Trippy Image From Deep Space Shows Earth and Moon From 180 Million Miles Away
The Psyche spacecraft is on a six-year journey to reach a metal-rich asteroid by the same name. Well into its voyage, the probe looked back at its home planet and…
NASA debuts free documentary on the race to stop killer asteroids
NASA has just premiered Planetary Defenders, a fascinating documentary looking at the high-stakes work geared toward protecting Earth from large asteroids spotted coming our way. The 75-minute production (above) features…
The Asteroid Dimorphos Looks Totally Different After NASA’s DART Mission Walloped It
In September 2022, a NASA spacecraft smashed into a tiny asteroid to nudge it off its orbital course. The mission was a success in testing an asteroid deflection method that…
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft will soon make its first flyby of an asteroid
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft, which launched in 2021, is on its way to the orbit of Jupiter to study the Trojan asteroids there. It won’t arrive there until 2027, but the…
How to watch NASA’s Psyche mission launch to a metal asteroid this week
NASA will launch its latest mission, Psyche, this week. The spacecraft will visit a strange asteroid that is thought to be made almost entirely of metal, studying it to understand…
Is that asteroid a problem? Meet the planetary defense squad that decides
NASA There are few cosmological concepts which have gripped the public — and Hollywood — more tightly than the idea of an incoming asteroid. Huge chunks of rock headed for…
Space-Scanning Algorithm Spots ‘Potentially Hazardous’ 600-Foot Asteroid
An asteroid-hunting algorithm set to be implemented in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s 10-year survey spotted its first potentially hazardous asteroid, proving the algorithm’s capabilities in advance of the observatory’s…
Hubble Spots ‘Boulder Cloud’ From NASA’s Asteroid-Smashing DART Mission
Astronomers using the Hubble Space Telescope have detected nearly 40 boulders near Dimorphos—the target of NASA’s wildly successful DART experiment to deflect a non-threatening asteroid. This isn’t exactly positive news,…
This awesome asteroid impact simulator isn’t for the faint-hearted
The amazing Asteroid Launcher simulator lets you hurl a space rock at Earth to see the amount of devastation it would cause.
30,000 near-Earth asteroids have been discovered — and the search is on for more
There are a whole lot of asteroids out there in our solar system, and looking for potentially dangerous asteroids is an ongoing job.