It’s Been 2 Months. Why Can’t NASA Open the Asteroid Sample Container?
In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly…
NASA Asteroid Probe Snaps First Image, Revealing a Field of Stars
It departed our planet just over two months ago, but NASA’s Psyche spacecraft is already 16 million miles from Earth, well on its way to its main destination: the asteroid…
Another Lucy Bonus: Asteroid’s Surprise Moon Is Actually Two Rocks Stuck Together
The first look at the Dinkinesh asteroid revealed a surprise: The small space rock had its own moon. Now as the Lucy spacecraft downlinked more images of its first target,…
Bennu Asteroid Samples Expected to ‘Fundamentally’ Shift Our Perspective on Cosmic Life
We’ve all been there: You’re getting some peanut butter, or looking to nosh a nice pickle, when you find your wrist strength is insufficient to get at the jar’s delicious…
Seeing Double: Lucy’s First Target Asteroid Has a Tiny Moon
As NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past its first asteroid on Wednesday, its mission scientists made a surprising discovery of a bonus space rock. The M3 MacBook Pro: Made Dark for…
NASA’s Lucy Ready to Explore Its First Asteroid This Week
After traveling millions of miles over the past two years, the Lucy spacecraft has almost reached its first destination. NASA’s asteroid probe will briefly rendezvous with Dinkinesh in the main…
Pieces of Asteroid Bennu Land at the Smithsonian After 200 Million Mile Voyage
After traveling through space for 200 million miles, rocky pieces from asteroid Bennu were dropped off on Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in late September. Now, some of those fragments…
NASA Is Struggling to Open Its Asteroid Sample Container
About a month ago, pristine samples from an asteroid landed on Earth while enclosed within a tight capsule. The sample canister was designed to keep the main chunk of the…
NASA’s Lucy Probe Phones Home From 49-Million-Mile Journey to Asteroid
The Lucy spacecraft is on a 12-year journey to visit eight different asteroids, and it’s almost caught up with the first space rock on its checklist. Are Fans Tired of…
SpaceX Successfully Launches NASA’s $1 Billion Psyche Mission to a Metal World
Update: October, 13, 11:17 a.m. ET: Psyche is finally in space. The Falcon Heavy lifted off on time, sending the probe on its 2.2 billion-mile journey to a highly metallic…