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NASA details complex mission to collect rock samples from asteroid Bennu

October 08, 2020 -

The autonomous spacecraft OSIRIS-REx will be touching down briefly on the asteroid Bennu on Oct. 20. Through its robotic arm, it will scoop rocks on the landing site Nightingale, a 52-foot rocky area in Bennu’s northern hemisphere. If all goes according to plan, the samples will be returned to Earth on Sept. 24, 2023.

The feat has only been done by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency. If the OSIRIS-REx mission is successful, it will be the first time the United States ...

Scientists design a new spacecraft, called a HAMMER, to carry nukes to incoming asteroids that threaten Earth

April 07, 2018 -

HAMMER stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response. Each unmanned vehicle is expected to weigh around eight tons, which is less than the old Apollo spacecraft or the successor Orion system.

The American researchers published their conceptual asteroid deflection spacecraft in the journal Acta Astronautica. They will be presenting it at an asteroid-research conference in May.

Their study called for the deployment of a group of HAMMERs ...

Cyanide found on meteorites can broaden understanding of life itself

March 07, 2020 -

“When most people think of cyanide, they think of spy movies — a guy swallowing a pill, foaming at the mouth and dying,“ said lead author Karen Smith, senior research scientist at Boise. “But cyanide was probably an essential compound for building molecules necessary for life.”Life seeded by meteorites

According to the scientists, the extraterrestrial compounds found in the meteorites resemble the active sites of hydrogenases, which are enzymes that provide energy to microorganisms ...

NASA’s OSIRIS-REX mission will examine samples from an asteroid, seeking clues to the origin of life

March 07, 2018 -

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) kindly shared the image of our planet and its natural satellite as seen through the spacecraft's NavCam1 imager from a distance of 39.5 million miles. OSIRIS-REx took the photo on 17 January of this year.

Seen from that distance, Earth and the Moon look like luminous stars instead of the blue-white and grey marbles we know them to be. They stand out as the brightest and largest objects in the photo. They're ringed ...

Avoiding Armageddon: Scientists experiment with ways to destroy or redirect threats from space

April 17, 2018 -

That's why researchers from the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) have been working as part of a national planetary defense team, and it is now reported that so far, they have managed to design a conceptual spacecraft that's meant to deflect any and all Earth-bound asteroids. After finishing the work on their initial design, they evaluated it to understand how it could work against a massive asteroid. The results of the research, details and all, were recently shared ...

NASA successfully retrieves first asteroid samples from OSIRIS-REx spacecraft

October 05, 2023 -

The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) probe was launched on Sept. 8, 2016, and traveled to the near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu.

OSIRIS-REx collected a sample of rocks and dust from the surface of this asteroid and then made the long journey back to Earth.

The OSIRIS-REx landed at 10:52 a.m. Eastern Time on Sept. 24 in a Department of Defense-managed targeted area at the Utah Test and Training ...

Asteroid strike news, articles and information:

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Asteroid impact news, articles and information:

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Recommended ResourcesCounterThink Cartoons are

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help children and expectant mothers ...

Asteroid impacts news, articles and information:

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Recommended ResourcesCounterThink Cartoons are

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help children and expectant mothers ...

Doomsday asteroid news, articles and information:

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Asteroid that killed dinosaurs also caused GIANT tsunamis

July 16, 2021 -

Scientists at the University of Louisiana at Lafayette (UL) found these mega-ripples by means of seismic imaging carried out by a petroleum firm. They looked at soil 5,000 feet below the surface of central Louisiana and found the 50-feet-high ripples spaced half a mile apart. According to the scientists, these ripples were the imprint of the tidal waves that spread out from the asteroid's impact crater.

Furthermore, the UL scientists said the orientation of the ripples ...

‘Oumuamua asteroid may be alien technology, hints study

August 21, 2020 -

Proponents of the other theory suggest that the interstellar object, ‘Oumuamua, is a comet that is partly or entirely made up of hydrogen molecules. This could explain why astronomers were not able to detect a basic feature of a comet: a coma or a comet’s tail.

But the researchers said that this explanation ignores the fact that if ‘Oumuamua is indeed a hydrogen comet, it would have evaporated midway or early into its journey.

“We were suspicious that hydrogen ...

Analysis reveals water once flowed through asteroid Ryugu’s interior, reshaping theories on how Earth got its oceans

December 18, 2025 -

A groundbreaking study of asteroid Ryugu has revealed that liquid water once flowed through its interior, challenging long-held theories about how Earth's oceans formed.

The discovery was based on samples returned by Japan's Hayabusa2 mission on the near-earth asteroid. It suggests that water-rich asteroids may have delivered far more water to early Earth than previously believed – potentially reshaping our understanding of planetary habitability....

Our solar system’s asteroid belt is slowly FADING AWAY

October 02, 2025 -

Key points:

The ghost of a planet that never was

The story of the asteroid belt’s existence is inextricably linked to its eventual demise. When the solar system was a swirling disk of gas and dust 4.6 billion years ago, the region between Mars and Jupiter was poised to become the home of another planet. The raw materials were there, but a celestial giant had other plans. Jupiter, the solar system's behemoth, exerted a gravitational influence ...

NASA tracks house-sized asteroid amid growing celestial threats

August 17, 2025 -

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is keeping a watchful eye on asteroid 2025 PR1, a house-sized space rock hurtling toward Earth at 17,717 miles per hour.

The asteroid passed within 609,000 miles of Earth on Saturday, Aug. 16 – closer than some satellites – but posed no immediate danger. Yet, this near-miss is part of a broader pattern: Three more asteroids are set to skim past Earth, including ...

Ryugu asteroid holds building blocks of life older than the solar system

March 22, 2023 -

The samples were obtained by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency's Hayabusa2 spacecraft and returned to Earth in December 2020. The samples from the asteroid that were more than 0.17 ounces were removed from the spacecraft in 2021. The earlier Hayabusa mission that was deployed to the Itokawa asteroid only recovered dust samples that were mere micrograms in size, as its collection system failed.

An analysis of a small portion of this sample, published Feb. 23 in Science, ...

Scientists discover 63 new young asteroid families, doubling known count

October 02, 2025 -

Researchers have identified 63 new young asteroid families – more than doubling the previously documented count – with the findings published in the journal Icarus.

Young asteroid families, clusters of space rocks formed from the breakup of larger bodies, are typically less than 10–15 million years old and consist of at least three members. Prior to this study, only 43 such families had been confirmed.

Using an advanced five-dimensional ...

Asteroid nearly collides with Earth in close call fly-by

August 24, 2020 -

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) said that the path of 2020 QG was forever changed by the gravitational force of Earth. The asteroid is now traveling in space in a new trajectory since its close run-in.

"It's really cool to see a small asteroid come by this close because we can see the Earth's gravity dramatically bend its trajectory," said Paul Chodas, director of the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory....

Humanity is one asteroid impact away from being wiped out

July 29, 2017 -

“Sooner or later we will get… a minor or major impact,” says Rolf Densing, head of the European Space Operations Centre (ESOC) in Darmstadt, Germany. Densing explained that even though we may not be alive to see it happen, “the risk that Earth will get hit in a devastating event one day is very high.”

Asteroid sizes range from just a few millimeters to over 6 miles in length, which astrophysicists believe is the size of the space rock that wiped out the dinosaurs millions ...

NASA draws up plans to land astronaut on doomsday asteroid

November 27, 2006 - NASA draws up plans to land astronaut on doomsday asteroid

Monday, November 27, 2006 by: Jerome DouglasTags: asteroids, astronauts, NASANASA's proposals are just at the initial stages, and the spacecraft needed to send an astronaut that far into space doesn't even exist yet. But, with a smallish asteroid called Apophis having already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036, NASA is taking the exercise very seriously.Chris McKay of the NASA Johnson Space ...