Comets

An artist’s rendition depicting how Comet Interceptor will sit behind Earth, ready to intercept any asteroids that could pose a threat to the planet.Illustration: ESAThe European Space Agency announced yesterday that it had signed a contract with private space company OHB to build the Comet Interceptor, a spacecraft to study a yet-to-be identified pristine cometfrom the Oort cloud, due for launch in 2029.The partnership between ESA and OHB’s Italian arm will bring Comet Interceptor to life. The spacecraft will eventually…

A new study has found that the outgassing of molecules from comets could be the result of the composition from the beginning of our solar system. The outgassing of molecules from comets may be the product of the solar system's original composition, according to a recent study from the University of Central Florida. The Planetary Science Journal reported the findings there. Olga Harrington Pinto, a doctorate candidate in the College of Sciences' Physics Department at UCF, was the study's principal investigator.…

The Didymos-Dimorphos system, seen as a single object, has sprouted two tails, a new Hubble image reveals. DART smashed into Dimorphos at the 10 o’clock direction. Image: NASA, ESA, Jian-Yang Li (PSI), Joe Depasquale (STScI)A new image from the Hubble Space Telescope shows a pair of dusty tails extending out from Didymos-Dimorphos, the result of NASA’s DART spacecraft smashing into the smaller member of the binary asteroid system.One tail, sure. But two? That’s undeniably weird, and also awesome. The European Space Agency…

“This is the first time we’ve actually attempted to move something in our solar system with the intent of preventing a natural disaster that has been part of our planet’s history from the beginning,” says Statler.The DART probe, which is short for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, has been in the works since 2015. It was designed, built, and operated by Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, with support from many NASA centers, and launched last November. DART is a major part of AIDA, the Asteroid…

The samples from the Ryugu asteroid brought back by Hayabusa-2, an exploration spacecraft sent by the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency, could be the most contaminant-free rocks from outer space ever examined by humans. In an in-depth analysis conducted by a team of Japanese researchers at JAMSTEC (Japan Agency for Marine-Earth Science and Technology), it is found that the samples brought on Earth in December 2020 by the Japanese aircraft are the most “uncontaminated” samples.This will help scientists get a…

NASA and the Psyche team declined interview requests until an independent review of the mission delay has been completed. Agency officials will make a decision about next steps based on that review in the coming months, said Lori Glaze, head of NASA’s planetary science division, at last month’s press conference. But WIRED spoke with other experts about options for sending a probe deep into the solar system, even if you can’t whip it past Mars.Parker, for example, thinks it might be feasible for Psyche to reach its…

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…

Infrared image from NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope showing the busted Comet 73P/Schwassman-Wachmann 3 skimming along a trail of debris left during its multiple trips around the Sun. “The flame-like objects are the comet’s fragments and their tails, while the dusty comet trail is the line bridging the fragments,” according to NASA. Image: NASAAs a periodic meteor shower, the Tau Herculids tend to be quite boring, but astronomers have reason to believe that this year’s version might be different. Here’s what you need to…