A stadium-sized asteroid tumbled harmlessly past Earth this month as a powerful NASA radar system watched. Asteroid 2008 OS7 passed by Earth on Feb. 2, 2024 at a safe distance of 1.8 million miles (2.9 million kilometers), about 7.5 times farther than the Earth-moon distance. While there was no risk of the space rock harming our planet, scientists with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) used the sophisticated Goldstone Solar System Radar (GSSR) to produce a series of images of the asteroid as it passed by us. The new observations helped…
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Geminid meteors may be 10 times older than thought, simulations of oddball asteroid Phaethon suggest
The rocks making up the Geminid meteor shower that occurs towards the end of every year may have been born through a chaotic event 18,000 years ago, a new study suggests — potentially making the meteoroids about 10 times older than previously estimated. The Geminid shower is named after the constellation Gemini — the position in the sky from which the meteors seem to appear. But the meteors actually originate from 3200 Phaethon, a bizarre blue asteroid that swings along a watermelon-shaped orbit to come within just 0.14 astronomical units…
Read MoreHuge stadium-sized asteroid will make its closest approach to Earth for centuries today (Feb. 2)
A “potentially hazardous” football stadium-size asteroid will zip safely past Earth on Friday (Feb. 2), and, in doing so, will reach its closest point to our planet for more than 100 years. It will also be at least several centuries before the space rock ever gets this close to us again. The massive asteroid, named 2008 OS7, is around 890 feet (271 meters) across and will pass by Earth at a distance of around 1.77 million miles (2.85 million kilometers), according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). For context, that…
Read MoreNASA Asteroid Sampling Mission Renamed OSIRIS-APEX for New Journey
5 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) At the end of a long-haul road trip, it might be time to kick up your feet and rest awhile – especially if it was a seven-year, 4 billion-mile journey to bring Earth a sample of asteroid Bennu. But OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer), the NASA mission that accomplished this feat in September, is already well on its way (with a new name) to explore a new destination. When OSIRIS-REx left Bennu in…
Read MoreSpace weather will drag NASA’s NEOWISE asteroid-hunting probe back to Earth in 2025
After more than a decade of hunting for asteroids and comets, the days of NASA’s NEOWISE mission are officially numbered. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California (JPL) just announced that the NEOWISE mission will come to an end within just a few years. JPL mission planners expect that solar activity will drag the space telescope out of orbit, and to a fiery death in Earth’s atmosphere, by 2025. “The mission has planned for this day a long time,” Joseph Masiero, a planetary scientist at the California Institute of Technology…
Read MoreAn asteroid will eclipse the puzzling red star Betelgeuse on Dec. 11
A rare astronomical event will be perfectly positioned in the night sky on Monday (Dec. 11) for some parts of the world. On that evening, an asteroid will pass in front of the curious red star Betelgeuse, eclipsing it from our vantage point here on Earth and blocking it from view for up to 15 seconds in an event known as an occultation. The asteroid is known as 319 Leona, a main belt object that orbits the sun between Mars and Jupiter. Shaped roughly like an egg, 319 Leona measures…
Read MoreNASA’s Psyche spacecraft finds its ‘first light’ while zooming to a metal asteroid (image)
It was a big day for NASA’s Psyche spacecraft on Dec. 4, the day the probe finally opened its eyes to the universe. Since launching atop a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket on Oct. 13 — the first interplanetary mission for the Heavy, in fact — Psyche has been essentially traveling the cosmos in darkness, as scientists had yet to turn on the solar-winged craft’s cameras. It’s currently on its way to study the asteroid for which it’s named, 16 Psyche, that sits somewhere between our fellow solar system planets Mars…
Read MoreNASA’s Psyche Delivers First Images and Other Data
5 Min Read NASA’s Psyche Delivers First Images and Other Data This mosaic was made from “first light” images acquired Dec. 4 by both of the cameras on NASA’s Psyche spacecraft. The star field lies in the constellation Pisces. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU The mission team has celebrated several successes since its launch from Kennedy Space Center on Oct. 13. The latest is the operation of the spacecraft’s cameras. NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is on a roll. In the eight weeks since it left Earth on Oct. 13, the orbiter has performed one…
Read MoreStrange moon of asteroid Dinkinesh is weirder than thought after NASA probe finds ‘contact binary’ (photo)
Asteroid Dinkinesh continues to surprise us. On Nov. 1, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past this space rock, marking the first of several asteroid encounters the probe is designed to make. Lucy’s goal is to ultimately explore a set of asteroids near Jupiter, known as the Trojans, which are thought to hold clues about the earliest days of our solar system; these objects may be able to shed light on the origins of life on Earth. But, on the way to those Trojans, Lucy has a couple of stops — including…
Read MoreSmithsonian debuts 1st display of asteroid Bennu sample brought back by OSIRIS-REx
A sizable crowd turned out to see a small rock on Friday (Nov. 3), as the Smithsonian debuted the first display of a piece of the asteroid Bennu from the sample brought back to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The institution’s National Museum of Natural History in Washington, D.C. hosted NASA Administrator Bill Nelson and other space agency and Smithsonian officials at an unveiling ceremony for the well-traveled pebble. The OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security-Regolith Explorer) spacecraft safely landed its sample return capsule on Sept. 24 in…
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