In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit.
For nearly a decade, a near-Earth asteroid named Kamo’oalewa has invoked speculation over how it came to orbit the Sun in total synchrony with Earth as though it shares some special relationship with our planet. A new study of the oddball may have pinpointed where it came from: a young impact crater on the far side of…
Asteroid 99942 Apophis is fast approaching our home planet for an uncomfortably close encounter in 2029. In order to prepare for the rare event, NASA is calling for ideas for low cost missions to rendezvous with Apophis, but the space agency already has a pair of asteroid probes ready to take on the task.
The aluminum canister containing bits of an ancient space rock has finally been opened, revealing the bulk of the asteroid Bennu sample in all its glory.
After months of fidgeting with a canister that contained rocky samples from an ancient asteroid, NASA engineers have finally removed two stubborn fasteners that appeared to be preventing the space agency from collecting the full amount of Bennu’s debris.
A diligent surveyor of the night skies, NEOWISE is sadly approaching its fiery demise as the Sun’s erratic outbursts are causing the infrared telescope to gradually fall out of its orbit before it eventually burns up in Earth’s atmosphere.
In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly answer crucial questions about how our planet came to be—if only we can get to them first.
After traveling through space for 200 million miles, rocky pieces from asteroid Bennu were dropped off on Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in late September. Now, some of those fragments will be put on display for museum-goers to observe firsthand.
The OSIRIS-REx canister still contains the bulk of the asteroid sample inside, but pieces of the ancient space rock found on the outside have already shown evidence of organic matter embedded within tiny bits of debris.
Scientists working to open up the sample canister containing rock and dust from asteroid Bennu have run into a problem: there’s just too much of it.
