Will we mine asteroids?
It's been said that a single asteroid might be worth trillions of dollars in precious rare metals. Will we ever reach out and mine these space rocks? How hard could it be?
It's been said that a single asteroid might be worth trillions of dollars in precious rare metals. Will we ever reach out and mine these space rocks? How hard could it be?
Space Exploration
Jan 9, 2015
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NASA is moving forward with a plan to develop a refrigerator-sized spacecraft capable of deflecting asteroids and preventing them from colliding with Earth.
Space Exploration
Jul 4, 2017
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An international team of astronomers has used ESO telescopes to investigate a relic of the primordial Solar System. The team found that the unusual Kuiper Belt Object 2004 EW95 is a carbon-rich asteroid, the first of its ...
Space Exploration
May 9, 2018
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284
It is known that gas giants around other stars are often located very near their sun. According to accepted theory, these gas planets were formed far away and subsequently migrated to an orbit closer to the star. Now, researchers ...
Astronomy
Mar 25, 2019
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Some 66 million years ago, a 10-kilometer asteroid hit Earth, triggering the extinction of the dinosaurs. New evidence suggests that the Chicxulub impact also triggered an earthquake so massive that it shook the planet for ...
Earth Sciences
Oct 6, 2022
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175
Was it a catastrophic collision in the star's asteroid belt? A giant impact that disrupted a nearby planet? A dusty cloud of rock and debris? A family of comets breaking apart? Or was it alien megastructures built to harvest ...
Astronomy
Nov 25, 2015
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1109
Astronomers have witnessed for the first time the breakup of an asteroid into as many as 10 smaller pieces. The discovery is published online March 6 in Astrophysical Journal Letters.
Astronomy
Mar 6, 2014
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When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu's surface in 2020, forces measured during the interaction provided scientists with a direct test of the poorly understood near-subsurface physical properties ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 7, 2022
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A team of scientists, astronomers and engineers meets weekly in a conference room on a Howard County, Md., research campus and plans to save the world.
Space Exploration
Feb 8, 2019
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An international team including a researcher from Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) has determined that one specific particle on the asteroid Ryugu can shed light on the unaltered initial materials from its parent ...
Astronomy
Sep 23, 2022
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552