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The American space agency wants to work out how it can grab an asteroid or at least a large chunk of one. Corralling a large piece of space rock is a key part of the agency’s Asteroid Grand Challenge and the Asteroid Redirect Mission. Despite the damage caused by a meteor that exploded over Chelyabinsk last year, Nasa believes the earth is safe from an asteroid collision for at least a century.

Scientists at the Carnegie Carnegie Institution for Science announced Wednesday the discovery of a new cosmic neighbor -- a distant dwarf planet named 2012 VP113 that was found spinning in the depths of space well past Pluto. Its existence suggests there may be another actual planet out there, they said, a rogue giant ten times bigger than Earth orbiting in the distant blackness

<p>LOS ANGELES (AP) — Peering into the far reaches of the solar system, astronomers have spied a pink frozen world 7½ billion miles from the sun.</p> <p>It's the second such object to be discovered in a region of space beyond Pluto long considered a celestial wasteland. Until now, the lone known resident in this part of the solar system was an oddball dwarf planet spotted in 2003 named Sedna after the mythological Inuit goddess who created the sea creatures of the Arctic.</p>

Scientists have made a stunning discovery in the outer realm of the solar system — an asteroid with its own set of rings that orbits the sun between Saturn and Uranus. The space rock is the first non-planetary object ever found to have its own ring system, researchers say. The pair of space rock rings encircle the asteroid Chariklo. They were most likely formed after a collision scattered debris around the asteroid, according to a new study unveiled today (March 27). The asteroid rings also suggests the presence of a still-undiscovered moon around Chariklo that's keeping them stable, researchers said....

This is a rare opportunity to witness an asteroid pass in front of a bright star, blocking out its light for up to ~14 seconds. Occultations occur all the time, but rarely do they happen to stars that are this bright and easy to see by naked eye. In that sense, it is likely a once in a lifetime event for those living near the path of occultation. Regulus is the brightest star in the constellation Leo and the 22nd brightest star in the night sky overall. The occultation will occur at about 2 am tomorrow morning. The path takes...

Beyond Neptune lies a reservoir of... icy debris left to roam the solar system's dim outer limits having never coalesced into planets... Named for astronomer Gerard Kuiper, who in 1951 predicted the existence of this 3-billion-kilometer-wide swath of icy chunks, the Kuiper belt didn't begin to reveal itself to observers until 1992. Since then, researchers have found more than a thousand bodies filling a doughnut-shaped belt, which extends 30 to about 50 astronomical units from the sun. One astronomical unit is the average distance between the Earth and sun... The puffed-up, elongated orbits and present-day sparseness of the belt all...

Many of the primitive bodies wandering the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter are former comets, tossed out of orbit by a brutal ballet between the giant outer planets, said a team of astrophysicists. A commonly accepted theory is that the asteroid belt is the rubble left over from a "proto-planetary disk," the dense ring of gas that surrounds a new-born star. But the orbiting rocks have long been a source of deep curiosity. They are remarkably varied, ranging from mixtures of ice and rock to igneous rocks, which implies they have jumbled origins. The answer to the mystery, according...

Asteroid Medley Challenges Naturalistic Origins by Brian Thomas, M.S. * Data from recent spacecraft flybys challenge the prevailing naturalistic perspective on asteroid origins. Secular astronomers assume that natural processes, rather than miracles, created the sun, Earth, planets, and asteroids from ancient, swirling masses of gases, but this new evidence points to something different. Writing in the British science journal Nature, Harvard's Francesca DeMeo and the Paris Observatory's Benoit Carry summarized the latest asteroid puzzles.1 For decades, secularists argued that asteroids somehow formed from merging dust particles in a hot nebula. Thus, where they orbit and what they're made of should...

An asteroid at least the size of a 60-story building will make a distant flyby of Earth this week, and you watch astronomers track the space rock tonight (March 9) in a live webcast, weather permitting. The asteroid poses no threat to Earth. The online Slooh community observatory will host the free webcast at 10 p.m. EDT (0200 GMT) to track asteroid 2014 CU13, a space rock about 623 feet (190 meters) wide discovered on Feb. 11 that will pass Earth at a range of about eight times the distance between Earth and the moon on Tuesday (March 11). The...

The Hubble Space Telescope spotted something no one had ever seen before: an asteroid shattering into as many as 10 smaller pieces. “This is a really bizarre thing to observe–we’ve never seen anything like this,” Jessica Agarwal of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research in Germany said in a statement. ... Asteroid P/2013 R3 was discovered last September 15 by the Catalina and Pan-STARRS sky surveys. At first, all astronomers saw was a faint, fuzzy object. Then, a couple of weeks later, the great Keck Telescope in Hawaii took a closer look and saw not one but three...

For the second day in a row, a space rock is going to zip close by Earth within the orbit of the moon, and you can watch the encounter live online.

The space rock known as 2014 DX110 is due to make its closest approach at about 4 p.m. ET Wednesday — at a distance of about 216,000 miles (345,600 kilometers), or roughly 90 percent of the moon's orbital distance. The passing asteroid is thought to be 60 to 140 feet (19 to 43 meters) wide. Sixty feet is the estimated width of the asteroid that broke apart roughly 20 miles (30 kilometers) above Chelyabinsk on Feb. 15, 2013, injuring hundreds of people. The Virtual Telescope Project 2.0, based in Italy, will air a webcast about 2014 DX110 at 3:30 p.m....

And it's actually (relatively) nearby. This is poor, unfortunate Ceres. Discovered in 1801, it was at first called a planet, then soon classified as an asteroid, and recently as a dwarf planet, not quite qualifying for real planet status despite residing in the solar system's asteroid belt. But now it can feel special: the Herschel Telescope has, the for the first time, detected water on the lil' planet--probably a whole lot of it, too. The telescope, using infrared vision, detected a signature of water vapor from Ceres. The researchers think when the 590-mile-wide Ceres moves closer to the sun, part...

Looking for something off of the beaten celestial path to observe? The coming weeks will offer telescope users a rare chance to catch a well known asteroid, as it puts on its best show for over two decades. Over the coming weeks, 2 Pallas, one of the “big four” asteroids – or do you say minor/dwarf planet/planetoid? – reaches a favorable observing point known as opposition. Gliding northward through the constellations of Hydra and Sextans through February and March 2014, 2 Pallas presents a favorable binocular challenge for both northern and southern hemisphere observers as it rises to the east...

In 2008, a group of astronomers led by Alex Parker did a study of the size distribution of asteroid families using data from the Sloan Digital Sky Survey. Asteroid families often have distinctive optical colors, the team said, and they were able to offer an improved way to separate out the family members into their colors. This resultant animation put together just this week by Parker shows the orbital motions of over 100,000 asteroids, with colors illustrating the compositional diversity and relative sizes of the asteroids. All main-belt asteroids and Trojan asteroids with orbits known to high precision are shown...

...The huge asteroid (which is the size of three football fields) will pass at a safe 8.8 lunar distances from the Earth during its closest approach...

A big asteroid sailed past Earth last month, and astronomers haven't yet totally excluded the possibility that it'll hit us when it comes around in 2032. If the past is any guide, we won't have to worry about asteroid 2013 TV135 — but it's a reminder that we'll have to fend off a killer space rock one of these days. Ukrainian astronomers discovered 2013 TV135 just 10 days ago, well after the asteroid had its close encounter with Earth on Sept. 16. Actually, it wasn't all that close: The distance was 4.2 million miles (6.7 million kilometers), or about 17...

TOKYO - A Japanese spacecraft that landed on an asteroid to collect surface samples for analysis has developed trouble with its thruster system, the nation's space agency said Tuesday. The problem is the latest facing Japan's attempt to complete the world's first two-way trip to an asteroid, following earlier problems with the probe's gyroscopes and two botched practice landings.The Hayabusa probe appeared to have touched down Saturday, just long enough to collect powder from the asteroid's surface and lift off again to return to Earth.But it soon began shaking due to a gas leak from a thruster, and that continued...

Smooth Sections on Asteroid Itokawa Credit & Copyright: ISAS, JAXA Explanation: Why are parts of this asteroid's surface so smooth? No one is yet sure, but it may have to do with the dynamics of an asteroid that is a loose pile of rubble rather than a solid rock. The unusual asteroid is currently being visited by the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa that is documenting its unusual structure and mysterious lack of craters. Last month, Hayabusa actually touched down on one of the smooth patches, dubbed the MUSES Sea, and collected soil samples that will eventually be returned to Earth...

The country that invented the Walkman may be back on track to burnish its image as a technological pioneer. Right now, more than 4.7 million miles from Earth, is a revolutionary spacecraft that could be the future of interstellar travel. Japan's space program, JAXA, confirmed on June 10 they had successfully unfurled the world's first solar sail — a spacecraft that uses the velocity of sunlight to propel it. Then, just three days later, Japan announced what could be an even more impressive accomplishment: a spacecraft that left Earth seven years ago had returned home. Before brilliantly burning up over...