Large and publicly available astronomical archives open up new possibilities to search for and study small solar system objects such as asteroids and comets.
A...
Using state-of-the-art analytical techniques, researchers have detected diverse suites of nucleobases — including canonical base pairs (e.g., adenine-uracil,...
Cubic zirconia from the 28-km- (17.4-mile) wide Mistastin Lake crater in Canada required >2,370 degrees Celsius melt, which is hottest recorded on Earth’s...
The debris cloud in the terrestrial zone of the 10-million-year-old star HD 166191 was created by a large impact involving objects of several hundred kilometers...
A small near-Earth asteroid called 2022 EB5 disintegrated over the Norwegian Sea just two hours after its discovery on March 11, 2022.
An artist’s impression...
Observations of an asteroid group indicate that they may have metal-rich surfaces, but those asteroids with measured densities are about half as dense...
Astronomers have discovered a third moon orbiting the main-belt asteroid (130) Elektra, making it the first quadruple asteroid ever found.
This image,...
2020 XL5 will be an Earth Trojan asteroid for at least 4,000 years, according to a paper published in the journal Nature Communications.
This composite...
Using a novel crater detection algorithm, which automatically counts the visible impact craters from a high-resolution image, a team of planetary researchers...
Astronomers using NASA’s Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) have discovered a unique object of uncertain nature — possibly a disintegrating...
An analysis of the Hayabusa-2 sample of material returned to Earth from the carbon-rich, diamond-shaped, near-Earth asteroid Ryugu shows that the material...
About 66 million years ago, a 10-km-wide asteroid crashed into Earth near the site of the small town of Chicxulub in what is now Mexico. The impact unleashed...
The solar wind, comprised of solar particles largely made of hydrogen ions, created water on the surface of dust grains carried on asteroids that smashed...
NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission launched November 24, 2021 at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex...
A team of researchers from the United States and Austria has analyzed remnants of ancient asteroids and modeled the effects of their violent collisions...
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft was launched on October 16, 2021, at 5:34 a.m. EDT aboard a United Launch Alliance (ULA) Atlas V rocket out of Space Launch Complex...
Using the Spectro-Polarimetric High-contrast Exoplanet REsearch (SPHERE) instrument mounted on ESO’s Very Large Telescope (VLT), astronomers have conducted...
Planetary researchers have discovered an inverse correlation between the local abundance of fine-grain material and the porosity of rocks on the carbonaceous...
(248370) 2005 QN137 is the eighth main-belt asteroid, out of more than half a million asteroids in the main belt, confirmed to not only be active, but...
Archaeologists have found evidence that in 1650 BCE (Middle Bronze Age), a cosmic airburst destroyed Tall el-Hammam, an ancient walled city in the Jordan...
