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Japan's Hayabusa2 probe, which has been circling the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) asteroid Ryugu since late June, deployed two little "rovers" called MINERVA-II1A and MINERVA-II1B at 12:05 a.m. EDT (0405 GMT) today (Sept. 21). The event occurred when the mother ship was about 180 feet (55 meters) above Ryugu's pockmarked, boulder-strewn surface, mission team members said. "The separation of MINERVA-II1 has been confirmed! The state of the spacecraft is normal," JAXA officials announced via Twitter just after the rovers deployed. That confirmation came after an apparently tense descent for Hayabusa2 flight controllers. "In the control room, you can hear the sound...

will pass by Earth at about half the distance between us and the moon this weekend. There's no need to worry, though. While the newly discovered near-Earth Asteroid 2018 RC will make a relatively close pass by our planet, it will still safely clear the neighborhood with no chance of a collision. The University of Hawaii's Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) first spotted the asteroid on Monday, and it's estimated to measure up to 233 feet (71 meters) in diameter. That's the same height as the 17-story will pass by Earth at about half the distance between us and...

Forget deflecting asteroids from hitting Earth—some engineers are drawing up a strategy to steer asteroids toward us, so our atmosphere can act as a giant catching mitt for resource-rich space rocks. What might sound like a crazy idea is actually quite business savvy, according to Minghu Tan, a Ph.D. student at the University of Glasgow in the United Kingdom who co-authored the new study. That’s because such near-Earth asteroids can host supplies, such as water and precious metals, that could support future human missions to space. But other scientists are skeptical that the concept will ever get off the ground....

Even as Japan's Hayabusa2 mission prepares to place landers on the surface of an asteroid, scientists are still squeezing discoveries out of data and samples gathered by its predecessor. Now, those samples have allowed scientists to piece together a detailed history of the asteroid that the first Hayabusa mission visited, a rocky near-Earth asteroid called Itokawa. The research relied on tiny particles of a phosphate-rich mineral found within the dust the Hayabusa spacecraft brought back from its journey. The scientists were able to study the uranium found in that phosphate and measure how much of it had broken down into...

The solar system just got a bit stranger. As astronomers continue their ongoing quest to find the elusive Planet Nine, a team found a space rock that lends credence to the idea that a huge super-Earth planet really exists in the outer reaches of our solar system. The newfound asteroid, called 2015 BP519, adds to a growing body of evidence about little worlds in the solar system being perturbed by something big. Astronomers detailed its discovery and description in a new paper, adding that its bizarre angle of its orbit gives more weight to the idea that a big planet...

The space agency said the 2016 NF23 is hurtling rapidly at a speed of around 20,000mph. At that speed, it is around 15 times faster than the 1,354mph the retired Concorde travelled at. The 2016 NF23 also measures up to a jaw-dropping 160metres. At that size, it is bigger than the Great Pyramid of Giza in Egypt which measures 139m. It is listed on NASA's Earth Close Approaches page, despite whizzing by at a distance of 3million miles away. But in space terms, it is considered close enough that it will pay attention to it. At 160m, it is considered...

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft began its final approach toward the big near-Earth asteroid Bennu on Friday (Aug. 17), NASA officials said. The milestone also marks the official start of OSIRIS-REx's "asteroid operations" mission phase, they added. OSIRIS-REx is still about 1.2 million miles (2 million kilometers) from Bennu and won't arrive in orbit around the 1,650-foot-wide (500 meters) space rock until Dec. 3. The $800 million OSIRIS-REx mission — whose name is short for Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer — launched on Sept. 8, 2016, from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. If all goes according to...

THE American space agency is planning to send a spacecraft to a lump of metal in space worth quadrillions of dollars. The 200km-wide asteroid is currently orbiting the sun between Mars and Jupiter. It is made up of various precious metals such as iron, nickel and gold. Experts believe the iron alone in the rock would be worth $10,000 quadrillion – enough to cause the world’s economy, worth $73.7 trillion, to promptly collapse altogether.

The European Southern Observatory (ESO) and ESA (European space agency) teamed up to produce a packed Asteroid Day webcast. There were interviews with ESA and ESO scientists. Updates from Europe’s asteroid hunters and some of the most recent asteroid science results, including the blockbuster news on Oumuamua, the first-ever interplanetary visitor. The programme also included an interview with ESA astronaut Luca Parmitano on the challenges of future human missions to asteroids, as well as a surprise segment that answered the age-old question: What really killed off the dinosaurs? More than 1M asteroids have the potential to impact Earth and through...

3200 Phaethon was the first asteroid to be discovered via spacecraft on October 11, 1983. Astronomers Simon F. Green and John K. Davies noticed it while searching Infrared Astronomical Satellite (IRAS) data for moving objects. Charles T. Kowal confirmed it optically and said it was asteroid-like in appearance. The object received the provisional designation 1983 TB. Two years later, in 1985, using the convention for naming asteroids, astronomers assigned it its number and name: 3200 Phaethon. An interesting feature of the orbit of 3200 Phaethon is that it comes very close to the sun, closer than any other named asteroid...

The startling finding means that experts may not be able to spot the massive space rock hidden in the annual Taurids meteor shower until it is too late. According to a group of researchers, one of the fragments could hit Earth in 2022, 2025, 2032 or 2039 during the annual meteor shower. The Taurids is a spectacular meteor shower that lights up the night skies every November. The meteor shower is the trail of debris left by the comet Encke. But the debris could be obscuring two asteroid chunks known as 2015 TX24 and 2005 UR that are potentially Earth-bound....

Astronomers have calculated the Apophis asteroid will speed past Earth on April 13, 2029, at just 18,600 miles away -- a hair's width in astronomical terms. To put that into perspective, the moon is 238,900 miles away... If the 27 billion kg asteroid were to hit Earth, scientists calculate that it would leave a crater over a mile wide and a staggering 518 metres deep. However, most worryingly, the impact would be equivalent to 880 million tons of TNT being detonated -- some 65,000 times as powerful as the nuclear bomb which was dropped on Hiroshima. The next time the...

An artist's impression of how the proposed asteroid-suspended Analemma Tower would look. The building will be suspended from an asteroid orbiting 50,000kms from the earth A New York-based firm is proposing that Dubai be the site of a futuristic, asteroid-suspended skyscraper that orbits around the world. The speculative Analemma Tower - which is being proposed by the Clouds Architecture Office - is designed to be suspended downward on an asteroid orbiting 50,000km from earth. It would orbit in a figure-eight pattern across the northern and southern hemispheres in a 24-hour cycle each day. A design close-up of the asteroid from...

Radical skyscraper design from a New York City firm will be built from the sky down instead of the ground up Analemma Tower is set to be suspended from an orbiting asteroid 31,068 miles (50,000 km) above the Earth Tower will move in a figure eight pattern between the northern and southern hemispheres each day Solar panels will generate power and water will be collected from cloud condensation and rain water Building will be broken up into sections, such as business, worship, dining, shopping and entertainment A New York architecture firm has unveiled designs for a skyscraper that is out...

The space rock is coming for a visit, but it won't get too close for comfort. T he 4 Vesta asteroid is currently making a drive-by visit to Earth. The asteroid, which reportedly measures more than 300 miles in diameter, is now so close to Earth that at night, you can see it with your very own eyes — no telescope required. ... So why isn’t anyone freaking out over this massive rock flying through space so close to Earth? Because even though it’s so close we can see it in the night sky, it’s not actually that close at...

As 28-year-old Ocasio-Cortez begins her meteoric rise in politics – observers have pointed out that she has an asteroid named after her, called 23238 Ocasio-Cortez. "It's true! Science was my first passion," she tweeted on June 12, adding that the asteroid was named in honour of longevity experiments she conducted out of Mt. Sinai Health System in New York. "My research won 2nd place globally in Microbiology at @intel ISEF," she said in the tweet, referring to the Intel International Science and Engineering Fair. "At [Boston University] I started as science major, changed to Econ ???? #nerdalert" The asteroid in...

Japan's Hayabusa-2 spacecraft will collect a piece of the asteroid Ryugu and bring it back to Earth. The asteroid Ryugu, recently imaged by the Hayabusa-2 spacecraft that will now prepare to collect a sample. JAXA _____________________________________________________________________________________ Japan’s Hayabusa-2 spacecraft has been traveling through space for almost four years, and it has finally reached its destination. The spacecraft has traveled all this way to a small asteroid, named Ryugu, for a singular purpose: to collect a piece of it and bring it back to Earth. Hayabusa-2 is the successor to Japan’s original Hayabusa spacecraft, which visited the asteroid Itokawa in 2005....

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) released several new images that Hayabusa2 snapped recently of the asteroid Ryugu, whose shape has now become clear. "From a distance, Ryugu initially appeared round, then gradually turned into a square before becoming a beautiful shape similar to fluorite (known as the 'firefly stone' in Japanese)," Hayabusa2 project manager Yuichi Tsuda wrote today (June 25) in a description of the newest photos, which the probe took Saturday and Sunday (June 23 and 24), from as close as 25 miles (40 kilometers). "Now, craters are visible, rocks are visible and the geographical features are seen...

The world’s first trillionaire won’t come from cryptocurrency or some clever new app – he or she will become rich from asteroid mining. _____________________________________________________________________ That’s what bankers Goldman Sachs reckon, anyway – and several companies are now vying to be the first into space. NASA estimates that the total value of asteroids out there could be up to $700 quintillion – equivalent to £75 billion each for us here on Earth. Several companies are now buidling the machines which will take us there – including Deep Space Industries, which is building a steam-powered thruster for spacecraft, the Guardian reports. British...

A boulder-sized asteroid designated 2018 LA was discovered Saturday morning, June 2, and was determined to be on a collision course with Earth, with impact just hours away. Because it was very faint, the asteroid was estimated to be only about 6 feet (2 meters) across, which is small enough that it was expected to safely disintegrate in Earth's atmosphere. Saturday's asteroid was first discovered by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, located near Tucson and operated by the University of Arizona. Although there was not enough tracking data to make precise predictions ahead of time, a swath of possible locations...