Asteroids Archives

November 2, 2022November 2, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

When an Asteroid Gets Close to Earth, we get a Rare Opportunity to Learn What it’s Made of

Gravity calculations can provide plenty of insight into a variety of phenomena. Everything from Einstein rings to the rocket equation is at least partially dependent on gravity. Now an undergraduate student and professor team from MIT think they have a new use for gravity calculations – understanding the interior density of asteroids.

October 25, 2022October 27, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

Lucy Took This Picture of Earth as it was Making its Gravity Assist Maneuver

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured this image of the Earth on Oct 15, 2022 during the spacecraft's flyby of our planet for a gravitational assist on its way to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. Credits: NASA/Goddard/SwRI

We may take it for granted, but every day we receive picture postcards from the robotic travelers we have sent out to explore our Solar System. Usually, we get to see faraway planets, moons, asteroids, or comets. But sometimes we get to see ourselves.

The Lucy spacecraft took a couple of amazing images of our home planet as the spacecraft was approaching Earth for the first of three slingshot gravity assists on its way out to explore the Trojan asteroids along Jupiter’s orbit.

October 19, 2022October 19, 2022 by Matt Williams

The Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Also Flooded the World's Coastlines With a Catastrophic Tsunami

Earth and possibly its Moon were hit by impactors that killed off the dinosaurs — Artistic rendition of the Chicxulub impactor striking ancient Earth, with Pterosaur observing. Could pieces of the same impact swarm have hit the Moon, too? Credit: NASA

For decades, scientists have theorized that a massive impact caused the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event. This event occurred about 66 million years ago and caused the mass extinction of about 75% of all plant and animal species on Earth (including the non-avian dinosaurs). With the discovery of the massive Chicxulub crater in the Yucatan Peninsula (southern Mexico) in the 1970s, scientists concluded that they’d found the impact responsible. Based on all the available data, the Chicxulub Impact event is believed to have been as powerful as 100,000 billion metric tons (110,231 U.S tons) of TNT.

This blast was more powerful than all the nuclear devices in the world combined and sent an estimated 25 trillion metric tons (~27.5 US tons) of hot dust, ash, and steam into the atmosphere, creating a global winter. But according to new research led by the University of Michigan, an international team of geologists has determined that the impact also created a global tsunami. According to their findings, this tsunami was 30,000 times more powerful than the 2004 Indian Ocean tsunami, one of the largest and most devastating tsunamis on record.

October 16, 2022October 16, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Astronomers Have Found More Than 30,000 Near-Earth Asteroids… so far

Asteroid hunters have become increasingly good at their job. The discipline, which took a back seat in the early days of astronomy, has really come into its own as of late. Once the general public, probably spurred on by popular 1990s movies like Deep Impact and Armageddon, realized the potentially existential threat they posed, support for finding all asteroids that could be planet killers skyrocketed. At this point, astronomers think that most planet-killing asteroids have been found and have worked their way down to much smaller but still devastating impactors. And now they’ve reached a new milestone with over 30,000 Near Earth Asteroids (NEAs) officially discovered.

October 10, 2022October 10, 2022 by Andy Tomaswick

Thanks to Hayabusa 2’s Samples, Scientists can Track the History of Ryugu Earlier in the History of the Solar System

When Huyabusa2 returned a sample of Ryugu, a Near Earth Asteroid, to Earth in December 2020, it was sure to light a bonfire of material science research. We’re starting to see the beginning of that, and a new study led by a scientist at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory has found a particular grain in the sample Huyabusa2 collected that shows how the asteroid formed.

October 4, 2022October 4, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

After Getting Slammed by DART, Asteroid Dimorphos has Grown a Tail

Astronomers using the NSF’s NOIRLab’s SOAR telescope in Chile captured the vast plume of dust and debris blasted from the surface of the asteroid Dimorphos by NASA’s DART spacecraft when it impacted on 26 September 2022. In this image, the more than 10,000 kilometer long dust trail — the ejecta that has been pushed away by the Sun’s radiation pressure, not unlike the tail of a comet — can be seen stretching from the center to the right-hand edge of the field of view.

More images and details keep coming in about the asteroid intentionally smashed by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft last week, and this latest image is stunning.

A telescope in Chile called SOAR took an image of the asteroid Dimorphos two days after the impact by DART and found the asteroid is trailing a stream of debris more than 10,000 kilometers (6,000 miles) long. However, other reports indicate that the debris trail could now be as long as 50,000 km (31,000 miles), and could still be growing.

September 30, 2022September 30, 2022 by Nancy Atkinson

A Single High-Resolution Image of Dimorphos Stacked From DART’s Final Images

A high resolution image of Dimorphos made by stacking the last images received from DART. Credit: Eydeet on Imgur.

Here’s a sharper view of Dimorphos, the small asteroid moonlet that the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally crashed into. Eydeet on Imgur created a higher resolution image of Dimorphos by stacking the last few images received from the spacecraft before impact.

First impressions? It’s an egg-shaped rubble pile.

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

DART Impact Seen by Hubble and Webb

DART hits an asteroid. — For the first time, the NASA/ESA/CSA James Webb Space Telescope and the NASA/ESA Hubble Space Telescope took simultaneous observations of the same target. These images, Hubble on left and Webb on the right, show observations of Dimorphos several hours after NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) intentionally impacted the moonlet asteroid. Courtesy NASA, ESA, CSA, and STScI

What happens when you whack a little asteroid with an even littler spacecraft? People around the world watched on the 26th of September when the DART mission smashed into the side of Dimorphos. This tiny worldlet is a companion asteroid to Didymos. It was the world’s first test of the kinetic impact technique, using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid by modifying its orbit. Amateur observer networks and professional observatories tracked the meetup from the ground. In a first, both Hubble Space Telescope (HST) and the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) took simultaneous images and data.

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Matt Williams

The First Telescope Images of DART's Impact are Starting to Arrive

Artist's impression of the DART mission impacting the moonlet Dimorphos. Credit: ESA

On September 26th, at 23:14 UTC (07:14 PM EST; 04:14 PM PST), NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft successfully struck the 160-meter (525 ft) moonlet Dimorphos that orbits the larger Didymos asteroid. The event was live-streamed all around the world and showed footage from DART’s Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO) as it rapidly approached Dimorphos. In the last few seconds, DART was close enough that individual boulders could be seen on the moonlet’s surface.

About 38 seconds after impact, the time it took the signal to reach Earth, the live stream ended, signaling that DART had successfully impacted Dimorphos and was destroyed in the process. Meanwhile, teams of astronomers stretching from the Indian Ocean to the Arabian Peninsula watched the impact with their telescopes. One, in particular – the Les Makes Observatory on the island of Le Reunion in the Indian Ocean – captured multiple images of the impact. These were used to create a real-time video and show the asteroid brightening as it was pushed away, followed by material ejected from the surface.

September 29, 2022September 29, 2022 by Seth Lockman

Robots Might Jump Around to Explore the Moon

LEAP (Legged Exploration of the Aristarchus Plateau) is a mission concept study, funded by ESA, to explore challenging lunar terrains using ANYmal, a four-legged robot developed at ETH Zürich and its spin-off ANYbotics. Credit: ETH Zürich/Robotics Systems Labs (RSL)

How great are wheels, really? Wheels need axles. Suspension. Power of some kind. And roads, or at least swaths of relatively flat and stable terrain. Then you need to maintain all of it. Because of their cost many civilizations across human history, who knew all about wheels and axles, didn’t bother using them for transportation. Another way to look at it – much of human technology mimics nature. Of the simple machines, levers, inclined planes, wedges, and even screws are observed in nature. Why not the wheel?