Today, astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world are collectively amazed by our erratic presence in the universe, especially as we drift through the cosmos among large asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago. June 30 is Asteroid Day, a holiday celebrated annually to reflect on the prospect of … Read more
An asteroid the size of a football stadium will pass between Earth and the moon on Saturday morning – the second of two astronomical near-misses in three days. Near miss in this case is a relative term: Saturday’s asteroid, 2024 MK, will come within 110,000 miles of Earth. Meanwhile, on Thursday, asteroid 2011 UL21 flew … Read more
Scientists are now inspecting hooked, bagged and tagged bits and pieces of the asteroid Bennu, the cosmic mother lode provided by NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security – Regolith Explorer mission. Known in acronym astro-speak as OSIRIS-REx, that seven-year journey brought the goods home via a sample return bus that came to a … Read more
In recent years there has been a wave of encounters and collisions with various asteroids. Interestingly, the composition of the asteroid debris clusters was surprising in several cases. Asteroid probes from several countries have found no solid objects, but numerous pieces of gravel and boulders loosely connected by the object’s small gravitational field. Lately, it … Read more