Asteroids
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…
Asteroid Ryugu Might Actually Be a Dead Comet
In 2014, the Japanese Space Agency JAXA launched the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to visit asteroid Ryugu. It arrived at the…
The Building Blocks of Earth Could Have Come From Farther out in the Solar System
Earth formed over 4.5 billion years ago via accretion. Earth's building blocks were chunks of rock of varying sizes. From…
A Tiny Asteroid was Discovered Mere Hours Before it Crashed Into the Earth
Last week, a small asteroid was detected just two hours before it impacted Earth’s atmosphere. Luckily, it was only about…
Thanks to Observations, a Potentially Dangerous Asteroid was Found to be Harmless
Earlier this year, the discovery of a potentially hazardous asteroid took astronomers on a roller coaster ride. On January 6,…
Last-Minute Defense Against an Asteroid That Could Obliterate it Before Impact
Gazing at the night sky can evoke a sense of wonder regarding humanity's place in the Universe. But that's not…