Jay TateBy Jonathan Amos, BBC science correspondent
Dusty samples from the “most dangerous known rock in the Solar System” have been brought to Earth.
The American space agency NASA landed the materials in a capsule that came down in the West Desert of Utah state.
The samples had been scooped up from the surface of asteroid Bennu in 2020 by the Osiris-Rex spacecraft.
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Jay Tate
A new study from the University of Washington represents a major advance in asteroid detection.
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Jay TateA weird asteroid has just gotten a little weirder.
We have known for a while that asteroid 3200 Phaethon acts like a comet. It brightens and forms a tail when it’s near the Sun, and it is the source of the annual Geminid meteor shower, even though comets are responsible for most meteor showers.
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Jay TateTo help guide NASA’s efforts over the next decade, the agency has released its Planetary Defense Strategy and Action Plan.
For three decades, NASA has engaged in studying near-Earth objects (NEOs), asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun and come within 30 million miles of our planet’s orbit.
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Jay TateScientists have explained what would happen if an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth to emphasize the need for planetary defense. The hypothetical asteroid scenario illustrates how an asteroid threat might evolve over several years and the potential devastation such a strike could cause.
The team led by the manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object (NEO) Program Office Paul Chodas presented the exercise at the 8th Planetary Defence Conference in Vienna,
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Jay TateThe chances have plummeted that a newly-discovered asteroid with the potential to wipe out a city will hit Earth on Valentine’s Day 2046, the European Space Agency said on Tuesday.
The asteroid, which is named 2023 DW and is estimated to be around the size of a 50-metre Olympic swimming pool,
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Jay TateValentine’s Day 2046 could be memorable for a number of reasons. Not only might you receive a card from an admirer you never knew you had, but you might also witness a large asteroid slamming into Earth and causing widespread devastation.
Hopefully the only delivery anyone will be getting that day is a card,
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Jay TateNo one saw the Chelyabinsk meteor of 15 February 2013 coming. Just after sunrise on a calm and sunny winter’s day, a 20-metre asteroid struck the atmosphere over the Ural Mountains in Russia, at a speed of more than 18 km/s.
The relatively small rock approached Earth from very near the direction of the Sun,
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Jay TateComet C/2022 E3 (ZTF) today makes its closest approach to Earth before likely leaving our Solar System forever. At billions of years old and not seen since Neanderthals roamed, the green comet continues to intrigue as it grows an apparent third tail and unexpectedly – but intriguingly – failed to wow scientists when observed in x-ray light.
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Jay TateA vast amount of rocks and other material are hurtling around our Solar System as asteroids and comets. If one of these came towards us, could we successfully prevent the collision between an asteroid and Earth?
Well, maybe. But there appears to be one type of asteroid that might be particularly hard to destroy.
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