IRON AND ICE

News About Asteroids And Comets

2,240 articles

ESA and JAXA weigh joint effort for Apophis flyby mission
Sep 01, 2025 (SPX)
The proposed Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) would rendezvous with the 375 m asteroid and monitor how Earth's gravity alters its physical state ...
Bennu samples reveal shifting asteroid colors as planetary scientist links spectra to surface ages
Aug 26, 2025 (SPX)
It also enables future research. By having a better understanding and comparing what telemetry and telescope data say about an asteroid with what its actual sur...
Close-up views of NASA's DART impact to inform planetary defense
Aug 22, 2025 (SPX)
The message prompted the spacecraft to execute a series of pre-programmed commands that caused a small, shoebox-sized satellite contributed by the Italian Space...
Two different types of asteroids may actually share same origin story
Aug 22, 2025 (SPX)
Asteroids are organized by researchers into categories based on similar characteristics, and a recent paper published in The Planetary Science Journal, led by I...
Asteroid family link strengthened by SwRI analysis of Bennu and Ryugu
Aug 22, 2025 (SPX)
The team compared Polana spectroscopy data with spacecraft and laboratory results from Ryugu and Bennu, revealing strong similarities in their near-infrared spe...
Ceres once held deep energy reserves that may have supported life
Aug 21, 2025 (SPX)
New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms....
Fireball lights up Japanese skies
Aug 20, 2025 (AFP)
A flashing fireball dashed across the skies of western Japan, shocking residents and dazzling stargazers, though experts said it was a natural phenomenon and no...
Comet water analysis strengthens link to Earth origins
Aug 18, 2025 (SPX)
An international team led by Martin Cordiner of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center mapped ordinary water (H2O) and heavy water (HDO) in the comet's coma during ...
Destructive cosmic airbursts likely more common than previously believed
Aug 18, 2025 (SPX)
"Touchdown events can cause extreme damage through very high temperatures and pressures," Kennett said. "And yet they don't necessarily form a crater, or they f...
Hera spacecraft tests asteroid tracking with distant Otero and Kellyday observations
Aug 08, 2025 (SPX)
Launched on 7 October 2024, Hera used a Mars flyby in March 2025 to set its course for arrival at Didymos and Dimorphos in late 2026. On 11 May 2025, the spacec...
Perseid meteor shower set to peak Aug. 12-13
Aug 06, 2025 (UPI)
The shower takes place each year when the Earth barrels through the trail of ancient debris from the Comet Swift-Tuttle. As the Earth's atmosphere collides with...
Heliostat arrays eyed for asteroid detection during nighttime hours
Jul 30, 2025 (SPX)
"Heliostat fields don't have a night job. They just sit there unused," said Sandusky. "The nation has an opportunity to give them a night job at a relatively lo...
Seismic signatures reveal fragmentation patterns of fireball meteoroids
Jul 24, 2025 (SPX)
The Hayabusa2 re-entry provided a rare opportunity to benchmark seismic signatures due to the known trajectory and timing of its descent. By comparing the capsu...
Tianwen-2 radar to reveal inner secrets of asteroids and comets
Jul 22, 2025 (SPX)
Asteroids and comets serve as time capsules of the solar system's origins, containing largely unaltered primordial materials. With minimal exposure to planetary...
Newly discovered interstellar object 'may be oldest comet ever seen'
Jul 14, 2025 (SPX)
The "water ice-rich" visitor, named 3I/ATLAS, is only the third known object from beyond our solar system ever spotted in our cosmic neighbourhood and the first...
Massive Boulders Ejected During DART Mission Complicate Future Asteroid Deflection Efforts
Jul 11, 2025 (SPX)
When NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the asteroid moon Dimorphos in September 2022, it didn't just change the asteroid's orbit as intended-it unleashed a ma...
Comet believed to be 3 billion years older than our solar system
Jul 11, 2025 (UPI)
University of Oxford scientists said the 3I/ATLAS comet could be some 3 billion years older than our solar system, which is believed to be 4.5 billion years old...
NASA spacecraft captures detailed images of Donaldjohanson asteroid
Jul 07, 2025 (SPX)
Mission engineers describe the event as a crucial dress rehearsal ahead of Lucy's primary science targets, the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. The results have booste...
Third-ever confirmed interstellar object blazing through Solar System
Jul 03, 2025 (AFP)
The visitor from the stars, designated 3I/Atlas, is likely the largest yet detected, and has been classified as a comet, or cosmic snowball. "It looks kind of f...
Asteroid 2024 YR4 poses low risk of Moon impact in 2032
Jun 30, 2025 (SPX)
Despite this reassurance, the final recorded trajectory of 2024 YR4 left a lingering 4% probability of impacting the Moon on 22 December 2032. That estimate is ...
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