Search results for Asteroid Belt

Planetary Sciences Sep 17, 2025

Lucy's main belt target has its features named

When considering the unnamed major features of all the moons, asteroids, and comets in our solar system, there are still a lot of places out there that need proper names. That means the International Astronomical Union (IAU), ...

Planetary Sciences Sep 10, 2025

Scientists find quasi-moon orbiting the Earth for the last 60 years—and it's not the first one

Everyone who has ever lived on Earth has been well-aware of the moon, but it turns out Earth also has some frequent temporary companions. These "quasi-moons" are small asteroids that enter into a kind of resonance with Earth's ...

Astronomy Sep 5, 2025

Fomalhaut star's warped ring shows evidence of sculpting by ancient planets

Astronomers using the Atacama Large Millimeter/submillimeter Array (ALMA) have made the highest resolution image to date, revealing new insights into the unusual and mysterious architecture of the debris disk encircling Fomalhaut, ...

Astrobiology Aug 28, 2025

No collision, no life: Earth probably needed supplies from space

Earth is so far the only known planet on which life exists—with liquid water and a stable atmosphere. However, the conditions were not conducive to life when it formed. The gas-dust cloud from which all the planets in the ...

Astronomy Aug 22, 2025

Asteroid Bennu: A time capsule of materials bearing witness to its origin and transformation over billions of years

Asteroid Bennu—the target of NASA's OSIRIS-REx sample return mission, led by the University of Arizona—is a mixture of materials from throughout, and even beyond, our solar system. Over the past few billion years, its unique ...

Astrobiology Aug 20, 2025

Ceres may have had long-standing energy to fuel habitability

New NASA research has found that Ceres may have had a lasting source of chemical energy: the right types of molecules needed to fuel some microbial metabolisms. Although there is no evidence that microorganisms ever existed ...

Planetary Sciences Aug 18, 2025

Spectral analysis suggests asteroids Bennu and Ryugu are part of Polana family

A Southwest Research Institute (SwRI) review of data collected from near-Earth asteroids Bennu and Ryugu supports the hypothesis that they were originally part of the Polana collisional family in the main asteroid belt between ...

Planetary Sciences Aug 11, 2025

Out of this world research: Analyzing and naming a new meteorite

A mysterious extraterrestrial visitor now has a permanent home and identity, thanks to University of Georgia researchers.

Astronomy Aug 7, 2025

First asteroid sightings push Hera's camera to the limit

ESA's Hera mission has captured images of asteroids (1126) Otero and (18805) Kellyday. Though distant and faint, the early observations serve as both a successful instrument test and a demonstration of agile spacecraft operations ...

Astronomy Jul 23, 2025

Could the latest 'interstellar comet' be an alien probe?

On July 1, astronomers spotted an unusual high-speed object zooming towards the sun. Dubbed 3I/ATLAS, the surprising space traveler had one very special quality: its orbit showed it had come from outside our solar system.

page 6 from 40