NASA’s first asteroid sample return mission is officially prepared for its long-awaited touchdown on asteroid Bennu’s surface. The Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security…
Ryugu’s interaction with the sun changes what we know about asteroid history. In February and July of 2019, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft briefly touched down on…
A reasonably small 4-8 m (~13-26 foot) asteroid recently flew by Earth, passing close to satellites orbiting in the geostationary ring at a distance of…
The large near-Earth object is well known to astronomers and will get no closer than 3.9 million miles to our planet. A large near-Earth asteroid…
After the successful completion of its “Checkpoint” rehearsal, NASA’s first asteroid-sampling spacecraft is one step closer to touching down on asteroid Bennu. On April 14,…
In August, a robotic spacecraft will make NASA’s first-ever attempt to descend to the surface of an asteroid, collect a sample, and ultimately bring it…
Planetary defense researchers at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory (LLNL) continue to validate their ability to accurately simulate how they might deflect an Earth-bound asteroid in…
After undergoing a series of performance and environmental tests, NASA’s Evolutionary Xenon Thruster – Commercial (NEXT-C) is being prepared for the Double Asteroid Redirection Test…
This global map of asteroid Bennu’s surface is a mosaic of images collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft between March 7 and April 19, 2019. A…
This summer, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will undertake NASA’s first-ever attempt to touch the surface of an asteroid, collect a sample of it, and safely back…
Asteroid Bennu’s most prominent boulder, a rock chunk jutting out 71 ft (21.7 m) from the asteroid’s southern hemisphere, finally has a name. The boulder…
A recent study supported in part by the NASA Astrobiology Program provides new data on meteoritic materials that could have originated from primitive bodies in…
NASA’s first asteroid-sampling spacecraft just got its best look yet at asteroid Bennu. Yesterday, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft executed…
Mineralogists from Jena and Japan make a surprising discovery on soil samples of the asteroid “Itokawa.” Mineralogists from Jena and Japan discover a previously unknown…
MIT engineers devise a decision map to identify the best mission type to deflect an incoming asteroid. On April 13, 2029, an icy chunk of…
Three Leiden astronomers have shown that some asteroids that are considered harmless for now, can collide with Earth in the future. They did their research…
On February 11, 2020, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft safely executed a 0.4-mile (620-m) flyover of the backup sample collection site Osprey as part of the mission’s…
A tilted orbit may explain the asteroid Pallas’ highly cratered surface. Asteroids come in all shapes and sizes, and now astronomers at MIT and elsewhere…