Dwarf planets tend to be a mysterious bunch. With the exception of Ceres, which resides in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, all members of this class of minor planets in our solar system lurk in the depths beyond Neptune.

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Jupiter is hit by an average of 6.5 objects per year that create impacts large enough to be visible from Earth, according to preliminary results from a worldwide campaign by amateur astronomers to observe the giant planet.  The estimate was presented at an international workshop on Jupiter for professional and amateur astronomers organised by Europlanet 2020 Research Infrastructure at the Observatoire de la Côte d’Azur in Nice,

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Researchers in Australia recently found a collection of spherules, evidence of a massive asteroid that struck Earth as it was still forming.

Spherules are tiny glass beads formed from material vaporized in the intense heat of an asteroid impact.

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Asteroids are big bruisers that can lead to a bad day on Earth. Dealing with space rocks that are on-target to strike our planet has prompted a number of planetary defense ideas.

At the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) in California,

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The concept of commercializing space has become quite popular among entrepreneurs who sense that there are many possible profit-making opportunities awaiting adventurers willing to attempt exploitation of the last frontier. Over the past half-century few private companies have successfully exploited the space environment.

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Using the oldest fossil micrometeorites — space dust — ever found, Monash University-led research has made a surprising discovery about the chemistry of Earth’s atmosphere 2.7 billion years ago.

The findings of a new study published today in the journal Nature —

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Scientists have reached ground zero for one of the world’s most famous cataclysms. Burrowing into the impact structure responsible for the demise of the dinosaurs, a team of researchers has achieved one of its main goals, with rocks brought up from 670 meters beneath the sea floor off the coast of the Yucatán Peninsula in Mexico.

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Astronomers have discovered a new satellite orbiting the main belt asteroid (130) Elektra – the smallest object visible in this image. The team, led by Bin Yang (ESO, Santiago, Chile), imaged it using the extreme adaptive optics instrument, SPHERE, installed on the Unit Telescope 3 of ESO’s Very Large Telescope at Cerro Paranal,

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Peering to the outskirts of our solar system, NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has spotted a small, dark moon orbiting Makemake, the second brightest icy dwarf planet – after Pluto – in the Kuiper Belt.

The moon – provisionally designated S/2015 (136472) 1 and nicknamed MK 2 –

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In the category of why-didn’t-I think-of-that ideas, Dr. Geoffrey Evatt and colleagues from the University of Manchester struck upon a brilliant hypothesis: that a layer of iron meteories might lurk just below the surface of the Antarctic ice. He’s the lead author of a recent paper on the topic published in the open-access journal, 

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