The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has found evidence of two giant asteroids slamming into each other in a nearby star system. The colossal collision ejected 100,000 times more dust than the impact that killed the dinosaurs. The violent impact occurred recently in Beta Pictoris, a star system located 63 light-years away in the constellation […]
The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) has observed evidence pointing to asteroids colliding in a neighboring star system. Resultant dust kicked up by the collision has a mass equal to around 100,000 times that of the asteroid that killed the dinosaurs. The asteroids were seen smashing together in Beta Pictoris, a star system located about […]
Earth is constantly bombarded by fragments of rock and ice, also known as meteoroids, from outer space. Most of the meteoroids are as tiny as grains of sand and small pebbles, and they completely burn up high in the atmosphere. You can see meteoroids larger than about a golf ball when they light up as […]
Mars may face more than twice as many close encounters with potentially dangerous asteroids as Earth does, according to a new study. This could imperil exploratory missions to the Red Planet, but also provide insight into how the inner solar system formed. Asteroids constitute the biggest threat from space to our planet — the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor, for example, […]
An animation of a cube-shaped spacecraft with two rectangular wing-like solar panels passing in front of the sun. OSIRIS-APEX emerged “unscathed” from its closest-ever brush past our sun on Jan. 2, scientists announced on Tuesday (May 28). The probe, originally known as OSIRIS-REx, aced its sample-return mission to the asteroid Bennu and is now headed […]
Scientists may have learned the history of the tiny contact-binary moon orbiting asteroid 152830 Dinkinesh, which was the first cosmic stop for NASA’s Lucy spacecraft. That moonlet may have spun off its larger parent asteroid when Dinkinesh was sent twirling through space after absorbing and re-emitting sunlight. Having launched in 2021, the Lucy mission is […]
By Will Dunham WASHINGTON (Reuters) – A little asteroid called Dinkinesh – visited last November by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft – has a surprisingly dynamic history, according to scientists, along with its moonlet Selam that is comprised of two bodies that gently melded into one. Dinkinesh and Selam are the smallest asteroids from our solar system’s […]
Astronomers have been surveying the sky for years to catalog and track so-called Near-Earth Objects (NEOs), asteroids and comets that come near to or cross paths with our planet’s orbit. Humanity has even been preparing for the possibility of protecting ourselves against a catastrophic collision; for example, the recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission […]
A family of primitive asteroids is providing astronomers with a window into the past as they seek to unravel the history of these small space rocks believed to have once brought water to Earth. Life in the solar system can be dangerous, with lots of impacts having taken place over the course of history — […]
A small asteroid flew very close to Earth Tuesday morning (May 14), just two days after it was discovered by astronomers. The asteroid 2024 JN16 is less than 15 feet (4 meters) wide — about the size of a car. It did not hit Earth but came within a mere 11,500 miles (18,500 kilometers) of […]
In just under half a decade, a 1,000-foot-wide (305-meter-wide) asteroid named after the Egyptian god of chaos and destruction, Apophis, will pass within 30,000 miles (48,300 kilometers) of Earth. Scientists don’t intend to allow the rare close passage of a space rock of this size to go to waste. On April 13, 2029 — a […]
An asteroid that tore through the atmosphere over Germany in January was spinning faster than any other near-Earth object ever recorded, new research suggests. The space rock, dubbed 2024 BX1, turned into a fireball and exploded over Berlin in the early hours of Jan. 21. Although small asteroids on collision courses with Earth are typically […]