When we think of asteroids, we almost immediately think of giant rocks bouncing around like the iconic chase scene in "The Empire Strikes Back," and we often hear how they are remnants from the birth of the solar system. ...
New observations by a team of US astronomers have cast fresh doubt on whether the lunar surface could host abundant water ice. Publishing their results in Science Advances, a team led by Shuai Li at the University of Hawaii ...
Even 200 years after asteroid 16 Psyche was discovered, astronomers continue to puzzle over its formation. Psyche is the 10th-most massive asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, and the largest known metallic ...
A thick layer of haze around the ultra-low-density planet Kepler-51d likely obscures not only the strange planet's composition, but also its origin, according to a new study. A team led by Penn State researchers used NASA's ...
When people think of asteroids, they tend to picture rare, civilization-ending impacts like those depicted in movies such as "Armageddon." In reality, the asteroids most likely to affect modern society are much smaller. While ...
Anyone familiar with the search for alien life will have heard of the "Goldilocks Zone" around a star. This is defined as the orbital band where the temperature is just right for liquid water to pool on a rocky planet's surface—a ...
Asteroid mining companies are finally getting off the ground, and that is raising some concerns about the impact those activities will have on the space environment. A new paper published in Acta Astronautica by Anna Marie ...
Astronomers have long debated why so many icy objects in the outer solar system look like snowmen. Michigan State University researchers now have evidence of the surprisingly simple process that could be responsible for their ...
The United Arab Emirates announced on Tuesday that it would extend its Mars probe mission, now in its fifth year, for an additional three, underlining the oil-rich state's space ambitions.
Most near-Earth asteroids are thought to drift in from the main asteroid belt. But a small subset may have a much closer origin: the moon. One intriguing example is 469219 Kamoʻoalewa (2016 HO3), an Earth quasi-satellite ...
