Tag: Solar System
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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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Scientists find building blocks of life in OSIRIS-REx samples, discover potentially dangerous asteroid
Scientists from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample return mission recently delivered remarkable findings about asteroid 101955 Bennu after the mission returned its samples to Earth in 2023. While scientists revealed the OSIRIS-REx findings this week, a newly discovered asteroid reached level three on the 10-point Torino space impactor hazard scale, the second highest rating given to…
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NASA defers decision on Mars Sample Return to the Trump administration
For nearly four years, NASA’s Perseverance rover has journeyed across an unexplored patch of land on Mars—once home to an ancient river delta—and collected a slew of rock samples sealed inside cigar-sized titanium tubes. These tubes might contain tantalizing clues about past life on Mars, but NASA’s ever-changing plans to bring them back to Earth…
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NASA awards SpaceX a contract for one of the few things it hasn’t done yet
When you compare SpaceX to the world’s other space enterprises, it’s probably easier to list the things SpaceX hasn’t done instead of reciting all of the company’s achievements. One of these is the launch of nuclear materials. SpaceX has launched a handful of planetary science missions for NASA, but these spacecraft have all used solar…
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NASA launches mission to explore the frozen frontier of Jupiter’s moon Europa
NASA’s Europa Clipper spacecraft lifted off Monday from Kennedy Space Center in Florida aboard a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, kicking off a $5.2 billion robotic mission to explore one of the most promising locations in the Solar System for finding extraterrestrial life. The Falcon Heavy rocket fired its 27 kerosene-fueled engines and vaulted away from…
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NASA will proceed with final preps to launch Europa Clipper next month
For a while earlier this summer, it looked like NASA’s flagship mission to study Jupiter’s icy moon Europa might miss its launch window this year. In May, engineers raised concerns that transistors installed throughout the spacecraft might be susceptible to damage from radiation, an omnipresent threat for any probe whipping its way around Jupiter. The…
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With NASA’s plan faltering, China knows it can be first with Mars sample return
China plans to launch two heavy-lift Long March 5 rockets with elements of the Tianwen-3 Mars sample return mission in 2028, the mission’s chief designer said Thursday. In a presentation at a Chinese space exploration conference, the chief designer of China’s robotic Mars sample return project described the mission’s high-level design and outlined how the…
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Using data from DART’s impact, scientists investigate characteristics of Dimorphos and Didymos
In September 2022, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully slammed into the side of asteroid moonlet Dimorphos. Initial data from the event indicated that DART had successfully altered the orbit of Dimorphos and achieved its primary mission goal — to assess how much a spacecraft could deflect an asteroid through a transfer of…
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Armada to Apophis—scientists recycle old ideas for rare asteroid encounter
For nearly 20 years, scientists have known an asteroid named Apophis will pass unusually close to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029. But most officials at the world’s space agencies stopped paying much attention when updated measurements ruled out the chance Apophis will impact Earth any time soon. Now, Apophis is again on the agenda,…
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NASA wants the Voyagers to age gracefully, so it’s time for a software patch
Forty-six years in deep space have taken their toll on NASA’s twin Voyager spacecraft. Their antiquated computers sometimes do puzzling things, their thrusters are wearing out, and their fuel lines are becoming clogged. Around half of their science instruments no longer return data, and their power levels are declining. Still, the lean team of engineers…