Tag: Asteroids

A threatening asteroid could bring Earth’s oft-squabbling nations together, at least for a while. Dealing with a big, dangerous asteroid that appears to have our planet in its crosshairs will require a healthy dose of international cooperation, experts say — and it’s best to start thinking about that scenario now, while we have enough time to lay out a potential response framework. The United Nations (UN) has developed “procedures for responding to tsunamis and other big events,” Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) detailee to NASA’s Planetary…

Two bus-sized asteroids will zip past Earth closely but safely this week, starting with a 7-meter-long (22-feet) space rock named 2024 JF that’s expected to pass by on Monday (May 6) evening.  Astronomers expect 2024 JF to make its closest approach at 8:04 p.m. ET tonight (1204 GMT on Tuesday). It will be followed by the 10-meter-long (32-feet) asteroid named 2024 JR1, which is expected to make its closest approach on Tuesday (May 7). You can watch both encounters live starting on Monday at 3:30 p.m. ET (0730 GMT), courtesy…

When NASA’s Lucy mission passed by the near-Earth asteroid Dinkinesh last November, it discovered that Dinkinesh had a companion — a little moonlet that astronomers soon named Selam. And now, scientists have measured Selam’s age. Their estimate suggests that tiny Selam separated from its larger partner Dinkinesh just 2 to 3 million years ago, making Selam a toddler — by solar system standards, of course. “Finding the ages of asteroids is important to understanding them, and this one is remarkably young when compared to the age of the solar system,…

Earth’s “quasi-moon”  was likely blasted away from the actual moon relatively recently in the solar system’s history, a new study suggests.  Kamo’oalewa, a 131- to 328-foot-wide (40 to 100 meters) near-Earth object (NEO), was liberated by an asteroid impact between 1 million and 10 million years ago, a smashup that created the moon‘s 13.7-mile-wide (22 kilometers) Giordano Bruno crater, according to the research. Kamo’oalewa, or “469219 Kamoʻoalewa” as it is officially designated, was discovered in 2016 by the Pan-STARRS 1 asteroid survey telescope on Haleakalā, Hawaii, as part of NASA’s…

The Winchcombe meteorite, which fell to the ground in Gloucestershire in the U.K. after blazing a trail through the night sky on Feb. 28, 2021, came from an asteroid that had been heavily altered by water as well as smashed apart and reformed multiple times. That’s the conclusion of a detailed analysis of the meteorite, fragments of which were found scattered in fields near the village of Winchcombe, and even on one family’s driveway. It was the first meteorite fall in the U.K. to be retrieved since 1991. Thanks to…

A three-legged robot named SpaceHopper could help combat the challenges of exploring low-gravity environments, such as those found on asteroids or moons.  The SpaceHopper program was first launched two and a half years ago as a student research project at ETH Zurich university in Switzerland. And recently, researchers tested the hopping robot in a simulated zero-gravity environment during a European Space Agency parabolic flight, according to a statement from the university. The robot consists of a triangular body with an articulated leg at each corner. Each of these three legs…

The asteroid Apophis, infamous because it’s headed to brush past Earth in 2029, most likely isn’t something to worry about, a new study finds. This space rock, scientists calculated, will not collide with other space rocks that could worryingly alter its orbit and redirect it toward Earth — at least until the day it swings past our planet, that is. Apophis is a peanut-shaped, near-Earth asteroid leftover from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. It wobbles back and forth even while spinning on its axis…