IRON AND ICE

News About Asteroids And Comets

2,242 articles

'Mini Psyches' give insights into mysterious metal-rich near-earth asteroids
Oct 04, 2021 (SPX)
New research, published in the Planetary Science Journal, investigated two metal-rich asteroids in our own cosmic backyard to learn more about their origins, co...
NASA's Lucy science mission will fly by eight asteroids
Oct 01, 2021 (UPI)
The spacecraft for the $981 million mission is at Kennedy Space Center for launch preparations, which include packing atop an Atlas V rocket for its 12-year voy...
Did a cosmic impact destroy an ancient city in the Jordan Valley
Sep 29, 2021 (SPX)
"It's an incredibly culturally important area," said James Kennett, emeritus professor of earth science at the UC Santa Barbara. "Much of where the early cultur...
Asteroid sample brought back to Earth gets a close-up look at Brown
Sep 29, 2021 (SPX)
Last week, the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency shipped one of the samples - a millimeter-sized fragment from the asteroid's surface - to the laboratory of...
Lucy mission prepares for launch to Trojan asteroids
Sep 29, 2021 (SPX)
Named after characters in Greek mythology, these asteroids circle the Sun in two swarms, with one group leading ahead of Jupiter in its path, the other trailing...
Dashcam detective work leads to recovery of space rocks from fireball over Slovenia
Sep 22, 2021 (SPX)
It is one of only around 40 fallen space rocks that has been recovered within weeks and for which the origins in the Solar System have been tracked. Initial res...
Discovery about meteorites informs atmospheric entry threat assessment
Sep 21, 2021 (SPX)
"We extracted samples from the interiors that had not already been exposed to the high heat of the entry environment," said Francesco Panerai, professor in the ...
Modern snakes evolved from a few survivors of dino-killing asteroid
Sep 15, 2021 (SPX)
The research, published in Nature Communications, shows that snakes, today including almost 4000 living species, started to diversify around the time that an ex...
Dino-killing asteroid set the stage for evolution of modern snakes
Sep 14, 2021 (UPI)
According to a new study, published Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications, the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs triggered a period of accelerated di...
ESO captures best images yet of peculiar dog-bone asteroid
Sep 10, 2021 (SPX)
"Kleopatra is truly a unique body in our Solar System," says Franck Marchis, an astronomer at the SETI Institute in Mountain View, USA and at the Laboratoire d'...
Diamonds in the sky
Sep 08, 2021 (SPX)
Asteroids are rocky bodies that orbit the sun. What makes them fascinating to researchers is that they are made up of leftover materials-the matter that didn't ...
Planetary radar observes 1,000th near-earth asteroid since 1968
Sep 07, 2021 (JPL)
On Aug. 14, 2021, a small near-Earth asteroid (NEA) designated 2021 PJ1 passed our planet at a distance of over 1 million miles (about 1.7 million kilometers). ...
Asteroid Ryugu in opposition to Hayabusa2
Sep 03, 2021 (SPX)
In June 2018, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) Hayabusa2 mission rendezvoused with the near Earth asteroid Ryugu. This spacecraft was on a mission ...
Geologists propose theory about a famous asteroid
Sep 02, 2021 (SPX)
Asteroids have long played a part in building popular fascination with space. "Marooned off Vesta" was the first story published by American writer Isaac Asimov...
Astronomer recruiting volunteers in effort to quadruple number of known active asteroids
Sep 02, 2021 (SPX)
Because finding an active asteroid is such a rare event, fewer than 30 of these solar system bodies have been found since 1949, so there is still much for scien...
The case of the missing mantle
Sep 02, 2021 (SPX)
The material released from these violent collisions is commonly thought to have escaped and orbited around the sun, bombarding the growing planets and altering ...
NASA Mission to Asteroid Psyche one year out from launch
Aug 25, 2021 (SPX)
In early 2026, the Psyche spacecraft will arrive at its target, an asteroid of the same name in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists beli...
Solar System's fastest-orbiting asteroid discovered
Aug 24, 2021 (SPX)
The newfound asteroid, called 2021 PH27, is about 1 kilometer in size and is on an unstable orbit that crosses that of Mercury and Venus. This means that within...
Comet Atlas may have been a blast from the past
Aug 20, 2021 (SPX)
Enter comet ATLAS (C/2019 Y4), which first appeared near the beginning of 2020. Comet ATLAS, first detected by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System...
Fizzing sodium could explain Asteroid Phaethon's comet-like activity
Aug 17, 2021 (JPL)
Whereas comets contain lots of different ices, asteroids are mainly rock and not known for producing such majestic displays. But a new study examines how near-E...
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