STOCKHOLM, Sweden (AP) - Four grains of moon dust brought to Earth by the first manned lunar mission were stolen from a space exhibit in Sweden, a museum official said Saturday.

The dust was collected by astronauts during the Apollo 11 mission in 1969 and presented to Sweden as a gift by President Nixon a year later.

The Swedish Museum of Natural History in Stockholm displayed the four .04-inch particles in a coin-sized capsule inside a stainless steel cylinder capped with a glass plate, museum spokesman Goeran Adenskog said.

Museum staff noticed Tuesday morning that someone had smashed the glass plate and removed the capsule, Adenskog said.

"We don't think it has any commercial value when the moon dust has been taken out of its context. Without documentation it is very difficult for a layman to determine whether its moon dust or earth dust," Adenskog said.

Police were notified but had dropped the investigation for lack of clues, he said.

Apollo 11 astronauts Neil Armstrong and Edwin "Buzz" Aldrin became the first men to walk on the moon on July 20, 1969.

A solar wind shock wave swept past Earth on 12:30 p.m. EST. The interplanetary magnetic field turned sharply south when the wave arrived, which means a geomagnetic storm is likely. Sky watchers in New Zealand and southern Australia, where it was night when the shock wave struck, have a good chance of seeing Southern Lights. Observers in northern Europe, and perhaps Canada and northern US states might see Northern lights after local nightfall on Saturday.

An international team of researchers studying meteorites measured the decay of uranium 238 into lead and found the material to be 4.57 billion years old. Theory holds that the Sun began to form about 4.6 billion years ago, with Earth and the other planets developing shortly thereafter.

The discovery, reported in the Sept. 6 issue of the journal Science, was made by researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL), the Royal Ontario Museum, the University of Hawaii and Moscow State University. The millimeter-sized deposits, made mostly of calcium and aluminum, formed when dust in the cloud that formed the solar system was heated to very high temperatures, the researchers say. The dust melted and then crystallized.

"By determining the ages of [the deposits] we can better date asteroids and planets and learn more about the early history of the solar system," said Ian Hutcheon of LLNL.

Mini Astronote: Sunday, Sept. 8 marks the 35th Anniversary of the launch of NASA's Surveyor 5 in 1967, one in a series of the first probes to land on the Moon.

NEW YORK (AP) - Why would Lance Bass want to go into space, when he could be home on the range with Ted Nugent?

The 'N Sync singer was rejected this week in his bid to visit the International Space Station because his sponsors were unable to come up with the $20 million fee in time.

But for just $1 million, Nugent has offered to have the boy band member over to his Michigan ranch to teach him bow-hunting skills. The guitarist and outdoorsman said Bass could then join him on a weeklong hunt, "where he'll be taught a greater appreciation for nature and gravity as he hunts, kills, cleans and cooks for himself."

"Bass needs to quit worrying about going into outer space and embrace and celebrate life by learning how to kill his own food," Nugent said Tuesday. "A slab of flesh on the back of a deer is the finest source of protein on the planet."

The 53-year-old rocker said he'd sweeten the deal by "throwing in a few guitar lessons."

Nugent is a National Rifle Association board member whose books include "God, Guns & Rock 'n' Roll" and "Kill it and Grill It: A Guide to Preparing and Cooking Wild Game and Fish." He says he'll kill 100 deer this year, most of which he'll donate to homeless shelters.

Bass' publicist, Jill Fritzo, did not immediately have a response to Nugent's offer Wednesday.

NASA's $484.2 million project to fly the world's largest airborne observatory is one step closer to take off with the arrival of a German-built infrared telescope in Texas on Wednesday .

"We're very excited to be taking delivery of the world's largest airborne telescope, provided by our German partners," said NASA SOFIA project manager Chris Wiltsee of NASA Ames Research Center. "They've done a first-rate job in its development and should be very proud of their accomplishment. We're looking forward to working closely with them to complete this magnificent observatory."

Installation into the Boeing airliner is scheduled to be completed by the spring of 2003, followed by a series of ground tests conducted in Waco through the late fall of 2003. Flight tests are to follow over Texas until spring of 2004.

"This event is a key step on the way to completing a unique and very versatile astronomy facility, which will reveal hidden regions of space and open the door to new vistas of discovery," said SOFIA program manager Cliff Imprescia of NASA Ames.

SOFIA is scheduled to arrive at NASA Ames in May or June of 2004 for its final flight tests and is scheduled to begin full-scale astronomical observations in late 2004. Observations are planned several nights per week from altitudes of about 41,000 feet and higher, above about 99 percent of the infrared-obscuring water vapor in the Earth's atmosphere.

"The whole world is waiting for SOFIA, because this is going to be such a unique observatory and a major advancement over anything we currently have," said Dr. Thomas Greene, NASA SOFIA project scientist at NASA Ames.

SOFIA will be considerably larger and much more sophisticated that its predecessor, the Kuiper Airborne Observatory,
a remodeled C-141 cargo transport aircraft based at NASA Ames from 1971 to 1995 and whose telescope was 36 inches (0.91 meters) in diameter.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Kennedy Space Center workers are preparing some areas of the spaceport for the possibility of heavy rain and gusting winds, but Tropical Storm Eduoard isn't expected to be much of a problem here.

"We're ready for whatever we're going to get," KSC spokesman George Diller said.

At 11 a.m. EDT (1500 GMT) the National Weather Service issued a tropical storm warning for the Florida coast from Titusville north to Brunswick, Ga. The storm was 75 miles northeast of Daytona Beach and moving west at 3 mph, with maximum sustained winds at 40 mph.

The brunt of the storm is expected to pass well to the north of the Cape Canaveral area, although a Tropical Storm Watch remains in effect for the coast from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station south to Sebastian Inlet.

There are no shuttles on the launch pads and a trio of rockets at the air station all are well protected inside their gantries, so officials are confident the storm will turn out to be a non-event for the Space Coast.

As clouds quickly filled the skies here, NASA moved shuttle Atlantis from its hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building this morning in preparation for its planned launch between 2 and 6 p.m. EDT (1800 and 2200 GMT) on Oct. 2.

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. -- Launch managers along Florida's Space Coast are keeping an eye on Tropical Storm Edouard, which formed during the weekend in the Atlantic just east of the Cape.

At 2 p.m EDT (1800 GMT) Tuesday the storm was 155 miles east Jacksonville, Fla., and moving west-southwest at 5 mph. It's maximum sustained winds were at 60 mph and Air Force Reserve aircraft flying into the storm reported a weakening trend that is expected to continue for the next 24 hours. The National Weather Service's current forecast predicts the storm may make landfall between Daytona Beach and Jacksonville on Thursday.

As a result, officials here ordered workers at the Kennedy Space Center and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station to begin thinking about how they would proceed if the lowest level weather alert -- Hurricane Condition Four -- was sounded on Wednesday, said KSC spokesman George Diller.

There are no space shuttles on the launch pad right now, so there is no worry there. A trio of rockets -- an Atlas 2AS, Delta 2 and Delta 4 -- are stacked at their launch complexes for upcoming missions but all are safely protected within their service structures, which are designed to withstand tropical storm force winds.

Meanwhile, preparations to launch shuttle Atlantis on Oct. 2 are moving forward. Workers are getting ready to transfer the orbiter from its processing hangar to the Vehicle Assembly Building this week. A small concern with the shuttle's robot arm might delay the move depending on the solution to the problem, but the launch date remains on target, said KSC spokesman Bruce Buckingham.

With the launch now just one month away, NASA announced today that the launch period for this assembly mission to the International Space Station was from 2 to 6 p.m. EDT (1800 to 2200 GMT) on Oct. 2. Because of post Sept. 11, 2001 security concerns, a precise launch window won't be announced until the day before liftoff.

One theory is that the twists are created near the Sun's surface by a phenomenon called differential rotation, in which the Sun rotates faster at the equator than at the poles.

New research from the British Mullard Space Science Laboratory, however, suggests differential rotation is not strong enough to account for the necessary twists that propel giant globs of plasma out into the solar system. So some as-yet-unknown process deep down is the more likely cause, the researchers say. The study was based on data collected by the SOHO and Yohkoh satellites.

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) -- NASA is helping New York's Consolidated Edison Co. sharpen radar images taken before and after Sept. 11 to look for damaged utility lines buried near the World Trade Center site.

Scientists at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory are applying expertise honed on space missions to sharpen the focus of the ground-penetrating radar images.

The images cover an 8-acre area in lower Manhattan and include several streets surveyed in August 2001 and January 2002. The three-dimensional pictures show what's below the surface to a depth of 6 feet.

Con Edison hopes the images will reduce the amount of digging needed to check on the snarls of electric, telephone, gas and other utility lines.

The technology has been used previously to hunt for buried unexploded ordnance for the Army Corps of Engineers.