Space.com caught up with NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson to discuss recent events and what’s on the planetary-defense agenda in the coming year. Source: https://www.livescience.com/defending-earth-asteroids-nasa-lindley-johnson-interview.html
Tag: Asteroids
NASA’s first mission to the Trojan asteroids integrates its second scientific instrument
NASA’s Lucy mission is one step closer to launch as L’TES, the Lucy Thermal Emission Spectrometer, has been successfully integrated on to the spacecraft. Source: https://phys.org/news/2021-01-nasa-mission-trojan-asteroids-scientific.html…
Biggest asteroid to pass near Earth in 2021 is also one of the fastest
Asteroid 2001 FO32 will be sweeping past Earth at such a fast pace that, when it’s closest, observers using telescopes might be able to detect its motion – its drift in front of the stars – in real time. Source: https://earthsky.org/astronomy-essentials/asteroid-2001-fo32-big-fast-pass-near-earth-2021…
2019 LD2: A very interesting orbit-hopping comet
Prior to Comet 2019 LD2, discovered last year, astronomers had never witnessed a comet in the process of orbiting from being between Jupiter and Neptune to orbiting inside Jupiter’s orbit. Now … witness the power of gravity! Source: https://earthsky.org/space/comet-2019-ld2-transitioning-orbit-hopping-jupiter-family…
A surprising find of fast-moving gas from a young star
Fast-moving gas from a young star – located in a star-forming region 400 light-years away – is giving astronomers insight into how planets form. Source: https://earthsky.org/space/no-lup-surprising-find-outflowing-gas-young-star…
‘Mysterious Object Hurtling Towards Earth’ is a 1966 Booster Rocket
“A Mysterious Object Is Hurtling Towards Earth, and Scientists Don’t Know What It Is,” read Newsweek’s headline on Monday, describing an object projected to pass 31,605 miles from earth. (One astronomer told them that was roughly 13% of the average distance between the earth and the moon). But then a computer model calculated its past trajectories through space, according to the…
Hayabusa 2: Returning asteroid sample could help uncover the origins of life and the solar system
What is your idea of an asteroid? Many people think of them as potato-shaped, inert and perhaps rather dull, pock-marked objects—far away in deep space. But over the last ten years, two Japanese space missions – Hayabusa and now Hayabusa 2 – have dispatched that view to the history books. Asteroids are interesting bodies that may be able to explain how…
Researchers uncover key clues about the solar system’s history
In a new paper published in the journal Nature Communications Earth and Environment, researchers at the University of Rochester were able to use magnetism to determine, for the first time, when carbonaceous chondrite asteroids—asteroids that are rich in water and amino acids—first arrived in the inner solar system. The research provides data that helps inform scientists about the early origins of…
Chaotic early solar system collisions resembled ‘asteroids’ arcade game
One Friday evening in 1992, a meteorite ended a more than 150 million-mile journey by smashing into the trunk of a red Chevrolet Malibu in Peekskill, New York. The car’s owner reported that the 30-pound remnant of the earliest days of our solar system was still warm and smelled of sulfur. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-chaotic-early-solar-collisions-resembled.html…
Lab developing device to help Earth dodge asteroids
In a corner of the campus at Riga Technical University, a team of scientists is working on technology that could one day stop asteroids from smashing into Earth. Source: https://phys.org/news/2020-12-lab-device-earth-dodge-asteroids.html…