Tantalized by images from NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based data, scientists thought the giant asteroid Vesta deserved a closer look. They got a chance to do that in 2011 and 2012, when NASA’s Dawn spacecraft orbited the giant asteroid, and they were able to check earlier conclusions. A new study involving Dawn’s observations during that time period demonstrates how this relationship works with Hubble and ground-based telescopes to clarify our understanding of a solar system object.

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Can’t find asteroid 2010 QW1 in the Minor Planet Database? No, the “Men in Black” didn’t secretly remove this Earth-orbiting asteroid from the listing… but recent top-notch detective work by astronomers did.

The mystery of this object all started back on August 23rd of this year, when the PanSTARRS sky survey based on the summit of Haleakala on the island of Maui in Hawai’i spotted an asteroid that was given the provisional designation of 2013 QW1.

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Divers have lifted from a Ural Mountain lake five rocks thought to be fragments of the meteorite that exploded in February near the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, a local environment ministry said Thursday.

The fragments, ranging from 10 to 30 centimeters in diameter, will now be handed over to scientists for a thorough examination,

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The U.S. space program’s deep space comet-hunting mission ended after nine years and the transmission of 500,000 images of celestial bodies, NASA said Friday.

The project team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., announced the Deep Impact mission’s end after being unable to communicate with the craft since Aug.

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Astronomers announce a new technique for spotting near-Earth asteroids at a rate a thousand times faster than ever before

Near Earth Objects represent a clear and present danger to the people of Earth. The Tunguska event over Eastern Siberia in 1908 is a good example of the kind of destruction that a relatively small object can produce.

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Water, ammonia, methanol and carbon dioxide could have come to Earth from cometary sources, according to a new study. Source: Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory

The energy of comets smashing into Earth billions of years ago could have generated life out of the building blocks of life that those extraterrestrial objects brought,

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A huge asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may not have been the only cosmic event to cause mass extinctions or change Earth’s climate. Tiny minerals leftover from many smaller meteorites could provide the geological evidence needed to show how rocks falling from the sky changed the course of life’s evolution on our planet more than just once.

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It’s well known that the dinosaurs were wiped out 66 million years ago when a meteor hit what is now southern Mexico but evidence is accumulating that the biggest extinction of all, 252.3m years ago, at the end of the Permian period, was also triggered by an impact that changed the climate.

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The 2013 Europlanet Prize for Public Engagement with Planetary Science has been awarded to Mr Jonathan (Jay) Tate for his outstanding efforts in furthering public understanding of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and the asteroid and comet impact hazard.

The Spaceguard Centre, founded by Tate in 2001, serves as a professional facility for astronomical research,

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The Sun-grazing asteroid, Phaethon, has betrayed its true nature by showing a comet-like tail of dust particles blown backwards by radiation pressure from the Sun. Unlike a comet, however, Phaethon’s tail doesn’t arise through the vaporization of an icy nucleus. During its closest approach to the Sun, researchers believe that Phaethon becomes so hot that rocks on the surface crack and crumble to dust under the extreme heat.

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