Tagged: asteroid

More than a year into a very real crisis, experts gathered virtually to confront a second emergency, a potential asteroid impact — but this disaster, fortunately, was entirely hypothetical. Every two years, as part of the International Academy of Astronautics’ Planetary Defense Conference, scientists and...

A MIND-BLOWING video has laid bare the enormous scale of some of our Solar System’s most famous asteroids. Put together by Spanish 3D artist Alvaro Gracia Montoya, the three-minute clip compares the sizes of twenty space objects New York City. Computer generated mock ups of the rocks...

  Asteroids are composed of remnant material from the early solar system that was not processed into planets. Therefore, they offer a window into the building blocks of the solar system, the composition of the solar nebula and the origins of life. The near Earth...

Scientists hope the dark grains from asteroid Ryugu will improve their understanding of the Solar System’s formation. Japan’s mission to bring asteroid dust back to Earth has succeeded. The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) confirmed on 14 December that a capsule from spacecraft Hayabusa2, which...

The huge asteroid that slammed into Earth 66 million years ago blanketed the entire planet in debris. Now simulations show exactly how that material spread so far from the impact site. The asteroid hit the Yucatan peninsula in modern-day Mexico. It created a global layer...

You can understand how a planet full of stressed-out people trying to survive a pandemic might get a little panicky about news of a very large asteroid visiting our cosmic neighborhood. But it’s all OK. Asteroid 2001 FO32 passed by at a safe distance on...

An Italian astronomer says the best defense against potential killer asteroids from space is solid offense, also based in space. The notion of protecting the planet from menacing space rocks by blasting them with missiles is an old trope of science and disaster fiction, but...

Bruce Willis can relax. We won’t be looking at an Armageddon scenario with infamous asteroid Apophis anytime soon. NASA has ruled out the chance of Apophis impacting Earth for at least the next 100 years. Apophis has literally been on Earth’s radar after being identified...

A piece of cosmic debris named 2021 GW4 briefly dove beneath the orbit of many of our largest satellites Monday. A small space rock about the size of a car or truck made a slightly intrusive but not very intimidating flyby on Monday. Asteroid 2021...

Osiris-Rex snagged some bits of asteroid Bennu in 2020, and now it’s swooped in to check out the mess it left behind. NASA’s Osiris-Rex mission has been studying asteroid Bennu and last year successfully grabbed a sample to bring back to Earth. That sample operation...