Asteroids
A Single High-Resolution Image of Dimorphos Stacked From DART’s Final Images
Here’s a sharper view of Dimorphos, the small asteroid moonlet that the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) spacecraft intentionally crashed…
This is the Last Thing DART saw as it Smashed Into its Asteroid Target
The first-ever planetary defense technology demonstration mission successfully conducted its mission, slamming into the surface of a distant asteroid and…
Watch OSIRIS-REx's Complex Orbital Path Around Bennu in This Cool Animation
The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft conducted a two-year reconnaissance and sample collection at the asteroid Bennu, providing crucial data about the 500-meter-wide…
OSIRIS-REx Would Have Sunk Deep into Asteroid Bennu if it Tried to Land
A pair of studies published in Science and Science Advances have helped identify that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource…
We’ll be Building Self-Replicating Probes to Explore the Milky Way Sooner Than you Think. Why Haven’t ETIs?
The future can arrive in sudden bursts. What seems a long way off can suddenly jump into view, especially when…
The Most Threatening Asteroid Just got Downgraded to “Harmless”. No Impact in 2052
It's comforting to know that there are people who are literally paid to watch the night sky to ensure that…
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…
China is Building an Asteroid Deflection Mission of its own, due for Launch in 2025
There's an old joke that the dinosaurs are only extinct because they didn't develop a space agency. The implication, of…
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…