Using data from the retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA)—a joint project of NASA and the German Space Agency at DLR—Southwest Research Institute scientists have discovered, for the first time, ...
Astrobiology
Feb 12, 2024
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5485
Ryugu is a near-Earth asteroid that gained significant attention when the Japanese Hayabusa2 mission collected samples and returned them to Earth. These samples have proven to offer a treasure trove of insights into the solar ...
Planetary Sciences
Jan 23, 2024
0
29
Large-scale sky surveys are set to revolutionize astronomy. Observatories such as Vera Rubin and others will allow astronomers to observe how the sky changes on the scale of days, not weeks or months. They will be able to ...
Astronomy
Nov 1, 2023
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20
Asteroids are chunks of rock left over from the formation of our solar system. Approximately half a billion asteroids with sizes greater than four meters in diameter orbit the sun, traveling through our solar system at speeds ...
Astronomy
Aug 4, 2023
3
165
The team working on ESA's Hera asteroid mission has glimpsed its destination. Last September NASA's DART mission returned images of the boulder-strewn Dimorphos moonlet just before impacting it, in an audacious and ultimately ...
Space Exploration
Jun 30, 2023
0
2
New research led by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) provides a better understanding of ejecta production, which has been the subject of broad interest for more than 60 years throughout the scientific community.
General Physics
Feb 22, 2023
0
10
An international team of researchers studying dust samples retrieved by the Hayabusa-2 space probe, has found that some of its dust grains are older than the solar system. In their paper published in The Astrophysical Journal ...
In 2011, a small meteorite was found in the Sahara Desert. Designated Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034 or "Black Beauty," the blackened chunk of volcanic crystal turned out to be a little piece of Mars, flung into space by an ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 13, 2022
0
74
When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft collected samples from asteroid Bennu's surface in 2020, forces measured during the interaction provided scientists with a direct test of the poorly understood near-subsurface physical properties ...
Planetary Sciences
Jul 7, 2022
0
72
Mining the asteroids for resources like iron, precious metals, water, or other valuable species may someday become profitable. Mining will probably starting with near Earth objects (NEOs), asteroids whose paths cross the ...
Space Exploration
Jun 16, 2022
0
140
