Astronomers have spotted an unusual asteroid with
the shortest “year” known for any asteroid. The rocky body, dubbed
2019 LF6, is about a kilometer in size and circles the Sun roughly every 151
days.

In its orbit, the asteroid swings out beyond Venus
and,

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An international team of asteroid and comet
experts, including two from the University of Hawaii, agrees on a natural
origin for our first interstellar visitor. On October 19, 2017, the Panoramic
Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System 1 (Pan-STARRS1) telescope,

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ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defence, being
designed to survey the smallest asteroid ever explored, is really three
spacecraft in one. The main mothership will carry two briefcase-sized CubeSats,
which will touch down on the target body. A French team has been investigating
what might happen at that initial instant of alien contact.

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Twenty-five years ago, humanity first witnessed a
collision between a comet and a planet. From July 16 to 22, 1994, enormous
pieces of the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 (SL9), discovered just a year prior,
crashed into Jupiter over several days, creating huge,

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For the first time, astronomers at the University
of Hawaii have demonstrated that their ATLAS and Pan-STARRS survey telescopes
can provide sufficient warning to move people away from the impact site of an
incoming asteroid. They detected a small asteroid prior to its entering the
Earth’s atmosphere near Puerto Rico on the morning of June 22,

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Every single day, many tons of tiny rocks – smaller
than pebbles – hit Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrate. Between frequent
shooting stars we wish on in the night sky and the massive extinction-level
asteroids that we hope we never see,

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Designed to explore a metal asteroid that could be
the heart of a planet, the Psyche mission is readying for a 2022 launch. After
extensive review, NASA Headquarters in Washington has approved the mission to
begin the final design and fabrication phase,

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Whenever scientists announce an upcoming close encounter with an
asteroid, certain corners of the internet light up like the synaptic rush that
accompanies a meth binge, with panicky headlines shouted straight from the
brain stem. But never mind that. We’re not that corner of the internet.

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By Jonathan AmosBBC Science Correspondent

Scientists think
the time has come for a full geophysical survey of The Minch, to see if the
Scottish strait is hiding an ancient meteorite crater.

The idea that such
a structure lies between the Western Isles and mainland Scotland was first
raised back in 2008.

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The unique capabilities of the SPHERE instrument on
ESO’s Very Large Telescope have enabled it to obtain the sharpest images of a
double asteroid as it flew by Earth on 25 May. While this double asteroid was
not itself a threatening object,

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