By Jonathan Amos  BBC Science Correspondent

A team of UK scientists has provided a new estimate for the amount of space rock falling to Earth each year.

It’s in excess of 16,000kg. This is for meteorite material above 50g in mass.

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Tales of people being killed by meteorite impacts date back to biblical times. But few deaths, if any, have been documented. Now, Turkish researchers have uncovered the earliest evidence that a meteorite killed one man and paralyzed another when it slammed into a hilltop in what is now Iraq in August 1888.

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The Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico is following an asteroid approaching Earth this week and while it poses no threat, it appears to know our planet is facing a pandemic.

“The small-scale topographic features such as hills and ridges on one end of asteroid 1998 OR2 are fascinating scientifically,”

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A new study has identified the first known permanent population of asteroids originating from outside our solar system. The objects are believed to have been captured from other stars billions of years ago, and have been orbiting our Sun in disguise ever since.

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Impact cratering both produces new regolith and causes seismic events that can degrade and erase small craters on the surface of asteroids, a paper by Planetary Science Institute Senior Scientist James Richardson says.

The impact of small bodies hitting an asteroid pulverizes its surface,

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The first known comet to visit us from another star system has an unusual make-up, according to new research.

The interstellar comet 2I/Borisov was detected in our Solar System last year.

This mysterious visitor from the depths of space has provided astronomers with an unprecedented opportunity to study how different it is from comets that have been formed around the Sun.

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Comet breakups are a timely topic right now. The interstellar comet 2I/Borisov just broke into at least two pieces. And though that comet is speeding out of the Solar System, never to be seen again, most of them don’t leave the Solar System.

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After the successful completion of its “Checkpoint” rehearsal, NASA’s first asteroid-sampling spacecraft is one step closer to touching down on asteroid Bennu. Yesterday, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performed the first practice run of its sample collection sequence, reaching an approximate altitude of 246 feet (75 meters) over site Nightingale before executing a back-away burn from the asteroid.

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In August, a robotic spacecraft will make NASA’s first-ever attempt to descend to the surface of an asteroid, collect a sample, and ultimately bring it safely back to Earth. In order to achieve this challenging feat, the OSIRIS-REx mission team devised new techniques to operate in asteroid Bennu’s microgravity environment –

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The simulation tests are currently in full swing, as the astrophysicist community is looking forward to the so-called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission – the first kinetic impact deflection probe to be carried out on a near-Earth asteroid.

Researchers at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California have moved further in their efforts to simulate how they might deflect celestial bodies potentially heading to and potentially hitting the Earth (although the latter is highly improbable),

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