Ever want to play a game of cosmic billiards? That's commonly how the DART mission was described when it successfully changed the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid last year. If you want an idea of how it works, just Google ...
Space Exploration
Nov 30, 2023
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Last September, NASA purposefully smashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos, a 160m-wide space rock orbiting a larger asteroid named Didymos. The goal of the mission, called DART (the Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was to demonstrate ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 6, 2023
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It is as inevitable as the rising of the sun and the turning of the tides. Someday another large rock from space will crash into the Earth. It has happened for billions of years in the past and will continue to happen for ...
Astronomy
May 18, 2023
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If you surfed the web this morning, you may have seen news of the latest existential threat to humanity: a "planet killer" asteroid named 2022 AP7.
Astronomy
Nov 2, 2022
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Watching the skies for large asteroids that could pose a hazard to Earth is a global endeavor. So, to test their operational readiness, the international planetary defense community will sometimes use a real asteroid's close ...
Astronomy
May 31, 2022
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A small asteroid hit Earth's atmosphere over the Norwegian Sea before disintegrating on March 11, 2022. But this event wasn't a complete surprise: Astronomers knew it was on a collision course, predicting exactly where and ...
Space Exploration
Mar 15, 2022
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Although the chance of an asteroid impacting Earth is small, even a relatively small asteroid of about 500 feet (about 150 meters) across carries enough energy to cause widespread damage around the impact site. NASA leads ...
Space Exploration
Dec 9, 2021
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In a study released Wednesday, NASA researchers used precision-tracking data from the agency's Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft to better understand ...
Astronomy
Aug 11, 2021
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NASA has approved the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope (NEO Surveyor) to move to the next phase of mission development after a successful mission review, authorizing the mission to move forward into Preliminary ...
Space Exploration
Jun 14, 2021
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The near-Earth object was thought to pose a slight risk of impacting Earth in 2068, but now radar observations have ruled that out.
Space Exploration
Mar 26, 2021
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