Jay TateIn January 2018, a falling meteorite created a bright fireball that arced over the outskirts of Detroit, Michigan, followed by loud sonic booms.
The visitor not only dropped a slew of meteorites over the snow-covered ground, it also provided information about its extra-terrestrial source.
Although tens of thousands of meteorites have been recovered by humans,
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Jay TateBy Jonathan Amos BBC Science Correspondent
A team of British scientists has arrived in the Antarctic to try to find the continent’s “missing meteorites”.
The group, from the University of Manchester, will spend six weeks scouring a remote region for lumps of iron that have fallen from the sky.
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Jay TateAnalysis of the impact craters on Ryugu using the spacecraft Hayabusa 2’s remote sensing image data has illuminated the geological history of the Near-Earth asteroid.
A research group led by Assistant Professor Naoyuki Hirata of the Department of Planetology at Kobe University’s Graduate School of Science revealed 77 craters on Ryugu.
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Jay TateBy Mike McRae
In the state of Western Australia sits the famous Wolfe Creek crater, the aftermath of a 14,000-tonne meteorite crashing into Earth thousands of years ago. A new study now claims the impact happened far more recently than we suspected, prompting a rethink on how often giant space rocks actually strike our planet.
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Jay TateComets are known to have a temper. As they swoop in from the outer edges of our solar system, these icy bodies begin spewing gas and dust as they venture closer to the Sun. Their luminous outbursts can result in spectacular sights that grace the night sky for days, weeks or even months.
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Jay TateHaving spent much of the 21st century developing planetary defence techniques, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart is a strong supporter of ESA’s proposed Hera mission. In general, when it comes to asteroid deflection, he says, two spacecraft are better than one.
“For asteroid deflection by kinetic impact, we stopped talking about a single deflection mission and we’ve started talking about a deflection campaign instead,
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Jay TateAstronomers using ESO’s SPHERE instrument at the Very Large Telescope (VLT) have revealed that the asteroid Hygiea could be classified as a dwarf planet. The object is the fourth largest in the asteroid belt after Ceres, Vesta and Pallas.
For the first time, astronomers have observed Hygiea in sufficiently high resolution to study its surface and determine its shape and size.
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Jay TateA Southwest Research Institute scientist is helping NASA observe and characterize near-Earth objects (NEOs) that could pose a threat to Earth or have potential for further exploration. SwRI’s Dr. Tracy Becker is part of an international team of scientists who will use the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico to study nearby asteroids and comets through a $19 million grant managed by the University of Central Florida (UCF).
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Jay TateGregory Laughlin and Malena Rice weren’t exactly surprised a few weeks ago when they learned that a second interstellar object had made its way into our solar system.
The Yale University astronomers had just put the finishing touches on a new study suggesting that these strange, icy visitors from other planets are going to keep right on coming.
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Jay TateEarth will soon lose a key tool in the fight to spot potentially hazardous asteroids — and NASA has decided to fund a custom-built replacement.
NASA wants to build a space telescope to survey the sky in infrared light, a much-needed boost in its program to identify and track asteroids in Earth’s immediate neighborhood.
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