Items tagged with asteroid
After deciding to delay a mission to send a spacecraft to asteroid Psyche last summer, an independently appointed review board has given NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) the green light to carry on. NASA and JPL convened the board last summer following the mission team's request to delay the...
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A potentially hazardous asteroid the size of the Empire State Building is hurtling toward Earth and you can watch its near approach live. Asteroid 1994 XD is expected to pass by at a distance of just eight times the distance of Earth from the moon.
Asteroid 1994 XD derives its name from the year it was discovered...
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A newly discovered asteroid has been detected and is said to be a quasi-moon, or fake moon, of Earth. The fake moon is actually asteroid 2023 FW13 and orbits the Sun in sync with Earth. Its orbit extends so far that "it sweeps out halfway to Mars and in halfway to Venus," according to a recent tweet from Sky and...
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The bright light from a meteor streaking across the night sky caught the attention of onlookers across north Queensland, before crashing into the ground creating a thundering boom. The spectacle was caught by various cameras throughout the area and shared on social media.
People from Cairns on the east coast of...
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Scientists took NASA's Webb telescope on a treasure hunt in the asteroid belt, and ended up finding as many questions as answers. Solar system scientists identified water vapor on Comet Read, an important clue in solving how water came about on Earth, but it was missing another key component: carbon dioxide.
NASA's...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) snapped an image of a nearby young star, Formalhaut, in order to study the first asteroid belt seen in infrared outside our own solar system. Astronomers were stunned when they found the dusty structures are more complex than they had first thought.
NASA's Hubble Telescope...
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NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory shared details about five asteroids that will make close approaches to Earth during the month of May. Asteroid 2023 JD will make the closest approach to Earth, at a distance of 821,000 miles (1,320,000 kilometers).
It is no secret that there are asteroids zipping around in outer...
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NASA's Lucy mission captured its first images of Trojan asteroids in late March. The four Jupiter Trojan asteroids the spacecraft viewed were Eurybates, Polymele, Leucus, and Orus.
Most of Lucy's target asteroids, called "Trojans" after characters from Greek mythology, are left over from the solar system's...
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Researchers have found RNA nucleobases in samples retrieved from asteroid Ryugu. The samples were collected by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft, which harvested the samples in 2019 before returning to Earth in 2020.
An international team led by Associate Professor Yasuhiro Oba at Hokkaido University...
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A 200-foot asteroid is on course to pass Earth at a distance closer than the moon. Asteroid 2023 DZ2 will make its near-Earth flyby just before 4pm EST on March 25, 2023.
2023 DZ2 is currently estimated to have a diameter of 210 feet (64 meters) and is part of the Apollo family of asteroids, according to a post on...
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Satellite data suggests that Earth could be at a higher risk of a giant asteroid impact than previously thought. The data may indicate that scientists have been misreading traces of past asteroid strikes that have occurred in the past million years, according to James Garvin, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center Chief...
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NASA is tracking a new asteroid the size of a swimming pool that has a 1 in 600 chance of impacting Earth. It is estimated to make its closest approach to Earth on Valentine's Day in the year 2046.
NASA Asteroid Watch's Twitter account tweeted out about the asteroid earlier this week, stating that it has been...
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NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft smashed into asteroid Dimorphos at 13,000mph on September 26, 2022. The intergalactic collision sent over 1,000 tons of dust and rock hurtling off the space rock. The DART mission was an attempt by the space agency to prove whether or not an impact of this...
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NASA astronomers and scientists will be keeping a close eye on an asteroid that is heading for a rendezvous with Earth's orbit later this week. Potentially hazardous asteroid (199145) 2005 YY128 is massive, and it is thought to measure between 1,870 and 4,265 feet across.
Asteroid 199145 was first detected by the...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) continues to reveal previously undetected celestial objects. This time the observatory finds an asteroid roughly the size of Rome's Colosseum.
A team of European astronomers utilizing JWST randomly detected an interloping asteroid located between Mars and Jupiter. The team...
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NASA's James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) captured footage of a ringed asteroid more than 2 billion miles away using a new technique, known as occultation. Chariklo is 160 miles (250 kilometers) in diameter and its rings orbit at a distance of around 250 miles (400 kilometers) from the center of the icy rock's...
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NASA's Hubble Space Telescope captured an intruder in one of its images as the space agency attempts to fill in the gaps of the Milky Way. When the project was first proposed, 75% of all the Milky Way nearby neighbors had been imaged by Hubble. The project aims to use the gaps between longer Hubble observations in...
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If you have ever wanted to see what kind of damage a large asteroid impact would have on your hometown, there is now an Asteroid Launcher web app that can give you all the catastrophic details. Asteroid Launcher is based on papers by Dr. Gareth Collins and Dr. Clemens Rumpf.
An Armageddon-type asteroid event, such...
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In what scientists deem a "wildly theoretical" paper, they believe creating a method for building large cities on asteroids could be the answer for viable space habitats in the future. The research from the University of Rochester scientists was recently published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space...
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In order to celebrate the release of it's asteroid toolkit, the European Space Agency (ESA) has issued a challenge to find a mystery asteroid. The Christmas asteroid poses no threat to Earth, but the agency says it does not know much about 2015 RN35, which presents an opportunity for learning more about...
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Hawaii's Mauna Loa volcano erupted for the first time in 40 years, and has NASA watching a few of its space-related facilities in the nearby area. Mauna Loa is the world's largest volcano, which erupted late Sunday, November 27, 2022.
According to U.S. Geological Survey, Mauna Loa erupted at 11:30 p.m. local time...
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An international team used the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) to discover three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding behind the glare of the Sun. One of the asteroids discovered is the largest near-Earth asteroid spotted in the last 8 years.
It seems like new near-Earth asteroids are being discovered every other day...
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