Jay TateThe first-ever mission to demonstrate an asteroid deflection technique for planetary defense has moved into the final design and assembly phase, following NASA’s approval on Aug. 16.
The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), being designed, built and managed by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland,
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Jay TateAsteroids deemed potentially hazardous by officials at the US’ National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) are set to swing past Earth this week, starting on Tuesday.
The first, 2016 NFB23, will fly past Earth Tuesday at roughly 11:38 p.m. EDT at a lunar distance of about 13.2, which translates to more than 3.1 million miles from our home planet,
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Jay TateThere is just over two months to go until asteroid 2015 TB145 approaches Earth once again, just as it did in 2015 around the night of Halloween, an occasion which astronomers did not pass up to study its characteristics. This dark object measures between 625 and 700 metres, its rotation period is around three hours and,
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Jay TateUnderstanding the origin and time evolution of near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) is an issue of scientific interest and practical importance because they are potentially hazardous to the Earth. However, when and how these NEAs were formed and what they suffered during their lifetime remain enigmas.
Japanese scientists, including those from Osaka University,
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Jay TateAfter traveling for two years and billions of kilometers from Earth, the OSIRIS-REx probe is only a few months away from its destination: the intriguing asteroid Bennu. When it arrives in December, OSIRIS-REx will embark on a nearly two-year investigation of this clump of rock, mapping its terrain and finding a safe and fruitful site from which to collect a sample.
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Jay TateNASA’s efforts to better understand asteroid impacts has found unexpected support from a new satellite sensor designed to detect lightning. New research published in the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science finds that the new Geostationary Lightning Mapper, or GLM, on two weather satellites is able to pick up signals of meteors in Earth’s atmosphere.
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Jay TateNext time when your kids ask you to bring them a star from the sky, you don’t have to shrug and walk away. Tell them to wait, instead.
A group of Chinese scientists are mulling a bold idea to capture a small near-Earth asteroid, which might be a potential threat,
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Jay TateNASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies Enters Third Decade. On March 11, 1998, asteroid astronomers around the world received an ominous message: new observational data on the recently discovered asteroid 1997 XF11 suggested there was a chance that the half-mile-wide (nearly one kilometer) object could hit Earth in 2028.
The message came from the Minor Planet Center,
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Jay TateSurprise — it’s twins!
That’s the realization that struck astronomers in June after they set out to study a near-Earth asteroid called 2017 YE5, which NASA today (July 12) announced is actually two asteroids, a pair of objects orbiting each other.
The bouncing-baby asteroids were revealed by three radar telescopes,
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Jay TateBy Eric Mack
The bus-sized pieces of space debris whipped by us at relatively close range over the weekend.
They almost snuck by undetected, but two small asteroids were discovered over the weekend just hours after they whizzed past us about 72,000 miles away — about one-third the distance to the moon.
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