Asteroids
Two Spacecraft Could Work Together to Capture an Asteroid and Bring it Close to Earth for Mining
Humanity seems destined to expand into the Solar System. What exactly that looks like, and how difficult and tumultuous the…
JWST Also Looked Inside the Solar System, at Jupiter and its Moons
After the ‘big reveal’ earlier this week of the James Webb Space Telescope’s first full color images and spectra of…
The Most Threatening Asteroid Just got Downgraded to “Harmless”. No Impact in 2052
It's comforting to know that there are people who are literally paid to watch the night sky to ensure that…
Could We Use Mars as a Base for Asteroid Mining?
The earliest mention of asteroid mining might be in a story from 1898 titled "Edison's Conquest of Mars," by Garrett…
Samples of Asteroid Ryugu Contain More Than 20 Amino Acids
The samples obtained by Hayabusa2 have revealed that the Near Earth Asteroid Ryugu contains 20 strains of amino acids -…
This is What the Metal Asteroid Psyche Might Look Like
If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt…
Astronomers Just Practiced What Would Happen if a Potentially Dangerous Asteroid was Detected
In and around our planet, there are thousands of comets and asteroids known as Near-Earth Objects (NEOs). Multiple space agencies…
Ceres Probably Formed Farther out in the Solar System and Migrated Inward
When Sicilian astronomer Giuseppe Piazzi spotted Ceres in 1801, he thought it was a planet. Astronomers didn't know about asteroids…
Scouring Through old Hubble Images Turned up 1,000 new Asteroids
Researchers have found over 1,700 asteroid trails in archived Hubble data from the last 20 years. While many of the…
Eight Missions are Getting Extensions, Most Exciting: OSIRIS-REx is Going to Asteroid Apophis
NASA has granted mission extensions to eight different planetary missions, citing the continued excellent operations of the spacecraft, but more…