Asteroids

In a bid to boost defence against near-Earth asteroids, China has started construction of the world's most far-reaching radar system, Global Times reported.The system will be built in an observation facility, codenamed China Fuyan or 'facetted eye', which will consist of distributed radars with more than 20 antennas. Each antenna will have a diameter of 25 to 30 metres.The facility will carry out high-definition observation of asteroids within 150 million kilometres, Long Teng, President of the Beijing Institute of…

Chinese researchers are working on a new method to detect and track asteroids, which will also determine if any giant piece of space rock poses any danger to Earth. The method involves building an array of more than 20 large antennas to bounce signals off asteroids to determine if they could possibly impact our planet. A handful of Chinese universities are involved in the project, the details of this were first published in China's Science and Technology Ministry's official newspaper the Science and Technology Daily.The…

A woman had a potentially fatal experience in Canada recently. As she slept through the night a meteorite, a small meteorite pierced through her roof and came crashing on her pillow. It barely missed her head, but created a hole in the roof. The incident turned the light back on the question: What if a rock big enough to cause large-scale damage, say an asteroid, were to hit Earth? As curiosity grew, NASA asked one of its experts the question. Dr. Kelly Fast said it's important to find the asteroids “before they find us.”…

One of the most worrying questions that weigh on the minds of scientists, astronomers as well as the general public is whether the Earth is threatened by a potential asteroid collision? Despite being addressed by the scientific community, this question crops up time and again. Now, a NASA scientist has tried to put all speculation to rest. In a video shared on YouTube, asteroid expert Davide Farnocchia, of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, said there was no asteroid threat to Earth in terms of impact hazard.The caption of…

According to a new study from physicists at the University of Colorado Boulder, like corn kernels pop in a frying pan, tiny grains of dust may hop around on the surface of asteroids.That popcorn-like effect may even help to tidy up smaller asteroids, causing them to lose dust and look rough and craggy from space.The researchers published their results in the journal Nature Astronomy. Their findings may help scientists better understand how asteroids change shape over time—and how these bodies migrate through space,…

You want to know something funny? We don't actually know how our planet formed. We have a broad general idea, but the finer details are a lot trickier to unravel.We do have a model that is currently accepted as the most likely explanation so far: that Earth formed from the gradual accretion of asteroids. However, even here, there are some facts about the formation of our planet that are challenging to explain.  A new paper, combining experimentation with modeling, has revealed a new formation pathway that much more…

NASA's Lucy spacecraft mission was successful in further deploying the solar panel array that will power the craft, according to the space agency. The mission team was able to deploy the unlatched solar array between 353 degrees and 357 degrees open. NASA's team performed the operation remotely, and the solar array is now under more tension in its expanded form, while providing more stability to the spacecraft. Lucy will need all its panels to be deployed in order to find enough energy as it makes its way toward Jupiter's…

Asteroids are rocky celestial bodies that revolve around the Sun, just like planets. Most of the asteroids in our solar system are located in the main asteroid belt, the region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. These asteroids are remnants from the formation of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. While most of them do not pose a threat to Earth, they can cause catastrophe in case of an impact on the planet. To raise awareness about the asteroid impact hazards, International Asteroid Day is observed on…

The DART mission will be the first to test asteroid deflection through kinetic impactor technology. Illustration: NASAIn order to protect the Earth, some sacrifices must be made. NASA’s DART spacecraft is currently on its way to a binary asteroid system known as Didymos and will essentially crash into one tiny asteroid to test out a deflection method. But rather than leaving behind an impact crater as initially intended, the DART spacecraft may actually deform the mini-moon, making it nearly unrecognizable.Using a new…

When an asteroid strikes a planet, it can pack a powerful punch—as the dinosaurs discovered to their detriment 66 million years ago. But what if two asteroids strike at the same time and in the same location?A first-of-its-kind study published in the journal Icarus investigates this phenomenon on Mars. Looking at the planet, researchers have discovered hundreds of craters that likely resulted from the impacts of a binary system, where one asteroid orbits another, like the moon orbits Earth.“They’re really difficult to…