Search results for asteroid belt

Planetary Sciences Apr 25, 2024

Hera asteroid mission's side-trip to Mars

ESA's Hera asteroid mission for planetary defense will make a swingby of Mars next March, borrowing speed to help reach its target Didymos binary asteroid system.

Astronomy Apr 18, 2024

Hubble goes hunting for small main belt asteroids

Like boulders, rocks, and pebbles scattered across a landscape, asteroids come in a wide range of sizes. Cataloging asteroids in space is tricky because they are faint and they don't stop to be photographed as they zip along ...

Planetary Sciences Apr 16, 2024

Dating the solar system's giant planet orbital instability using enstatite meteorites

Evidence from the fragments of a destroyed asteroid suggests that the shift in the positions of the giant planets in our solar system billions of years ago happened between 60–100 million years after the solar system's ...

Astrobiology Apr 1, 2024

Meteorites: Why study them? What can they teach us about finding life beyond Earth?

Universe Today has explored the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, planetary atmospheres, planetary geophysics, and cosmochemistry, and how this myriad ...

Astronomy Mar 21, 2024

Hubble finds that aging brown dwarfs grow lonely

It takes two to tango, but in the case of brown dwarfs that were once paired as binary systems, that relationship doesn't last for very long, according to a recent survey from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope.

Astrobiology Mar 19, 2024

Planetary geophysics: What is it? What can it teach us about finding life beyond Earth?

Universe Today has examined the importance of studying impact craters, planetary surfaces, exoplanets, astrobiology, solar physics, comets, and planetary atmospheres, and how these intriguing scientific disciplines can help ...

Planetary Sciences Mar 4, 2024

James Webb Space Telescope captures the end of planet formation

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is helping scientists uncover how planets form by advancing understanding of their birthplaces and the circumstellar disks surrounding young stars.

Space Exploration Mar 1, 2024

When an object like 'Oumuamua comes around again, we could be ready with an interstellar object explorer

On October 19th, 2017, astronomers with the Pann-STARRS survey observed an interstellar object passing through our system—1I/2017 U1 'Oumuamua. This was the first time an ISO was detected, confirming that such objects pass ...

Astronomy Feb 20, 2024

NASA's New Horizons detects dusty hints of extended Kuiper Belt

New observations from NASA's New Horizons spacecraft hint that the Kuiper Belt—the vast, distant outer zone of our solar system populated by hundreds of thousands of icy, rocky planetary building blocks—might stretch ...

Astronomy Feb 13, 2024

Vera Rubin's keen eye on our solar system will inspire future missions

When the interstellar object (ISO) 'Oumuamua appeared in our solar system in 2017, it generated a ton of interest. The urge to learn more about it was fierce, but unfortunately, there was no way to really do so. It came and ...

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