Search results for asteroid belt

General Physics Sep 30, 2020

Stellar explosion in Earth's proximity

When the brightness of the star Betelgeuse dropped dramatically a few months ago, some observers suspected an impending supernova—a stellar explosion that could also cause damage on Earth. While Betelgeuse has returned ...

Astronomy Sep 22, 2020

NASA's OSIRIS-REx to asteroid Bennu: 'You've got a little Vesta on you'

In an interplanetary faux pas, it appears some pieces of asteroid Vesta ended up on asteroid Bennu, according to observations from NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. The new result sheds light on the intricate orbital dance of ...

Astronomy Sep 16, 2020

Astronomers discover a 2-km asteroid orbiting closer to the sun than Venus

Astronomers have painstakingly built models of the asteroid population, and those models predict that there will be ~1 km-sized asteroids that orbit closer to the sun than Venus does. The problem is, nobody's been able to ...

Space Exploration Sep 16, 2020

Meteorite study calls into doubt a popular theory about the early solar system

It is generally accepted that the inner region of the early solar system was subject to an intense period of meteoric bombardment referred to as the late heavy bombardment. However, researchers have found evidence that suggests ...

Space Exploration Sep 9, 2020

Study indicates sand-sized meteoroids are peppering asteroid Bennu

A new study published this month in JGR Planets posits that the major particle ejections off the near-Earth asteroid Bennu may be the consequence of impacts by small, sand-sized particles called meteoroids onto its surface ...

Space Exploration Aug 28, 2020

First-ever mission to the Trojan asteroids passes NASA milestone

NASA has approved the final development stage of the Southwest Research Institute-led Lucy mission to explore the Trojan asteroids in preparation for its October 2021 launch.

Space Exploration Aug 28, 2020

Jakob van Zyl, key Jet Propulsion Laboratory engineer, dies

Jakob van Zyl, an engineer who held crucial positions at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory and was involved in numerous space exploration missions over decades, has died. He was 63.

Space Exploration Aug 11, 2020

Main Belt asteroid Psyche might be the remnant of a planet that never fully formed

New 2-D and 3-D computer modeling of impacts on the asteroid Psyche, the largest Main Belt asteroid, indicate it is probably metallic and porous in composition, something like a flying cosmic rubble pile. Knowing this will ...

Astronomy Aug 11, 2020

Mystery solved: Bright areas on Ceres come from salty water below

NASA's Dawn spacecraft gave scientists extraordinary close-up views of the dwarf planet Ceres, which lies in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. By the time the mission ended in October 2018, the orbiter had ...

Astronomy Aug 10, 2020

Dwarf planet Ceres is an ocean world: study

The dwarf planet Ceres—long believed to be a barren space rock—is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed Monday.

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