Asteroids as a research area encompasses the scientific investigation of small rocky bodies primarily located in the asteroid belt and throughout the Solar System, focusing on their composition, internal structure, dynamical evolution, and role in planetary formation and collisional processes. This field integrates observational astronomy, spectroscopy, celestial mechanics, planetary geology, and space mission data to constrain asteroid taxonomies, surface and subsurface properties, impact hazards, and resource potential. Research addresses accretion and differentiation histories, space weathering, binary and rubble-pile formation, migration mechanisms, and their contribution to the delivery of volatiles and organics to terrestrial planets, providing constraints on early Solar System conditions.
The two CubeSat passengers aboard ESA's Hera mission for planetary defense have exchanged their first signals with Earth, confirming their nominal status. The pair were switched on to check out all their systems, marking ...
Space Exploration
Oct 28, 2024
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A Southwest Research Institute researcher collaborated with a team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to attempt to explain the presence of mysterious flow features that exist on the surfaces of airless celestial bodies, ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 21, 2024
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An international team led by three researchers from the CNRS, the European Southern Observatory (ESO, Europe), and Charles University (Czech Republic) has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 16, 2024
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The OSIRIS-REx project made history last year as the first U.S. mission to bring back an asteroid sample from space—and with it came a treasure trove of data. An international collaboration, led by Sandia National Laboratories ...
Planetary Sciences
Oct 14, 2024
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84
A small international team of astronomers and astrophysicists has confirmed that asteroid 2019 UO14 is a Trojan asteroid of Saturn. The team has posted a paper describing their study of the asteroid on the arXiv preprint ...
Earth's newest celestial neighbor has finally arrived. Astronomers using a powerful telescope in Sutherland, South Africa, first detected the 33-foot-long asteroid in August, reporting their discovery in Research Notes of ...
Space Exploration
Oct 10, 2024
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212
The European Space Agency's Hera spacecraft is on its way to do follow-up observations of Dimorphos, two years after an earlier probe knocked the mini-asteroid into a different orbital path around a bigger space rock.
Space Exploration
Oct 8, 2024
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46
An international team of researchers with a wide range of backgrounds has found evidence of asteroids providing the compounds necessary for life to get its start on Earth. In their paper published in the journal Nature Astronomy, ...
SpaceX returned to flight with its Falcon 9 rocket on Monday, sending up the Hera probe for the European Space Agency on its way to a pair of asteroids, but SpaceX and NASA have called off plans to launch the Falcon Heavy ...
Space Exploration
Oct 8, 2024
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67
Astronomers have good news about potentially hazardous asteroids lurking near our planet: There aren't as many as we thought.
Astronomy
Oct 7, 2024
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