Jay TateA new map of the solar system’s asteroids shows more diversity than previously thought.
To get an idea of how the early solar system may have formed, scientists often look to asteroids. These relics of rock and dust represent what today’s planets may have been before they differentiated into bodies of core,
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Jay TateA first look at the European Space Agency’s Rosetta spacecraft after its reactivation last week shows the probe endured an unprecedented power-saving hibernation with few problems, giving engineers confidence the mission can continue the final leg of its decade-long pursuit of a little-known comet thought to harbor the building blocks of life.
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Jay TateRussia and the United States will pool efforts in the creation of asteroid diversion techniques.
Russian Emergency Situations Minister Vladimir Puchkov said in a video link with the administrator of the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) it was time to work together to protect the Earth from asteroids and meteorites.
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Jay TateThis spring, NASA will be paying cautious attention to a comet that could put on a barnstorming show at Mars on Oct. 19, 2014. On that date, comet C/2013 A1 Siding Spring will buzz Mars about 10 times closer than any identified comet has ever flown past Earth.
Spacecraft at Mars might get a good look at the nucleus of comet Siding Spring as it heads toward the closest approach,
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Jay TateIf anything, NASA’s asteroid-hunting spacecraft seems to be refreshed after going into forced hibernation for 2.5 years. In the first 25 days since it started seeking small solar system bodies in earnest again, the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) found three new objects and detected an additional 854,
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Jay TateScientists using the Herschel space observatory have made the first definitive detection of water vapor on the largest and roundest object in the asteroid belt, Ceres.
Plumes of water vapor are thought to shoot up periodically from Ceres when portions of its icy surface warm slightly.
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Jay TateA new study might contain some bad news for companies hoping to mine asteroids for their valuable ores.
In the last couple of years, start-ups – including one backed by Sir Richard Branson – have announced plans to extract resources from space rocks.
But calculations by Dr Martin Elvis suggest our cosmic neighbourhood might not be such a treasure trove after all.
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Jay TateThe list of major meteor showers hasn’t changed much in recent decades, but it has changed a little. Meteor showers are part of nature, after all, and the list of major showers shifts and changes slightly, as all things in nature do, with one shower or another becoming more or less exciting as the years pass.
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Jay TateUniversity of Maryland undergraduates have impressed professional astronomers by finding a rare pair of asteroids that orbit and regularly eclipse one another.
The students in an undergraduate astronomy class confirmed that a previously unstudied asteroid, dubbed 3905 Doppler, is in fact two asteroids gravitationally tied to each other,
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Jay TateNASA’s Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen asteroid — its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation last year.
NEOWISE originally was called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), which had made the most comprehensive survey to date of asteroids and comets.
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