On the way to investigate the scene of a historic asteroid collision, a European spacecraft swung by Mars and captured rare images of the red planet's mysterious small moon Deimos, the European Space Agency (ESA) said Thursday.
Last year, astronomers detected the near-earth asteroid (NEA) 2024 YR4, which orbits the sun every four years and periodically crosses Earth's orbit. The nature of its orbit makes it a potentially hazardous object (PHO), ...
New information is pushing Asteroid 2024 YR4 off of our front pages. Initial estimates gave it a 2.8% chance of striking Earth in 2032. Now, the European Space Agency says the chance of it striking our planet is down to a ...
NASA's Lucy spacecraft has its next flyby target, the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson, in its sights. By blinking between images captured by Lucy on Feb. 20 and 22, this animation shows the perceived motion of Donaldjohanson ...
How can we explore Saturn's moon, Enceladus, to include its surface and subsurface ocean, with the goal of potentially discovering life as we know it? This is what a recent study presented at the American Geophysical Union ...
In December 2024, astronomers in Chile spotted a new asteroid streaking through the sky, which they named 2024 YR4. What's significant about this 100m-wide space rock is that it has a small chance of hitting Earth in 2032.
We all know that asteroids are out there, that some of them come dangerously close to Earth, and that they've struck Earth before with catastrophic consequences. The recent discovery of asteroid 2024 YR4 reminds us of the ...
When Earth first formed, it was too hot to retain ice. This means all the water on our planet must have originated from extraterrestrial sources. Studies of ancient terrestrial rocks suggest liquid water existed on Earth ...
When astronomers detected the first known interstellar object, 'Oumuamua, in 2017, it sparked a host of new studies trying to understand the origin and trajectory of the galactic sojourner.
Asteroids that orbit close to the Earth inevitably cause us some anxiety due to the even remote possibility of a collision. But their proximity also offers ample opportunities to learn more about the universe. Ryugu, a 900-meter ...
