IRON AND ICE

News About Asteroids And Comets

2,240 articles

NASA Mission helps solve a mystery: why are some asteroid surfaces rocky?
Oct 25, 2021 (SPX)
But when NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission arrived at Bennu in late 2018, the mission saw a surface covered in boulders. The mysterious lack of fine regolith became eve...
SwRI-led team produces a new Earth Bombardment Model
Oct 25, 2021 (SPX)
When large asteroids or comets struck early Earth, the energy released melted and vaporized rocky materials in the Earth's crust. The small droplets of molten r...
Astronomers detect signs of an atmosphere stripped from a planet during giant impact
Oct 21, 2021 (SPX)
Now astronomers at MIT, the National University of Ireland Galway, Cambridge University, and elsewhere have discovered evidence of a giant impact that occurred ...
DART arrives at Vandenberg for a late November launch
Oct 21, 2021 (SPX)
The truck, spacecraft and a small motorcade of APL engineers and technicians pulled into Vandenberg Space Force Base near Lompoc, California, on Saturday, Oct. ...
Is Planetary Defense PI in the Sky?
Oct 18, 2021 (SPX)
Little did they realize as they prepared for the once-in-several-decades event that another bit of celestial debris was hurtling toward Earth, with a more direc...
To watch a comet form, a spacecraft could tag along for a journey toward the sun
Oct 18, 2021 (SPX)
This is thought to be the source of many of the comets that eventually pass Earth. A new study lays out the dynamics of this little-understood system. Among the...
Highly porous rocks responsible for Bennu's surprisingly craggy surface
Oct 18, 2021 (SPX)
But when the spacecraft of NASA's University of Arizona-led OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission arrived at Bennu in late 2018, the mission team saw a surf...
How the Sun Affects Asteroids in Our Neighborhood
Oct 18, 2021 (SPX)
Over the next 12 years, NASA's Lucy mission will visit eight asteroids - including seven Trojans - to help answer big questions about planet formation and the o...
NASA launches Lucy probe to explore Jupiter asteroids
Oct 16, 2021 (AFP)
The Atlas V rocket responsible for propelling the probe took off at 5:34 am local time (0934 GMT) from Cape Canaveral. Named after an ancient fossil of a pre-hu...
NASA, ULA pursue precision launch for Lucy asteroid mission
Oct 13, 2021 (UPI)
The launch period will begin the earliest possible attempt at 5:34 a.m. EDT Saturday from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station in Florida. The launch is to send t...
Late-time small-body disruptions can protect the Earth
Oct 07, 2021 (SPX)
A kinetic impactor or a standoff nuclear explosion can achieve a deflection. However, if the warning time is too short to stage a successful deflection, another...
Dwarf planet Vesta a window to the early solar system
Oct 07, 2021 (SPX)
Vesta is the second-largest body in the asteroid belt at 500 kilometers across. It's big enough to have evolved in the same way as rocky, terrestrial bodies lik...
Rare micrometeorite may have originated from a Ceres-like asteroid
Oct 06, 2021 (SPX)
They will be presenting the results of their study at the 53rd annual American Astronomical Society's Division for Planetary Sciences conference, being held vir...
Is new finding an asteroid a comet or both
Oct 05, 2021 (SPX)
"This behavior strongly indicates that its activity is due to the sublimation of icy material," said Hsieh, lead author of the paper "Physical Characterization ...
Unique asteroid holds clues to early Solar System
Oct 05, 2021 (SPX)
Called Psyche, this asteroid orbits the Sun in the main asteroid belt, between Mars and Jupiter. Using data gathered from Earth-based radar and optical telescop...
UAE spacecraft to explore asteroid belt after Mars success
Oct 05, 2021 (AFP)
The five-year journey from 2028 will traverse 3.6 billion kilometres (2.2 billion miles), with the unmanned craft drawing on gravity assists from Earth and Venu...
'Mini Psyches' give insights into mysterious metal-rich near-earth asteroids
Oct 04, 2021 (SPX)
New research, published in the Planetary Science Journal, investigated two metal-rich asteroids in our own cosmic backyard to learn more about their origins, co...
Dust collected from a speeding asteroid analyzed with massive accelerator
Oct 04, 2021 (SPX)
A team of scientists with Argonne and the University of Chicago is among the few groups around the world chosen to study tiny fragments of an asteroid. These du...
Study finds evidence of the origin of metal-rich near-earth asteroids
Oct 04, 2021 (SPX)
"We find that both NEAs are composed of mostly metal and a small fraction of silicate minerals, similar to mesosiderites, a rare type of stony-iron meteorites f...
NASA's Lucy science mission will fly by eight asteroids
Oct 01, 2021 (UPI)
The spacecraft for the $981 million mission is at Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations, which include packing atop an Atlas V rocket for its 12-year voy...
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