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...Last night (Sunday, October 5th), a telescope on Mount Lemmon, Arizona, detected a tiny moving blip, the signature of a small chunk of rock moving rapidly through space. Twenty-five observations have been done since then by professional and amateur astronomers around the world, and the object's orbit has been pinned down with fairly high precision. It is almost certain to hit Earth's atmosphere around 10:46 p.m. EDT tonight, October 6th. (That's 2:46 a.m. October 7th, Greenwich Mean Time.) The rock is roughly 10 feet (3 meters) across, and it's expected to enter the atmosphere above northern Sudan at about 8...

AN asteroid discovered today will hit Earth's atmosphere over Sudan in a few hours -SNIP- The asteroid would create a large fireball about 10.46pm EDT (1.46pm AEST) as it burns up, a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said. "We want to stress that this object is -SNIP- a threat," said Timothy Spahr, director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center at Harvard in Massachusetts. "We're excited since this is the first time we have issued a prediction that an object will enter Earth's atmosphere," Dr Spahr said. The asteroid, known as a meteoroid, -SNIP- "A typical meteor...

AN asteroid discovered today will hit Earth's atmosphere over Sudan in a few hours but will burn up before it can hit the ground or endanger aircraft, astronomers say. The asteroid would create a large fireball about 10.46pm EDT (1.46pm AEST) as it burns up, a team at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics said. "We want to stress that this object is not a threat," said Timothy Spahr, director of the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center at Harvard in Massachusetts. "We're excited since this is the first time we have issued a prediction that an object will enter Earth's...

Don Quijote is an asteroid investigation , geophysical characterisation and deflection technological experiment mission. The mission will contain the following elements: * Two spacecraft which are to be launched in separate interplanetary trajectories. * One spacecraft, which will be referred to as Hidalgo, will impact an asteroid of approximately 500 m diameter at a relative speed of at least 10 km/s. * The other spacecraft, called Sancho, will arrive earlier at the same asteroid along a very different route, perform a rendez-vous and remain in orbit around the asteroid for several months before and after the impact. * Sancho will...

Asteroid Buzzes Earth Highlighting Cosmic Blind SpotBy Robert Roy Britt Senior Science Writer 3-21-2002 An asteroid large enough to have flattened a city buzzed Earth earlier this month and was not seen until after if flew harmlessly by. The space rock approached Earth in the glare of the Sun, a blind spot that made it impossible to see during the day or night from any terrestrial vantage point. The event illustrates the potential of a surprise hit by an asteroid, astronomers said. The object, now named 2002 EM7, was probably between 40 and 80 meters (130-260 feet) in diameter, said...

The paper ... noted that a number of large, very remote objects share a similar orbital angle. That's suspicious if you're an astronomer expecting to see a random distribution of objects. The key orbital feature is known, rather obtusely, as the “argument of perihelion.” We're not shy of complicated orbital concepts (we try to toss around the phrase "obliquity of the ecliptic" whenever possible), but this one is not very easy to explain. "The argument of perihelion is the angle at which an object comes to perihelion with respect to the ecliptic plane," Sheppard said in an e-mail. Mike Brown,...

According to a Tuesday piece in Motherboard, Noam Chomsky, a philosopher and political commentator, and Lawrence Krauss, a physicist and cosmologist, had a public dialogue about space exploration. Being both men of the far left, they concluded that space travel should be best left to robots and conducted by governments. The conclusions are the exact opposite of what the prevailing trends are in space policy.

Space agency kills off internet rumour by confirming an asteroid strike will not wipe out humanity in the next few weeks, or years, or decades.Good news for those with plans for October and beyond: the Earth will still be in existence. NASA has confirmed – after rumours swept the internet about an imminent asteroid strike expected between 15 and 28 September – that the two-week period in question will be entirely free of Earth-destroying space attacks. The likelihood of any known potentially hazardous asteroid striking the planet within the next 100 years stands at 0.01%, the space agency said in...

Humans on Europa: A Plan for Colonies on the Icy Moon By Don Lipper Special to SPACE.com posted: 07:00 am ET 06 June 2001 Forewarned is forearmed in science fact and science fiction when it comes to Jupiter's icy moon Europa. Frigid and ice-covered, Europa is believed to harbor a giant liquid ocean beneath its crusty arctic surface, a primordial sea whose tidal motions are driven by Jovian gravity and warmed by intense radiation given off by the giant planet. Yet despite the planet's fearsome environment, members of the Artemis Society, a private venture dedicated establishing a permanent, self-supporting community...

A recent diamond discovery and technological advancements in outer space have exposed potential new metal and gemstone sources for the jewellery industry.Geologists have reportedly discovered another type of diamond within the lava of the Tolbachik volcano, located on the Kamchatka Peninsula in Russia.According to multiple media reports, the Russian Ministry of Science released a statement that read: “The solidified lava of the Tolbachik eruption [which occurred in 2012–13] carries within it a new and never-before-seen type of diamond ... According to the Russian geologists, these unique diamonds are not formed in the magmatic melt, but are created by volcanic gases...

Distributed at the outer edge of the asteroid belt, the Euphrosynes have an unusual orbital path that juts well above the ecliptic, the equator of the solar system. The asteroid after which they are named, Euphrosyne — an ancient Greek goddess of mirth — is about 156 miles (260 kilometers) across and is one of the 10 largest asteroids in the main belt. Current-day Euphrosyne is thought to be a remnant of a massive collision about 700 million years ago that formed the family of smaller asteroids bearing its name. Scientists think this event was one of the last great...

An asteroid worth a potential £3.5 trillion ($5.4 trillion) is due to pass by Earth on Sunday, and you can watch it live from 11pm UK time (6.30pm ET). Asteroid 2011 UW-158's fly-by will be streamed live on the internet from an observatory in the Canary Islands. The space rock has attracted the attention of asteroid mining company Planetary Resources, because it is thought to have a 100 million ton core of platinum that the company might one day want to exploit. Asteroid 2011 UW-158 will pass within 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from Earth on Sunday - 30...

It may sound like a science fiction movie, but in a small conference room at the Goddard Space Flight Center, a tight-knit group of top NASA scientists is coming up with new ways to protect our planet from killer asteroids. The idea is to repurpose and build on technologies being developed for other space missions. How big is the threat from asteroids? Well, Jason Kessler, NASA's director of the Grand Challenge, says that as of Wednesday morning asteroid hunters around the world have identified and are tracking 12,706 Near Earth Objects (NEOs) -- or asteroids - that could come close...

Mars theory cites episodes of wet asteroids By Paul Recer The Associated Press WASHINGTON — Mars never had oceans as some researchers claim, but instead is a cold, dry planet that was pounded by water-bearing asteroids and showered with scalding rain that carved vast gullies and valleys, a new study claims. The study, reported this week in the journal Science, sheds new light on a continuing debate by Mars researchers about how much water was on Mars, where it went and how it formed the planet's intricate pattern of canyons, riverbeds and deltas. Using Mars photos and computer simulations, researchers...

Around 3 a.m. (CDT) tomorrow morning April 21, a 50-foot-wide asteroid will hurdle just 0.2 lunar distances or 45,600 miles over your bed. The Mt. Lemmon Survey, based in Tucson, Arizona, snagged the space rock Saturday. 2015 HD1 is about as big as a full grown T-rex through not nearly as scary, since it will safely miss Earth … but not by much.

Scientists have calculated that 2014 UR116 asteroid will fly in dangerous proximity to Earth every three years. If it collides with the planet the energy of the explosion could be a thousand times greater than the impact of the Chelyabinsk meteorite. Vladimir Lipunov, a leading scientist on the team which discovered the asteroid this October, says the scientists now know its orbit and its period which is 3 years, but they cannot say precisely when the asteroid will approach the Earth. “We should track it constantly. Because if we have a single mistake, there will be a catastrophe. The consequences...

...the Kola fireball had a 'disturbingly similar' path to asteroid 2014 UR116, which is due to pass by the moon in 2017. Spotted on April 19 last year, researchers used camera footage to help recreate its trajectory and hunt down any remaining fragments... This led researchers to the Annama meteorite, which is an ordinary H5 chondrite -- a group of space rocks with high strength that make up 31 per cent of meteorite falls. The computer model compared the orbit of Annama, a 1,100lb (500kg) rock, with the evolution of a dozen orbits of near-Earth asteroids... Vladimir Lipunov, a professor...

Another processing of the experimental photographer Vincenzo Giovanni Ruello revealing the actual asteroid in close up P/2010-A2 originally photographed by Hubble telescope in 2010

Asteroid 2004 BL86, which passed closest to Earth today at a distance of 750,000 miles (1.2 million km), has a companion moon. Scientists working with NASA’s 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of the asteroid which show the tiny object in orbit about the main body. ... 2004 BL86 measures about 1,100 feet (325 meters) across while its moon is approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across. The asteroid made its closest approach today (Jan. 26th) at 10:19 a.m. (CST), however it will peak in brightness this evening around 10 p.m. (4:00...

NASA is saying amateur astronomers with small telescopes and strong binoculars may be able to see the asteroid, although stormy conditions in the Northeast will limit night-time viewing there. Here's how to try to view the asteroid. Editor's note: These times are Eastern Standard Time so adjust them three hours earlier for optimal Pacific Standard Time viewing.]