Tag: near-earth-object
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Don’t panic, but an asteroid has a 1.9% chance of hitting Earth in 2032
Something in the sky captured the attention of astronomers in the final days of 2024. A telescope in Chile scanning the night sky detected a faint point of light, and it didn’t correspond to any of the thousands of known stars, comets, and asteroids in astronomers’ all-sky catalog. The detection on December 27 came from…
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NASA shuts down asteroid-hunting telescope, but a better one is on the way
Last week, NASA decommissioned a nearly 15-year-old spacecraft that discovered 400 near-Earth asteroids and comets, closing an important chapter in the agency’s planetary defense program. From its position in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft’s infrared telescope scanned the entire sky 23 times and captured millions of images, initially searching for infrared emissions from galaxies, stars, and…
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NASA shuts down asteroid-hunting telescope, but a better one is on the way
Last week, NASA decommissioned a nearly 15-year-old spacecraft that discovered 400 near-Earth asteroids and comets, closing an important chapter in the agency’s planetary defense program. From its position in low-Earth orbit, the spacecraft’s infrared telescope scanned the entire sky 23 times and captured millions of images, initially searching for infrared emissions from galaxies, stars, and…