asteroid
NASA has detected that an asteroid will come daringly close to Earth, though it won’t hit our planet. According to a press release from the space agency, the asteroid is roughly “the size of a box truck… is predicted to make one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded.” The asteroid, called […]
It wasn’t quite the asteroid that wiped out humanity in Don’t Look Up, but Canadian Julie Bellerose was at the controls of a NASA space probe that deflected an asteroid during a planetary defence test. On Sept. 26, a space probe called Dart hit an asteroid moving faster than 22,500 km/h, millions of kilometres away from the planet. […]
NASA is on a new mission to test whether using a spacecraft to deflect an asteroid really works. NBC News reports that this is the first time NASA has run an assessment like this—and is doing so to see if it can safeguard the planet from getting hit by a disastrous space rock in the future, […]
An asteroid the size of a skyscraper made a “relatively close” approach to Earth on Tuesday. According to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory website, the “potentially hazardous” space object—called 2021 KT1—is believed to be about 600 feet in diameter, which would make it bigger than the Washington Monument and about the size of the Seattle Space Needle. NASA […]
On Monday, a NASA spacecraft filled with asteroid rubble, called Osiris-REx, started its journey back to Earth. It should be here in *checks watch* roughly two-and-a-half years. Osiris-REx first got to asteroid Bennu in 2018. For two years it flew near/around it. Then it touched down and collected debris. It’s estimated to be holding somewhere between half a […]
NASA is taking the “better safe than sorry” approach. Earlier this week, the space agency kicked off a five-day “tabletop exercise” that simulates a hypothetical asteroid impact on Earth—a scenario that reportedly remains very unlikely at this point. The exercise, which is being lead by Center for Near Earth Object Studies, aims to test how experts and agencies […]
An asteroid thought to be one of the biggest threats to strike the planet when it was first discovered back in 2004 is now being dismissed as a non-issue (at least for the foreseeable future) after astronomers were able to better assess its trajectory. Check back in 100+ years. Previously the object, dubbed ‘99942 Apophis,’ was believed […]
A new report from the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy indicates that a 1,000-foot-wide asteroid called Apophis may pass very close to Earth in 2068. While tracking the asteroid, which is named after the Egyptian god of chaos, scientists found it has sped up due to an orbital process called the Yarkovsky effect. “The new […]
NASA confirmed its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has successfully touched down on Bennu—a carbonaceous asteroid located about 200 million miles from Earth. The agency shared video of the spacecraft’s touch-and-go operation, in which it briefly landed on the astroid to swipe rocks and dust that are billions of years old. NASA says those samples, which are expected to be delivered to Earth in […]
An asteroid is set to buzz by Earth but not kill everyone, according to NASA. As you may be aware this happens on occasion. The agency put out a tweet this past Friday stating that, on September 1, asteroid 2011 ES4 will miss Earth by 45,000 miles, which is close when you consider the universe is […]
