A few months ago, the asteroid 2006 QV89 grabbed headlines thanks to a slim chance of striking Earth this September. But now the potentially-hazardous space rock has missed its appointment. ESA has confirmed that the asteroid hasn’t appeared in the sky yet, ruling out an impact any time soon.
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The Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa 2 has successfully pulled off a second touchdown on the surface of the distant asteroid Ryugu. The risky dive saw the probe collect material that had been exposed during the creation of an artificial crater on April 5.
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It’s been suggested in the past that life could hitch a ride on asteroids or comets to jump from world to world – a process known as panspermia. Now, a Harvard team has calculated just how likely that scenario would be throughout the Milky Way. In short: extremely.
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Astronomers have discovered a weird star system that appears to be dimming completely at random, and none of the usual explanations seem to fit.
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In a neat bit of fast-paced detective work, NASA recently backtracked from an image of a meteor that exploded over the Carribean Sea and was able to confirm that it marked the demise of an asteroid that had only been detected 12 hours earlier.
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NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission to the asteroid Bennu has already brought about landmark moments for space exploration. Mission control has now moved the probe into tighter and tighter loops around the asteroid, setting a new record for the closest ever orbit of a planetary body.
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The South Pole-Aitken basin on the Moon is the largest impact crater in the solar system, measuring about 2,500 km (1,550 mi) across at its widest point. And now scientists have detected something strange buried under the crater.
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New research suggests some asteroids could actually be alien, captured during close flybys with other star systems. These close encounters could also explain objects like Oumuamua and might even provide an alternative to the “Planet Nine” hypothesis.
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The Japanese probe Hayabusa collected samples from the asteroid Itokawa and returned them to Earth in 2010. Now researchers from Arizona State University have discovered traces of water in those samples, adding weight to the idea that much of Earth’s water may have come from asteroid impacts.
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A tabletop exercise at the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) next week will consider a fictional scenario where an asteroid 100 to 300 m (330 to 990 ft) in diameter with a one-in-100 chance of striking the Earth on April 29, 2027 is detected.
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