Our observatories have now discovered a total of 30 056 near-Earth asteroids in the Solar System, setting a new milestone for humanity. The majority of these were discovered in the last decade, showing our ability to detect potentially risky asteroids is rapidly improving.
Astronomers at the University of Hawaii's Institute for Astronomy (UH IfA) have spotted a new asteroid with a comet-like tail moving in the same orbit as Jupiter. These objects are usually called Trojan asteroids, but this one was described to be the first one…
A new study has identified the first known permanent set of asteroids originating from outside our solar system. These are believed to have been captured from other stars billions of years ago, orbiting the Sun in disguise ever since. The findings came more than two…
Fewer large near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) remain to be discovered than astronomers thought, according to a new analysis by planetary scientist Alan W. Harris of MoreData! in La Canada, California. Harris is presenting his results this week at the 49th annual meeting…
In ESA's first-ever asteroid impact exercise, the agency and European disaster response offices recently rehearsed how to react if a threatening space rock is ever discovered to be on a collision course with Earth. They went through a countdown to an impact, practic
At a press conference held today at the Seattle Museum of Flight, three prominent astronauts supporting the B612 Foundation presented a visualization of new data showing the surprising frequency at which the Earth is hit by asteroids. The astronauts were guests of
NASA's Asteroid Data Hunter contest series will offer $35,000 in awards over the next six months to citizen scientists who develop improved algorithms that can be used to identify asteroids.
The first contest in the series will kick off on March
Our solar system seems like a neat and orderly place, with small, rocky worlds near the Sun and big, gaseous worlds farther out, all eight planets following orbital paths unchanged since they formed.
However, the true history of the solar system is more riotous.
As speculations claim essential resources for modern industry will extinct in upcoming years, ideas of mining the asteroids to extract minerals and bring them to Earth promise to cope with such inevitable problem. Scientists claim that minerals
Buried in the flood of data from the Kepler telescope is a planetary system unlike any seen before. Two of its apparent planets share the same orbit around their star. If the discovery is confirmed, it would bolster a theory that Earth once shared its orbit with a
