Asteroids

Astronomers, astronauts and other near-Earth object experts from around the world are gathering next week in Luxembourg to talk about asteroids. If you tune in to the Asteroid Foundation’s live event on International Asteroid Day (which is June 30), you can hear about the latest in space rock research. The four hour event will consist of panel discussions on future missions, advances in technology, how scientists track and discover asteroids and what resources might be gleaned from asteroids. It will be moderated by…

If you wanted to do a forensic study of the Solar System, you might head for the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. That's where you can find ancient rocks from the Solar System's early days. Out there in the cold vacuum of space, far from the Sun, asteroids are largely untouched by space weathering.  Space scientists sometimes refer to asteroids – and their meteorite fragments that fall to Earth – as time capsules because of the evidence they hold.The asteroid Psyche is especially interesting, and NASA is…

For the first time, scientists have found the building blocks for life on an asteroid in space. Japanese researchers have discovered more than 20 amino acids on the space rock Ryugu, which is more than 200 million miles (320 million kilometers) from Earth.  Scientists made the first-of-its-kind detection by studying samples retrieved from the near-Earth asteroid by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's (JAXA) Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which landed on Ryugu in 2018.In 2019, the spacecraft collected 0.2 ounce (5.4 grams)…

There's no question that young solar systems are chaotic places. Cascading collisions defined our young Solar System as rocks, boulders, and planetesimals repeatedly collided.A new study based on chunks of asteroids that crashed into Earth puts a timeline to some of that chaos.  Astronomers know that asteroids have remained essentially unchanged since their formation in the early Solar System billions of years ago.They're like rocky time capsules that contain scientific clues from that important epoch because…

Gigantic asteroids have smashed into the Earth before—RIP dinosaurs—and if we’re not watching out for all those errant space rocks, they could crash into our world again, with devastating consequences. That’s why Ed Lu and Danica Remy of the Asteroid Institute started a new project to track as many of them as possible.Lu, a former NASA astronaut and executive director of the institute, led a team that developed a novel algorithm called THOR, which harnesses massive computing power to compare points of light seen in…

An asteroid is a relatively small chunk of rocky minerals that orbits the Sun. When they swing by Earth, they are described as Near Earth Asteroids. Most of these rocky objects can be found orbiting in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. But nearly 1,400 of these have been classified as potentially hazardous to Earth, which means their orbit and size pose a reasonable threat to our safety. Most of the asteroids that enter the Earth's atmosphere are unable to withstand the heat and burn into a meteorite before…

There are a lot of asteroids to track in our solar system and many are yet to be discovered.Cloud-Based Astrodynamics Platform To Discover and Track AsteroidsDiscovering and tracking asteroids is critical for planetary defense against killer asteroid impacts. The detailed astronomical data associated with it is also useful for providing new insights for astronomers. Helping with this task is a new algorithm called THOR, which has now proven to be capable of finding asteroids. It has been running on the Asteroid…

A former NASA astronaut has come up with a plan to save the Earth from killer asteroids. Dr. Ed Lu, who has a doctorate in applied physics, is trying to find a way to discover dangerous asteroids with enough advanced warning to deflect them away from Earth. It’s a noble effort and one that could work together with other asteroid detection and deflection systems, like NASA’s D.A.R.T spacecraft. An algorithm could make finding killer asteroids easier https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=_GNxx_1ZgWE On Tuesday,…

Researchers have found over 1,700 asteroid trails in archived Hubble data from the last 20 years. While many of the asteroids are previously known, more than 1,000 are not. What good are another 1,000 asteroids? Like all asteroids, they could hold valuable clues to the Solar System's history.  As time passes and more and more telescopes perform more and more observations, their combined archival data keeps growing. Sometimes discoveries lurk in that data that await new analytical tools or renewed efforts from scientists…

In a strange discovery, scientists have found twin asteroids that may be Earth's newest neighbours. The asteroids, separated by about 600,000 miles, seem to have separated from a parent asteroid only a few centuries ago. The asteroids were discovered as separate entities in August 2019. However, within a month, the similarity in their orbiting patterns made researchers take a closer look. Asteroids 2019 PR2 and 2019 QR6 puzzled scientists when they tried to delve into their history. Looking into the archived Catalina Sky…