Breaking news
Asteroid Bennu may contain the building blocks of life within its ‘rubble-pile’ surface, and the body was once part of a much larger, water covered world, scientists claim. NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission will land on Bennu on October 20 to collect samples of the space rock and bring them back to Earth for scientists to study … Read more
Asteroid impact 66 million years ago released aerosols and dust into Earth’s upper atmosphere that blocked the sun and killed the dinosaurs, study reveals Previous work suggests the black carbon that filled the air after an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago was released by massive wildfires Now, researchers found evidence it was … Read more
NASA spotted pieces of asteroid Vesta ranging in size from five to 14 feet scattered across Bennu’s southern hemisphere and near its center. The boulders were detected in images from the OSIRIS-Rex and appear much brighter than the surrounding area of dark, rich carbon. The team analyzed the chunks using an on-board spectrometer and found … Read more
Earth’s closest ever recorded fly-by: Asteroid the size of a CAR flew within 1,830 miles of our planet this weekend and NASA didn’t see it until AFTER it had happened Researchers have dubbed the 6–18 feet in diameter space rock ‘2020 QG’ It was spotted by the Palomar Observatory in California late on Saturday evening … Read more
NASA has started work on a spaceship that will be sent to explore a metal-rich asteroid called Psyche that could be worth more than $10,000 quadrillion. There are so many precious metals buried within the asteroid that it could make every single person on Earth a billionaire if it were to be returned to the planet. … Read more
An asteroid that hit the Earth 66 million years ago ‘had to be responsible’ for the demise of the dinosaurs, according to a new study into the effects of the impact. Researchers from Imperial College London created mathematical models of the impact volcanic activity and a large asteroid would have on dinosaur habitats. The space … Read more
Asteroids colliding with the Earth four billion years ago created the building blocks of life on our planet and possibly even on ancient Mars, a new study claims. Researchers from Tohoku University in Japan recreated the conditions present in seabed craters made by the space rocks crashing into the young Earth. The team say these … Read more
Skyscraper-sized asteroid travelling at 11,000mph will zip past Earth at a distance of 3.1 million miles this weekend The asteroid has been called 163348 (2002 NN4) and was first spotted in 2002 It will make its closest approach to the Earth at 04:20 BST on Saturday 6 June The 1,870ft space rock is more than 400ft … Read more
Bizarre ‘asteroid’ with a TAIL of gas spotted orbiting the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter turns out to be a comet ‘in disguise’ The asteroid was first spotted in 2019 and the tail was confirmed in April 2020 2019 LD2 is letting off gas which is trailing behind the space rock like a … Read more
Rock samples taken from under the Chicxulub crater left by the dinosaur-killing asteroid 66 million years ago could hold the key to the origin of life on Earth. A team of researchers found that the impact of the city-sized space rock produced a network of warm waterways under the crater, which is in the Yucatán Peninsula … Read more