Later this year, NASA is set to launch a probe the size of a tennis court to the asteroid belt, a region between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter where remnants of the early solar system circle the sun. Once inside the asteroid ...
Space Exploration
Jun 15, 2022
0
1106
The moon was exposed to a heavy bombardment of asteroids 3.9 billion years ago. The origin of this bombardment, however, was previously unclear. Planetologists at Münster University have now tested these hypotheses with ...
Planetary Sciences
Nov 8, 2021
0
475
A close examination of the millimeter-wavelength emissions from the asteroid Psyche, which NASA intends to visit in 2026, has produced the first temperature map of the object, providing new insight into its surface properties. ...
Planetary Sciences
Aug 6, 2021
1
694
The largest asteroid to pass by Earth this year will swing closest on Sunday, giving astronomers a rare chance for a good look at a space rock that formed at the dawn of our solar system.
Space Exploration
Mar 21, 2021
2
3335
Last month, Japan's Hayabusa2 mission brought home a cache of rocks collected from a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. While analysis of those returned samples is just getting underway, researchers are using data from the ...
Astronomy
Jan 5, 2021
0
413
A small capsule containing asteroid soil samples that was dropped from 136,700 miles (220,000 kilometers) in space by Japan's Hayabusa2 spacecraft landed as planned in the Australian Outback on Sunday. After a preliminary ...
Space Exploration
Dec 7, 2020
1
16
A team of researchers affiliated with a host of institutions in the U.S., Canada and Italy has found that studying the craters on asteroid Bennu allowed them to calculate how long it has been orbiting near Earth. In their ...
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 11, 2020
1
361
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.
Astronomy
Aug 10, 2020
13
8844
A new analytic model for calculating the effective thermal conductivity of planetary regolith allows scientists to better understand the connections between the physical and thermal properties of planetary surfaces and the ...
Space Exploration
Jul 29, 2020
0
24
