Asteroids
Don’t Bother Trying to Destroy Rubble Pile Asteroids
The asteroids in our Solar System are survivors. They've withstood billions of years of collisions. The surviving asteroids are divided…
The Outer Solar System Supplied a Surprising Amount of Earth’s Water
In a recent study published in Science, a team of researchers at Imperial College London examined 18 meteorites containing the…
Lucy Adds Another Asteroid to its Flyby List
In October 2021, NASA launched its ambitious Lucy mission. Its targets are asteroids, two in the main belt and eight…
Asteroids Didn’t Create the Moon’s Largest Craters. Left-Over Planetesimals Did
The Moon's pock-marked surface tells the story of its history. It's marked by over 9,000 impact craters, according to the…
What Would Asteroid Mining do to the World's Economy?
A new study by a team of Chinese researchers examines the impact asteroid mining with have on global equity.
Three New Potentially Hazardous Asteroids Discovered, Including a big one That Measures 1.5 km Across
An asteroid 1.5 km across is no joke. Even a much smaller one, about the size of a house, can…
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…
Arecibo Won’t Be Rebuilt
The National Science Foundation announced last week that it won’t rebuild or replace the iconic Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico,…
Success! DART Impact Shortened Asteroid’s Orbit Time by 32 Minutes
NASA says its DART spacecraft caused a larger-than-expected change in the path of its target asteroid when they collided two…
Scientists Have Been Underestimating the Asteroid That Created the Biggest Known Crater on Earth
Ancient impacts played a powerful role in Earth's complex history. On other Solar System bodies like the Moon or Mercury,…