The White House has published a 25-page report on ‘National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy,’ detailing preparations in the event that a celestial object such as a ‘killer asteroid’ is found to be on a collision course with Earth.The report was written by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN).

…

NASA has selected two missions that have the potential to open new windows on one of the earliest eras in the history of our solar system – a time less than 10 million years after the birth of our sun.

…

NASA’s NEOWISE mission has recently discovered some celestial objects traveling through our neighborhood, including one on the blurry line between asteroid and comet. Another–definitely a comet–might be seen with binoculars through next week.

An object called 2016 WF9 was detected by the NEOWISE project on Nov.

…

NASA spacecraft finds that Ceres is full of water.

Asteroids might look dry and barren, but the Solar System’s biggest asteroid — Ceres — is chock full of water, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft has found.

“It’s just oozing,” says Thomas Prettyman,

…

NASA is certainly not in the business of spreading panic over asteroid strikes – every time one comes close, we see yet another press release telling us that all known ‘potentially hazardous asteroids’ have less than a 0.01 percent chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years.

…

The United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs (UNOOSA) is pleased to announce that the United Nations General Assembly (UNGA) has proclaimed that International Asteroid Day will be observed globally on 30 June every year. The decision was made during the 71st session of the UNGA on 6 December after a proposal by the Association of Space Explorers was endorsed by the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) during its 59th session in June.

…

A team of astronomers have obtained observations of the smallest asteroid – with a diameter of only two meters (six feet) – ever characterized in detail. The asteroid, named 2015 TC25, is also one of the brightest near-Earth asteroids ever discovered,

…

Growing up in the California desert, Qicheng Zhang developed an early appreciation for stars and the universal expanse beyond the sky. But his biggest space curiosity by far was with comets, those celestial bodies of ice, gas and dust, leftovers from the long-ago formation of stars and planets.

…

Scientists in Europe want to ensure the European Space Agency doesn’t abandon its plans to study and test the latest asteroid deflection technologies.

In a letter addressed to ESA, scientists encouraged the space agency to continue lending organizational and financial support to the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission.

…