NASA’s
Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission
released its fifth year of survey data on April 11, 2019. The five years of
NEOWISE data have significantly advanced scientists’ knowledge of asteroids and
comets in the solar system, as well as the stars and galaxies beyond.

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1. Why Asteroids Impact Earth

Why do asteroids and meteoroids collide with Earth?
These objects orbit the Sun just like the planets, as they have been doing for
billions of years, but small effects such as gravitational nudges from the
planets can jostle the orbits,

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A small asteroid has been caught in the process of
spinning so fast it’s throwing off material, according to new data from NASA’s
Hubble Space Telescope and other observatories. Images from Hubble show two
narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris streaming from the asteroid (6478)
Gault.

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Metallic asteroids are thought to have started out
as blobs of molten iron floating in space. As if that’s not strange enough,
scientists now think that as the metal cooled and solidified, volcanoes spewing
liquid iron could have erupted through a solid iron crust onto the surface of
the asteroid.

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Making a dent: Japan probe prepares to blast asteroid

A Japanese probe began descending towards an asteroid on Thursday on a mission to blast a crater into its surface and collect material that could shed light on the solar system’s evolution.

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Scientists to Conduct
Largest-Ever Hubble Survey of the Kuiper Belt

NASA’s Space Telescope Science Institute (STScI)
recently awarded Southwest Research Institute the largest Hubble Space
Telescope (HST) solar system program ever, with 206 of Hubble’s orbits around
the Earth allocated to the project.

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Hubble Space Telescope captured this striking image of asteroid (6478) Gault, showing two narrow, comet-like tails of dusty debris. Each tail represents an episode in which the asteroid gently shed its material – key evidence that Gault is beginning to come apart.…

Scientists have found an extraordinary snapshot of the fallout from the asteroid impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.

Excavations in North Dakota reveal fossils of fish and trees that were
sprayed with rocky,

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US detects huge meteor explosion

By Paul RinconScience editor, BBC News website,

A huge fireball
exploded in the Earth’s atmosphere in December, according to NASA.

The blast was the second largest of its kind in 30
years,

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When UC Santa Barbara geology professor emeritus
James Kennett and colleagues set out years ago to examine signs of a major
cosmic impact that occurred toward the end of the Pleistocene epoch, little did
they know just how far-reaching the projected climatic effect would be.

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