Planetary

An uncrewed spacecraft smashed into an asteroid Monday in an effort to deflect the distant space rock, the dramatic climax of a National Aeronautics and Space Administration mission to test whether the technique could one day be used to protect Earth.“We’re all just losing our minds right now,” said Harrison Agrusa, a University of Maryland astrophysicist and investigation team member on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, mission. “I just can’t believe it went, as far as I know, exactly according to plan,” he…

An audacious planetary defense mission reached a historic crescendo today, with a NASA probe spectacularly crashing into the asteroid Dimorphos, obliterating itself in the process. The world-first attempt to bounce an asteroid off course has been hailed an initial success, and is considered an important practice run for how we might deflect a hazardous asteroid in the future.The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission is an attempt to alter the orbit of Dimorphos around its larger sibling, Didymos, both part of a…

Artist’s depiction of a double asteroid system passing by Earth. Image: ESA-P.CarrilLater today, NASA’s DART spacecraft will attempt to smash into a non-threatening asteroid. It’s one of the most important things we’ve done in space—if not the most important thing—as this experiment to deflect a non-threatening asteroid could eventually result in a robust and effective planetary defense strategy for protecting life on Earth. We’ve landed humans on the Moon, transported rovers to Mars, and sent spacecraft to interstellar…

Ten months after launch, NASA's asteroid-deflecting DART spacecraft neared a planned impact with its target on Monday in a test of the world's first planetary defense system, designed to prevent a doomsday collision with Earth.The cube-shaped "impactor" vehicle, roughly the size of a vending machine with two rectangular solar arrays, was on course to fly into the asteroid Dimorphos, about as large as a football stadium, and self-destruct around 7pm EDT (4:30 IST) some 6.8 million miles (11 million km) from Earth.The…

Can the National Aeronautics and Space Administration shift the orbit of an asteroid by smashing into it with a fast-moving spacecraft? The agency might find out Monday, when a bus-size craft traveling at a speed in excess of 14,000 miles an hour tries to hit a 525-foot-wide space rock.The anticipated collision between the uncrewed spacecraft and the asteroid, named Dimorphos, marks the climactic moment of NASA’s $325 million Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission. DART is the world’s first mission to test a technology…

An MIT study finds that astronomers risk misinterpreting planetary signals in James Webb Space Telescope data if models to interpret the data don’t improve. In this conceptual image, the James Webb telescope captures light from around a newly-discovered planet (on left). However, when scientists analyze this data, limitations in opacity models could produce planetary predictions that are off by an order of magnitude (represented by 3 possible planets on the right). Credit: Jose-Luis Olivares, MIT. James Webb icon courtesy…

Asteroids, comets, and other near-Earth objects (NEOs) pass by our planet daily. Meteors and even some asteroids have impacted our planet, often leaving fiery displays in the sky behind them. As of yet, though, we haven’t had to worry about any killer asteroids coming too close. But a recent survey says that mega constellations of satellites could make it harder to detect NEOs, putting Earth at risk. Survey says too many satellites in orbit make it hard to spot NEOs Discovering asteroids and other NEOs is…

Astronomers have found the oldest visible planetary nebula (PN) inside a 500-million-year-old galactic open cluster (OC). The rare celestial jewel has been discovered inside a cluster called M37 and is believed to be of high astrophysical value. Planetary nebulas (PNe) are glowing shrouds ejected from dying stars that shine with distinct colours and shapes offering a spectacular sight for astronomers. The discovery was made by a team of researchers from the University of Hong Kong. They found that the PN had a kinematic…

Just like humans, aliens need places to live, and in management sim Space for Sale, you've got your chance to turn a backwater, bargain-priced solar system into a high-class homestead. There are a bunch of obstacles in your way, however, not the least of which are the creatures that call your solar system home, and the eccentric requests of your alien clientel.THQ Nordic revealed developer Mirage Game Studio's Space for Sale with a trailer during its 2022 game showcase, which gives a sense of how the…

Astronomers may have discovered the youngest exoplanet ever detected. They detected the world in question around the adolescent star AS 209 using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array in Chile. Of course, detecting a signal from the planet doesn’t prove its existence. As such, James Webb will now target that area and look for more evidence the planet exists. Challenging what we know Image source: dottedyeti / AdobeResearchers discovering what may be the youngest exoplanet ever detected is big…