On the Record

“It is important because if you're driving down the highway and you saw a crash of a small spaceship and a car or a bus full of kids, you really wouldn't know what to do.”

Credit: CECU NEWS SERVICES/REUTERS

Denver citizen Jeff Peckman explains his proposed ballot initiative to create an Extraterrestrial Affairs Commission. The city is obliged to discuss the measure.

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This one's for you

Canadian singer/songwriter Neil Young now has a trapdoor spider named after him: the Myrmekiaphila neilyoungi (pictured). Long may you run … away from it.

Scorecard

Going up: Long-lived data

An engineer has extracted data from a partially melted hard drive that fell to Earth after the Columbia shuttle explosion in 2003.

Going down: Short-lived art

Curators at the New York Museum of Modern Art have had to kill an artwork consisting of a tiny jacket made of living stem cells after it grew too big.

Credit: COURTESY OF GALLIMARD EDITIONS

3 good reasons

… to send astronauts to an asteroid

1. With the right asteroid it's easier than going to the Moon.

2. No one has been to an asteroid before.

3. Everyone loves Le Petit Prince.

A NASA study outlining such a plan is due to be published soon in Acta Astronautica.

Sources: Rocky Mountain News, Art Newspaper, Yahoo News, thestar.com