Image: A shadowy selfie taken 280 million km from Earth

On 21 September 2018, 280 million km from Earth, a roughly 1.5 square-metre cube descended towards a primitive space rock. After years of planning and 4 years in flight, this tiny spacecraft captured this 'shadow selfie' ...

Are asteroids humanity's 'greatest challenge'?

Throughout its 4.5-billion-year history, Earth has been repeatedly pummelled by space rocks that have caused anything from an innocuous splash in the ocean to species annihilation.

These space rocks could save the planet

The box was inconspicuous, but Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) postdoctoral researcher Megan Bruck Syal immediately knew its contents: two meteorites around the size of walnuts. They formed about 4.6 billion ...

Could a laser weapon save earth from killer asteroids?

Potentially hazardous asteroids are still looming large in the minds of scientists engaged in planetary defense issues. Numerous strategies describing deflection of near-Earth objects (NEOs) have been proposed, including ...

Russia's new ballistic missiles to be tested on asteroids

In a shocking announcement, Russian scientists say they want to test improved ballistic missiles on the asteroid Apophis, which is expected to come dangerously close to Earth in 2036. If this doesn't send chills down your ...

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