Asteroids
OSIRIS-REx Did One Last Close Flyby of Asteroid Bennu. It’s Almost Time to Come Home
After more than two years in orbit around asteroid Bennu, NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is ready to come home. It's bringing…
Careful Calculations Show That Earth is Safe From Asteroid Apophis for at Least 100 Years
If you're looking for doomsday, you can forget about asteroid Apophis. The latest radar observations have effectively ruled out any…
It Turns Out That the World’s Oldest Impact Crater Isn’t an Impact Crater
In early 2012, an international research team surveying parts of southwestern Greenland announced that they had discovered the oldest impact…
Dust in the Chixalub Crater Makes the Compelling Case That an Asteroid Wiped out the Dinosaurs 65 Million Years ago
For decades scientists have believed that an asteroid impact event ended the era of the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.…
Jupiter has Added a Comet to its Trojan Collection
Jupiter is notorious for capturing objects that venture too close to the gas giant and its enormous pull of gravity.…
OSIRIS-REx is Heading for Home in May
The OSIRIS-REx team decided to delay the spacecraft’s departure from asteroid Bennu for two months. The departure window opens in…
Asteroids Crashing Into Dead Stars are Helping Explain Where the Universe’s Missing Lithium Went
What happened to all the lithium? The question has stumped astronomers for decades. While cosmologists have successfully predicted the abundance…
Japan’s Hayabusa 2 Probe Drops Off Bits of an Asteroid and Heads for Its Next Target
Japan's Hayabusa 2 probe zoomed past Earth on December 5th and dropped off a capsule containing bits of an asteroid,…
There Might Be Water On All Rocky Planets
If you asked someone who was reasonably scientifically literate how Earth got its water, they'd likely tell you it came…
New Scans Give us a Better View of the Metal Asteroid Psyche
In 2022, NASA will launch a spacecraft to asteroid Psyche (16 Psyche), one of the largest in the asteroid belt,…