Tag: asteroid
-
NASA begins DART mission to practice pushing away an asteroid, with an extra push from Aerojet
SpaceX’s Falcon 9 rocket launches NASA’s DART asteroid probe from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. (NASA via YouTube) A space probe the size of a school bus is on its way to smash into an asteroid the size of Egypt’s Great Pyramid, directed by thruster systems built by Aerojet Rocketdyne in Redmond, Wash. This…
-
OSIRIS-REx probe touches down to grab bits of an asteroid, with assist from Aerojet
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe lowering its sample collection arm to the surface of the asteroid Bennu. (Lockheed Martin Illustration) NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe reached the climax of its seven-year round trip to deep space today and briefly touched down on a near-Earth asteroid, propelled by thrusters made in the Seattle area. Scientists and…
-
First Mode wins $1.8M contract to build hardware for Psyche mission to asteroid
An artist’s conception shows NASA’s Psyche spacecraft at the asteroid Psyche. The Deep Space Optical Communication demonstrator is pointing out from the bottom panel of the spacecraft in this configuration. (NASA / JPL-Caltech / ASU Illustration) Seattle-based First Mode has been awarded a $1.8 million subcontract from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to build flight hardware…
-
Happy Asteroid Day! Why we’re going out to space rocks before they come for us
An artist’s conception shows the spacecraft for NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test approaching its target. (NASA / JHUAPL Illustration) Today’s 112th anniversary of a close brush with a cosmic catastrophe serves as a teachable moment about the perils and prospects posed by near-Earth asteroids. Asteroid Day is timed to commemorate a blast from space that…
-
Don’t panic: Huge, headline-grabbing asteroid has no chance of hitting us anytime soon
An artist’s conception shows asteroids zipping past Earth. (NASA Illustration) The bad news is that an asteroid of city-killing proportions is heading in our direction, but the good news is that it’ll miss us on Saturday night by 3.2 million miles. The space rock, known as 2002 NN4, generated enough scary headlines that NASA felt…
-
After visiting asteroid, Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe heads back to Earth with samples
An image from Hayabusa 2’s camera shows the half-mile-wide, diamond-shaped asteroid known as Ryugu receding in the metaphorical rear-view mirror. (JAXA, Chiba Institute of Technology and Collaborators) Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft and its science team bid a bittersweet farewell to the asteroid Ryugu, 180 million miles from Earth, and began the months-long return trip to…
-
One year after Planetary Resources faded into history, space mining retains its appeal
An artist’s conception shows Planetary Resources’ Arkyd 300 spacecraft prospecting amid a cluster of asteroids. (Planetary Resources Illustration) It’s been a year since the Redmond, Wash.-based asteroid mining venture known as Planetary Resources was acquired by ConsenSys and pivoted to blockchain projects in space — but the idea of mining space resources still resonates among…
-
NASA science chief says NEO Surveillance Mission will seek out threatening asteroids
The NEO Surveillance Mission’s space telescope would take advantage of technologies developed for NEOCam, the proposed spacecraft shown in this artist’s conception. (IPAC / Caltech Illustration) The head of NASA’s science operations says the space agency intends to develop a new space-based infrared telescope to hunt down near-Earth objects — not primarily for science’s sake,…
-
Surprise! NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe catches asteroid spewing bits into space
This view of asteroid Bennu ejecting particles from its surface on Jan. 19 was created by combining two images taken by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. Other image processing techniques were applied, such as cropping and adjusting the brightness and contrast of each image. (NASA / Goddard / Univ. of Arizona / Lockheed Martin Photo) NASA’s OSIRIS-REx…
-
Watch Japan’s Hayabusa 2 probe blast away a blizzard of rocks from an asteroid
If there was ever any doubt that Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft was able to get access to samples from an asteroid called Ryugu last month, a video released today should put those doubts to rest. The black-and-white video clip, shot by the probe’s CAM-H monitoring camera, shows the sampling horn being lowered to the sunlit…