Asteroids Archives

October 29, 2023October 29, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

An Asteroid Came Uncomfortably Close to Earth in July. Could we Have Stopped it?

Illustration of the Pulverize It method. Credit: Cohen & Cohen - UCSB

In July of this year, an asteroid roughly 30 to 60 meters across passed Earth to within one-quarter of the distance to the Moon. It posed no threat to our world, but if it had struck Earth it would have created a blast three times greater than the 2013 Chelyabinsk impact. And we only noticed it two days after it passed. It’s a good example of how sizable asteroids still miss detection. Not ones large enough to threaten our extinction, but large enough to threaten millions of lives. If a similar asteroid was detected just days before impact, could we stop it? That’s the question raised by a recent study in the arXiv.

October 29, 2023October 28, 2023 by Carolyn Collins Petersen

Environmental Concerns Could Drive Asteroid Mining

Asteroid mining concept. Credit: NASA/Denise Watt

Asteroid mining is one of those topics that sounds like it’s straight out of science fiction. But, in recent years, with the growth of lower-cost launch options, mining space rocks could become downright economical. As an added plus, getting important resources from asteroids could help drive the switchover to clean environmental practices and technologies right here on Earth.

October 25, 2023October 26, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

After DART Smashed Into Dimorphos, What Happened to the Larger Asteroid Didymos?

NASA’s DART mission (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) slammed into asteroid Dimorphos in September 2022, changing its orbital period. Ground and space-based telescopes turned to watch the event unfold, not only to study what happened to the asteroid, but also to help inform planetary defense efforts that might one day be needed to mitigate potential collisions with our planet.

Astronomers have continued to observe and study Dimorphos, well past the impact event. However, Dimorphos is the smaller asteroid in this binary system, and is just a small moon orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos.

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is the only telescope capable of visually distinguishing between the two closely orbiting asteroids. Now, astronomers have made follow-on observations on the system with JWST to see what happened to Didymos after the dust cleared.

October 19, 2023November 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

There are 14,000 Near Earth Asteroids Left to Find

Everyone likes a cool infographic, right? Does that statement hold even if the infographic points out a gap in our knowledge that could kill millions of people? Because that’s what a cool-looking infographic NASA released on October 16th does.

October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by Evan Gough

A Hypervelocity Experiment Mimics the Surface Conditions of Ceres

Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA, taken by Dawn Framing Camera — Dwarf planet Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. NASA's Dawn mission found complex organic molecules on Ceres. Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA, taken by Dawn Framing Camera

It might be oxymoronic to say that the more we find out about something, the more mysterious it becomes. But if that’s true of anything in our Solar System, it might be true about Ceres, the largest body in the main asteroid belt.

October 17, 2023October 17, 2023 by Brian Koberlein

Can We Find the Heaviest Elements in Asteroids?

Asteroids are out there, and some pose a threat to Earth. How will we react when we determine that one's coming for us? Credit: N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), ESO/M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)

One of the reasons that asteroid mining is such a popular idea among industrialists is that they holds large quantities of heavy elements. NASA’s Psyche spacecraft just launched this week, headed for an asteroid that holds ten to thirty quintillion U.S dollars worth of rare-earth elements and other heavy metals. During our planet’s formation, the heavier of these elements tended to sink deep into the Earth, making them hard to find. But even in small asteroids, these heavy elements might be much more common and accessible. Since we rely on these rare-earth elements for our modern society, metal-rich asteroids such as Psyche are worth checking out.

October 12, 2023October 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

OSIRIS-REx Returned Carbon and Water from Asteroid Bennu

This is the outside of the OSIRIS-REx sample collector. Sample material from asteroid Bennu is on the middle right. There's evidence of carbon and water in the initial analysis of Bennu's regolith. Most of the sample is sealed inside the capsule. Photo: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

Carbon and water are so common on Earth that they’re barely worth mentioning. But not if you’re a scientist. They know that carbon and water are life-enabling chemicals and are also links to the larger cosmos.

Initial results from OSIRIS-REx’s Bennu samples show the presence of both in the asteroid’s regolith. Now, eager scientists will begin to piece together how Bennu’s carbon, water, and other molecules fit into the puzzle of the Earth, the Sun, and even the entire Solar System and beyond.

October 4, 2023October 4, 2023 by Evan Gough

Watch OSIRIS-REx Release its Sample Capsule

This is the OSIRIS-Rex sample return capsule in the Great Salt Lake Desert. It's charred and blackened from its plunge through Earth's atmosphere. Image Credit: NASA/Keegan Barber

Most of the spacecraft we send out into the Solar System are never meant to return. Time, space, and entropy overtake them, or else they’re purposely sent crashing to their doom at the end of their missions. But not OSIRIS-REx. Its mission was only a success when it returned to Earth with its rare cargo.

September 27, 2023September 27, 2023 by Matt Williams

NASA Opens the Lid on OSIRIS-REx's Sample Capsule

OSIRIS REx Asteroid Sample Return lid opening at Building 31 Astromaterials Curation Facility at the Johnson Space Center. Credit: NASA/Robert Markowitz

On Sunday, September 23rd, the Sample Retrieval Capsule (SRC) from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission landed in the Utah desert. Shortly thereafter, recovery teams arrived in helicopters, inspected and secured the samples, and flew them to the Utah Test and Training Range (UTTR). On Monday, the sample canister was transferred to the Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science Directorate (ARES) in Houston, Texas. Yesterday, on Tuesday, September 26th, NASA announced that the process of unsealing and removing the samples from the canister had begun with the removal of the initial lid.

September 12, 2023September 12, 2023 by Evan Gough

Lucy Has its First Asteroid Target in the Crosshairs

This image shows the tiny main-belt asteroid Dinkinesh. Lucy captured this image from 23 million km away. Image Credit: NASA/Goddard/SwRI/Johns Hopkins APL

NASA’s Lucy spacecraft launched almost one year ago, in October of 2021. Its journey is an ambitious one, and long. It’ll visit eight different asteroids in its planned 12-year mission. Two of them are main belt asteroids, and the other six are Jupiter Trojans, which share the gas giant’s orbit around the Sun.

Lucy’s first, and smallest, target asteroid is now in the spacecraft’s sights.