Astronomers are pretty sure they know where the moon came from. In the early solar system, a Mars-sized object dubbed Theia smashed into Earth. This cataclysmic collision knocked a huge mass of material into orbit, which ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 4, 2024
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37
Using observations made with the Gran Telescopio Canarias (GTC) a study led from the Instituto de Astrofísica de Canarias (IAC) and the Universidad Complutense de Madrid (UCM) has confirmed that the asteroid 2023 FW14, discovered ...
Planetary Sciences
Mar 21, 2024
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134
After its successful first asteroid encounter in 2023, NASA's Lucy mission has its sights firmly set on its main targets, the never-before-explored Jupiter Trojan asteroids. In 2024, the Lucy spacecraft will transition from ...
Space Exploration
Jan 26, 2024
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2
NASA's Lucy spacecraft is preparing for its first close-up look at an asteroid. On Nov. 1, it will fly by asteroid Dinkinesh and test its instruments in preparation for visits in the next decade to multiple Trojan asteroids ...
Space Exploration
Oct 19, 2023
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55
A new study led by Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) Planetary Scientist and Associate Vice President Dr. Alan Stern posits that the large, approximately 5-kilometer-long mounds that dominate the appearance of the larger ...
Astronomy
Oct 3, 2023
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77
Some of the asteroids NASA's Lucy mission will visit are still more than 330 million miles (530 million kilometers) away from the spacecraft, which is more than three times the average distance between Earth and the sun. ...
Space Exploration
Apr 14, 2023
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27
Asteroids sharing their orbits with the planet Neptune have been observed to exist in a broad spectrum of red color, implying the existence of two populations of asteroids in the region, according to a new study by an international ...
Astronomy
Mar 28, 2023
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53
An international team of scientists, including NYU Abu Dhabi researcher Nikolaos Georgakarakos and others from the U.S., Japan, and China, led by Jian Li from Nanjing University, has developed new insights that may explain ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 17, 2023
0
171
On Oct. 16, at 7:04 a.m. EDT, NASA's Lucy spacecraft, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the Earth's atmosphere, passing a mere 220 miles (350 kilometers) above the surface. By swinging past Earth ...
Space Exploration
Oct 13, 2022
4
178
In our solar system, there are several thousand examples of co-orbital objects: bodies that share the same orbit around the sun or a planet. The Trojan asteroids are such an example. We have not yet observed any similar co-orbitals ...
Astronomy
May 26, 2022
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