Albuquerque, a hot spot for the solar manufacturing industry and home to the Sandia National Laboratories, managed by Lockheed Martin, could see annual economic growth of nearly 4% during the same period.

FORBES: Magazine Article

This summer, two of them merged to form a single oval, larger than the earth, making the second-biggest storm in the solar system after the Great Red Spot.

ECONOMIST: Comparative meteorology

In the past two years, solar energy has become an especially hot spot in the clean energy sector.

FORBES: Could The Credit Crunch Kill Green Energy?

States are turning to more market based incentives as opposed to rebates, such as the Solar Renewable Energy Credits (SRECs), a cap and trade like credit granted to firms or individuals who have installed solar capacity, which can be sold on spot markets.

FORBES: Solar Industry Rising: Can Energy's Fastest-Growing Sector Keep It Going?

The 1.8m (60-inch) diameter telescope on Haleakala will also spot many small, faint bodies in the outer Solar System that hid from previous surveys.

BBC: Pan-Starrs telescope begins operations to hunt asteroids

Without such a solar explosion, NEAR-Shoemaker would likely have had to pass several times over the same spot to record as much data.

CNN: Asteroid Eros resembles 'building blocks' of Earth