Planets like earth may have had muddy origins
Scientists have long held the belief that planets – including Earth – were built from rocky asteroids, but new research challenges that view.
Jul 14, 2017
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NASA plans to test asteroid deflection technique designed to prevent Earth impact
NASA is moving forward with a plan to develop a refrigerator-sized spacecraft capable of deflecting asteroids and preventing them from colliding with Earth.
How a speck of light becomes an asteroid
On the first day of the year 1801, Italian astronomer Gioacchino Giuseppe Maria Ubaldo Nicolò Piazzi found a previously uncharted "tiny star" near the constellation of Taurus. The following night Piazzi again observed this ...
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.
Could asteroids bombard the Earth to cause a mass extinction in 10 million years?
Scientists have spent decades debating whether asteroids and comets hit the Earth at regular intervals. At the same time, a few studies have found evidence that the large extinction events on Earth – such as the one that ...
Scientists warn of asteroid danger
A leading astrophysicist from Queen's University Belfast has warned that an asteroid strike is just a matter of time.
Researchers to design, build instrument to explore metal asteroid
In a few years, an instrument designed and built by Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) researchers will be flying hundreds of millions of miles through space to explore a rare, largely metal asteroid.
Czech scientists see growing risk of asteroid hitting Earth
The risk is growing that Earth will be hit by an asteroid from a meteor stream known as the Taurids, Czech astronomers said on Tuesday.
NASA's asteroid-hunting spacecraft a discovery machine
NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission has released its third year of survey data, with the spacecraft discovering 97 previously unknown celestial objects in the last year. Of those, ...
Close call: When asteroids whisk past Earth
A peanut-shaped asteroid 1.3 kilometres (3,280 feet) across streaked past Earth on Wednesday, giving astronomers a rare chance to check out a big space rock up close.
