The annual Perseid meteor shower would be occurring tonight. Around this time each year, the Earth would be passing through the intergalactic orbit of a comet named Swift Tuttle. The meteor shower occurs between the last week of July and the first week of August.
According to NASA Meteoroid Environment Office's Bill Cooke, during an interview with ABC News, "It's not one of those things where you can go out for 30 minutes after sunset." He advised that there is no need for binoculars and in a perfect setting one can see more than 60 shooting stars per hour.
In a report by AccuWeather, the good conditions for viewing the meteor shower is near the mid-Atlantic region, especially in the areas of Philadelphia and Washington DC.
The US Space Program, between 1958 and 2011 has budgeted a total amount of US$526.18 billion. This translates to about US$9.928 billion each year. According to the Federal Aviation Administration's report in 2002, the aerospace industry is attributed with about US$95 billion worth of economic activity in the United States. A large portion comes from the US$23.5 billion salaries to the 576,000 employees in the industry.
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