravitational tidal heating caused by the gravitational friction of an earth-like exo-moon on an eccentric orbit around a Jupiter-like planet lying at a Jupiter-like distance from its parent star, could, in fact, create habitable conditions.

FORBES: Earth-Like Exo-Moons Can Lurk Well Beyond Planetary Habitable Zones, Say Astronomers