Asteroids

A Mission To Find 10 Million Near Earth Asteroids Every Year

So far, scientists have found around 34,000 near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) that could serve as humanity's stepping stone to the stars.…

5 months ago

A Weather Satellite Watched a Space Rock Burn Up Above Spain and Portugal

It's been a momentous May for skywatchers around the world. First the big auroral event of May 10-11, next a…

5 months ago

Finding The Age Of A Contact Binary “Moon”

There are millions of asteroids floating around the solar system. With so many of them, it should be no surprise…

6 months ago

The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed

Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects…

7 months ago

If We Want to Visit More Asteroids, We Need to Let the Spacecraft Think for Themselves

Missions to asteroids have been on a tear recently. Visits by Rosetta, Osirix-REX, and Hayabusa2 have all visited small bodies…

7 months ago

DART Changed the Shape of Asteroid Dimorphos, not Just its Orbit

On September 26th, 2022, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) collided with the asteroid Dimorphos, a moonlet that orbits the…

7 months ago

An Asteroid Found Sharing the Orbit of Mars

Astronomers discovered another asteroid sharing Mars' orbit. These types of asteroids are called trojans, and they orbit in two clumps,…

8 months ago

Citizen Scientists Find Fifteen “Active Asteroids”

Nature often defies our simple explanations. Take comets and asteroids, for example. Comets are icy and have tails; asteroids are…

8 months ago

DART Made a Surprisingly Big Impact on Dimorphos

NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission was hailed a success when it collided with its target asteroid Dimorphos last…

8 months ago

A New Space Telescope will Map the Universe and Help Protect the Earth from Asteroids

Can we secure our place in the Solar System? Not in any absolute sense because nature can be very unpredictable.…

9 months ago