When you buy through links in our articles, Future and its syndication partners may earn commission. An animation compares the path of Apophis in 2029 to a swarm of satellites orbiting Earth. | Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech The European Space Agency is accelerating a new mission called Ramses that will fly to a near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis… Read More »
NASA’s Goldstone planetary radar system recently recorded two near-Earth asteroids, 2024 MK and 2011 UL21, passing by our planet. Perhaps a little worryingly, it was detected just 13 days before either one passed safely past. Soilbut scientists at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) assures us that it never posed a threat in Southern California, but… Read More »
The Winchcombe meteorite crashed in Gloucestershire, England Leaving a trail in the night sky on February 28, 2021It came from an asteroid that had been heavily altered by water, broken up and reformed many times. This is the result of a detailed analysis of the meteorite, fragments of which were found scattered across fields near… Read More »
Move over, moon rocks: There’s a new kind of space rock on display at Space Center Houston. The official visitor center of NASA’s Johnson Space Center on Friday, March 1, became only the second place in the world where the public can view a sample of asteroid Bennu collected and returned to Earth by the… Read More »
Were dinosaurs already on the brink of extinction when an asteroid hit Earth 66 million years ago, ending the Cretaceous, the geological period that began about 145 million years ago? This is a question that has been bothering paleontologists like us for more than 40 years. In the late 1970s, debate arose as to whether… Read More »
Samples of 4.5 billion-year-old asteroids that traveled millions of kilometers to reach Earth may reveal the origins of life on the planet. The teaspoon-sized sample taken from the asteroid Bennu is being examined by scientists at the Natural History Museum (NHM). The normally unobtrusive black dust-like sample could help shed light on some of the… Read More »