Houston, we may have a problem! A rare, colossal-sized asteroid is on course to fly by Earth — and will come closer to our planet than any other rocks of its size in human history. The asteroid, named Apophis after the ancient Egyptian God of evil and destruction, is believed to span about 1,230 feet … Read more
Talk about a sugar rush! NASA may have just come a little closer to cracking one of science’s most enduring mysteries — how life on Earth got started. The space agency has reportedly discovered life-giving essential sugars on the asteroid Bennu, a 500-meter-wide rock hurtling through space, some 200 million miles from our planet. NASA cracked … Read more
Our blue moon will no longer be standing alone. Jupiter, eat your heart out: Earth will be getting a second moon in the form of Asteroid 2024 PT5, which will start orbiting our planet later this month. The space rock’s celestial sojourn was detailed recently in a study published in the non-peer-reviewed journal AAS Research Notes. … Read more
Are we about to get “rocked?” NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has issued a warning for a monstrous asteroid that is expected to rocket past Earth on Tuesday evening. Dubbed 2024 ON, the celestial space rock measures 950 feet in diameter — approximately the size of a football stadium. The entity is being monitored by the … Read more
Rock on. Asteroid debris from a moonlet that was partially exploded by a NASA spacecraft could soar across the skies of Earth and create a stunning light show. Rocket scientist Dr. Eloy Peña-Asensio, from the Polytechnic Institute of Milan, made the claim after studying the effects of the 2022 mission. “Their [the rock pieces] small … Read more
We may no longer have to fear unseen Empire State Building-sized space rocks passing within our orbit. Asteroid hunters have identified 27,500 overlooked near-Earth asteroids using cutting-edge tech that could potentially stave off armageddon in the future. Instead of stargazing with a traditional telescope, researchers devised a novel algorithm called Tracklet-less Heliocentric Orbit Recovery, or … Read more
That asteroid in the sky appeared closer than it seemed. An asteroid nearly the size of a double-decker bus — or “six adult Indian peacocks,” according to the Jerusalem Post — passed by Earth late Wednesday night, at 11:37 p.m. Eastern time. The giant rock, called 2024 DW, was anticipated to come as close as … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists. It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini-moon. The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. … Read more
This discovery could rock our world. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has collected samples from Bennu — a 4.5 billion-year-old “near-Earth” asteroid that has a slight chance of a planetary collision 159 years from now — and they could show, as the agency described it, “the building blocks of life on Earth.” NASA’s Origins, … Read more
It’s a bird, it’s a plane, it’s a “potentially hazardous asteroid.” On July 18, 2023, an algorithm called HelioLinc3D identified a 600-foot asteroid, which has since been christened “2022 SF289.” Though the name doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, the discovery is a massive achievement. Partnering with the University of Hawaii’s NASA-funded ATLAS project, which … Read more
CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — An asteroid big enough to wipe out a city will zip harmlessly between Earth and the moon’s orbit this weekend, missing both celestial bodies. Saturday’s close encounter will offer astronomers the chance to study a space rock from just over 100,000 miles away. That’s less than half the distance from here … Read more
Don’t look up. A top NASA scientist is warning that the threat of a massive asteroid striking Earth is much more fearsome than previously thought to be. In the words of James Garvin, chief scientist of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, “it would be in the range of serious crap happening.” Garvin — who presented … Read more