Tag: Asteroids

When asteroids hurtle towards Earth in Hollywood films, astronauts often deploy nuclear warheads against them in order to save humanity. Now, scientists have found this strategy could actually help deflect an incoming cosmic impact — not by blowing an asteroid up with a nuke, but by exploding one more than a mile above its surface to shower it with X-ray radiation. As the catastrophic end of the Age of Dinosaurs about 66 million years ago reveals, cosmic impacts can have disastrous effects for life on Earth. “Asteroids aren’t just history…

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Debris from the impact of NASA’s DART spacecraft with the asteroid Dimorphos could reach Earth and Mars, astronomers have concluded. However, while the debris could result in meteors on Mars, it is rather unlikely we’ll see a meteor shower on Earth. DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, slammed into Dimorphos on Sept. 26, 2022, with the intention of testing whether a kinetic impact could nudge the orbit of a potentially hazardous asteroid away from Earth one day. The test passed with flying colors: Dimorphos was pushed into a shorter orbit…

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Rogue asteroids, to put it simply, pose a threat to Earth. Though there hasn’t been a cataclysmic event in about 65 million years, that’s not to say there haven’t been nail-biting moments during space rock flybys — in 2013, for instance, the Chelyabinsk asteroid slammed into Earth’s atmosphere “blazing like a second sun” and sending shockwaves through the surrounding area. Space agencies around the world understandably want to be prepared. To this end, NASA launched the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft in 2022, its first mission dedicated to demonstrating…

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The space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago was a rare strike from an asteroid beyond Jupiter, a new study details. The finding pins down the nature of the fateful space rock and its origin within our solar system, and may benefit technology that forecasts asteroid strikes on our planet. Most scientists agree that the Chicxulub impactor — named after the community in modern-day Mexico near the 90-mile-wide (145 kilometers) crater carved by the rock — came from within our solar system. But its precise origins…

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The unusual shapes of the tiny asteroids Dimorphos and Selam have perplexed astronomers for years, but a new study finally explains how they got so strange. It also suggests these bizarrely shaped “moonlets” may be more common than scientists thought. Binary asteroids — pairs of asteroids that are essentially mini versions of the Earth-moon system — are pretty common in our cosmic neighborhood. These include the Didymos-Dimorphos duo that headlined NASA’s 2022 Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. Previous research suggests that such binary asteroids form when a rubble-pile “parent”…

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I’m standing so close to JAXA’s Hayabusa2 asteroid lander that I could reach out and touch it. Instead, I jump on top of it. Then I strike a pose. When I leap off, I float for a moment in the low gravity before touching down gently on the surface of Ryugu, a craggy, gray world devoid of life and color.  The “I” in this situation is my avatar, a digital approximation of myself that has a more consistent beard length and isn’t constantly rubbing sleep from its eyes. The Hayabusa2…

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Today, astronomers and space lovers around the world are collectively marveling at our mercurial presence in the universe, particularly as we drift the cosmos amid large asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. June 30 marks Asteroid Day, a holiday observed annually to reflect on the prospect of a planet-destroying space rock striking Earth and what scientists are doing to mitigate that risk. The day is observed on the anniversary of the 1908 Tunguska event in Russia, when a space rock about half the…

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