In 1994, astronomers watched in awe as the comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 crashed into the planet Jupiter, creating massive fireballs exploding with the force of six million megatons of TNT—equivalent to 600 times the world's nuclear ...
Space Exploration
May 14, 2018
3
74
NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) mission has released its fourth year of survey data. Since the mission was restarted in December 2013, after a period of hibernation, the asteroid- and ...
Space Exploration
Apr 23, 2018
0
18
Asteroid 2002 AJ129 will make a close approach to Earth on Feb. 4, 2018 at 1:30 p.m. PST (4:30 p.m. EST / 21:30 UTC). At the time of closest approach, the asteroid will be no closer than 10 times the distance between Earth ...
Space Exploration
Jan 22, 2018
0
65
An international team of astronomers led by NASA scientists successfully completed the first global exercise using a real asteroid to test global response capabilities.
Space Exploration
Nov 4, 2017
0
260
On Oct. 12 EDT (Oct. 11 PDT), a small asteroid designated 2012 TC4 will safely pass by Earth at a distance of approximately 26,000 miles (42,000 kilometers). This is a little over one tenth the distance to the moon and just ...
Space Exploration
Oct 11, 2017
0
29
A few NASA-funded astronomer teams are always on the hunt for potentially hazardous near-Earth objects, asteroids and comets whose orbits periodically bring them within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. At NASA, the Planetary ...
Space Exploration
Aug 2, 2017
0
21
Comets that take more than 200 years to make one revolution around the sun are notoriously difficult to study. Because they spend most of their time far from our area of the solar system, many "long-period comets" will never ...
Space Exploration
Jul 25, 2017
4
167
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 ...
Space Exploration
Jun 30, 2017
1
390
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, ...
Space Exploration
Jun 5, 2017
2
380
A relatively large near-Earth asteroid discovered nearly three years ago will fly safely past Earth on April 19 at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth ...
Space Exploration
Apr 7, 2017
1
800
