IRON AND ICE

News About Asteroids And Comets

2,240 articles

NASA to Broadcast OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Collection Activities
Oct 15, 2020 (SPX)
Live coverage of the spacecraft's descent to the asteroid's surface for its "Touch-And-Go," or TAG, maneuver, which will be managed by Lockheed Martin Space nea...
Planetary astronomer co-authors studies of asteroid as member of NASA's OSIRIS-REx mission
Oct 09, 2020 (SPX)
Scientists believe Bennu may contain the molecular precursors to the origin of life and the Earth's oceans, so one of the mission's main objectives is to determ...
Scientists peer inside an asteroid
Oct 09, 2020 (SPX)
The results appear in a study published in the journal Science Advances and led by the University of Colorado Boulder's OSIRIS-REx team, including professors Da...
NASA's OSIRIS-REx unlocks more secrets from Asteroid Bennu
Oct 09, 2020 (SPX)
These discoveries complete the OSIRIS-REx mission's pre-sample collection science requirements and offer insight into the sample of Bennu that scientists will s...
SwRI scientists study the rugged surface of near-Earth asteroid Bennu
Oct 09, 2020 (SPX)
On October 20, the spacecraft will descend to the asteroid's boulder-strewn surface, touch the ground with its robotic arm for a few seconds and collect a sampl...
U.S. space mining policies may trigger regulatory 'race to the bottom,'
Oct 08, 2020 (UPI)
Earlier this year, NASA published a new set of rules for lunar mining and other space activities, dubbing the voluntary guidelines the "Artemis Accords." Aaron ...
Second Alignment Plane of Solar System Discovered
Sep 30, 2020 (SPX)
In the solar system, the planets and most other bodies move in roughly the same orbital plane, known as the ecliptic, but there are exceptions such as comets. C...
GMV to carry out the development phase of the GNC system to guide the HERA mission
Sep 30, 2020 (SPX)
The contract takes in the complete design of the interplanetary probe, integration and tests, including an advanced Guidance, Navigation and Control (GNC) syste...
NASA's OSIRIS-REx Begins its Countdown to TAG
Sep 29, 2020 (SPX)
On Oct. 20, the mission will perform the first attempt of its Touch-And-Go (TAG) sample collection event. This series of maneuvers will bring the spacecraft dow...
US probe to touch down on asteroid Bennu on October 20
Sep 24, 2020 (AFP)
Scientists hope the mission will help deepen our understanding of how planets formed and life began and provide insight on asteroids that could impact Earth. "Y...
School bus-size asteroid to safely zoom past Earth
Sep 23, 2020 (JPL)
Based on its brightness, scientists estimate that 2020 SW is roughly 15 to 30 feet (5 to 10 meters) wide - or about the size of a small school bus. Although it'...
SwRI instruments on Rosetta help detect ultraviolet aurora at comet
Sep 22, 2020 (SPX)
At Earth, auroras are formed when charged particles from the Sun follow our planet's magnetic field lines to the north and south poles. There, solar particles s...
Ryugu's rocky past laid bare
Sep 22, 2020 (SPX)
"Ryugu is too small to have survived the whole 4.6 billion years of solar system history," said Professor Seiji Sugita from the Department of Earth and Planetar...
Comet discovered to have its own northern lights
Sep 22, 2020 (JPL)
On Earth, aurora (also known as the northern or southern lights) are generated when electrically charged particles speeding from the Sun hit the upper atmospher...
Comet Chury's ultraviolet aurora
Sep 22, 2020 (SPX)
As an international team reported in the Nature Astronomy journal, the phenomenon has now been discovered at comet Chury. The solar wind's particles are respons...
OSIRIS-REx finds possible pieces of Vesta on Bennu
Sep 22, 2020 (SPX)
"We found six boulders ranging in size from 5 to 14 feet (about 1.5 to 4.3 meters) scattered across Bennu's southern hemisphere and near the equator," said Dani...
Mission set to collect sample from asteroid
Sep 21, 2020 (XNA)
Zhang Rongqiao, chief designer of China's Mars exploration effort, said on Friday that Chinese space authorities have chosen the 2016 HO3, a small asteroid, as ...
Ryugu's rubble suggests its short life has been rather turbulent
Sep 21, 2020 (UPI)
Some asteroids are composed of large, solid pieces of rock, but Ryugu is more like a rubble pile than a rock. It is too small and fragile to have remained intac...
Meteorite study calls into doubt a popular theory about the early solar system
Sep 17, 2020 (SPX)
We know from a range of sources, including ancient meteorites and planetary geology, that around this time there were vastly more collisions between, and impact...
Industry starts work on Europe's Hera planetary defence mission
Sep 16, 2020 (ESA)
Hera - named after the Greek goddess of marriage - will be, along with NASA's Double Asteroid Redirect Test (DART) spacecraft, humankind's first probe to rendez...
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