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Scientists have yet to pin down the asteroid's exact size, but it's not that large, likely between 14 feet and 32 feet (4.4 and 9.9 meters) long, according to CNEOS. This potentially RV-size asteroid was discovered only last week, on Sept. 18, by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona, and announced the next day by the Minor Planet Center, a NASA-funded group that monitors minor planets, comets and natural satellites. (It's not unusual to find unknown asteroids; in September alone, the Minor Planet Center has announced the discovery of 244 near-Earth objects.) Passing by Earth will actually be a life-changing...

Explanation: Why does asteroid Bennu eject gravel into space? No one is sure. The discovery, occurring during several episodes by NASA's visiting OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, was unexpected. Leading ejection hypotheses include impacts by Sun-orbiting meteoroids, sudden thermal fractures of internal structures, and the sudden release of a water vapor jet. The featured two-image composite shows an ejection event that occurred in early 2019, with sun-reflecting ejecta seen on the right. Data and simulations show that large gravel typically falls right back to the rotating 500-meter asteroid, while smaller rocks skip around the surface, and the smallest rocks completely escape the low...

CU Boulder and Lockheed Martin will lead a new space mission to capture the first-ever closeup look at a mysterious class of solar system objects: binary asteroids. In 2022, the Janus team will launch two identical spacecraft that will travel millions of miles to individually fly close to two pair of binary asteroids. Their observations could open up a new window into how these diverse bodies evolve and even burst apart over time, said Daniel Scheeres, the principle investigator for Janus. The mission, which will cost less than $55 million under NASA's SIMPLEx program, may also help to usher in...

Among recent 'near-Earth objects' it's one of the biggest but won't be as terrifying close as the rock that flew past less than 2,000 miles from us in August An asteroid the size of a football pitch is to whizz past planet Earth on Monday, September 14. The giant chunk of rock, named Asteroid 2020 QL2, is up to 120 metres in diameter. It's among the 'near Earth objects' being documented and observed by astronomers. NASA's Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) says QL2 will fly past at a speed of nearly 24,000 mph and come within a distance of...

The rust may be a result of the water discovered on the moon A newly published study notes that the moon is "rusting," leaving experts perplexed by the discovery. The research, published in Science Advances, notes that the rust may be a result of water discovered on the moon, but it's still shocking, given the lack of oxygen and dearth of water on Earth's celestial satellite. "It's very puzzling," the study's lead author, Shuai Li of the University of Hawaii, said in a statement. "The moon is a terrible environment for hematite to form in." Li was looking at data...

So why does rust currently exist on the moon? There are a number of factors, but Earth is partly to blame. To begin with, water exists on the moon in small quantities. Ice water exists in lunar craters, but that water exists on the far side of the moon, far from where the rust occurred. The current theory is that dust particles that often hit the moon are helping release water molecules, mixing those water molecules with iron on the surface. Then there's the oxygen part. That's where Earth comes in. Thanks to the fact it exists in such close...

An asteroid with diameters between 22 and 49 metres will shoot pass Earth in a distance closer than Earth from the Moon on September 1, according to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). 2011 ES4's close approach is 'close' on an astronomical scale but poses no danger of actually hitting Earth. Planetary defence experts expect it to safely pass by at least 45,000 miles (792,000 football fields) away on Tuesday, September 1," NASA Asteroid Watch tweeted on Saturday. The last time asteroid 2011 ES4 fly by the Earth was visible from ground for four days. This time, it will...

NASA and the European Space Agency are monitoring an asteroid that has a "non-zero" probability of colliding with Earth later this year. Based on the data collected by the two agencies, the asteroid is not in danger of causing an impact event due to its small size. The approaching asteroid has been identified as 2018 VP1. This asteroid is currently listed in NASA’s Sentry and the ESA’s Risk List, which are the agencies’ respective asteroid impact monitoring systems. As noted by the agencies, all asteroids listed in Sentry and the Risk List have chances of colliding with Earth in the...

This year could end with a bang. Scientists recently spotted an asteroid on a direct collision course to Earth — projected to hit a day before the presidential elections in November. The flying space object, known as 2018VP1, is expected on Nov. 2, according to the Center for Near Objects Studies at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The asteroid is 6.5 feet in diameter, according to NASA data, and first identified at the Palomar Observatory in California two years ago. The space agency says there could be three potential impacts “based on 21 observations spanning 12.968 days, with the chance of...

On Sunday (Aug. 16), the asteroid, initially labeled ZTF0DxQ and now formally known to astronomers as 2020 QG, swooped by Earth at a mere 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) away. The flyby wasn't expected and took many by surprise. In fact, the Palomar Observatory didn't detect the zooming asteroid until about six hours after the object's closest approach. "The asteroid approached undetected from the direction of the sun," Paul Chodas, the director of NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, told Business Insider. The close flyby was also a fast one, as 2020 QG swooped near Earth at a blistering 27,600...

The dwarf planet Ceres – long believed to be a barren space rock – is an ocean world with reservoirs of sea water beneath its surface, the results of a major exploration mission showed on Monday. Ceres is the largest object in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter and has its own gravity, enabling the Nasa Dawn spacecraft to capture high-resolution images of its surface. Now a team of scientists from the United States and Europe have analysed images relayed from the orbiter, captured about 35km (22 miles) from the asteroid. They focused on the 20-million-year-old Occator crater and...

An asteroid named 2020 OY4, made its closest approach to our planet on July 28, when it was discovered just 26,000 miles away from Earth. It flew by earth at the range that rivals the orbits of some high-flying satellites. This is extremely close in astronomical terms, and just 11 percent of the average distance between the Earth and the moon. In fact, the data from NASA that tracks near-Earth objects suggests that the close approach of this asteroid was the closest that any asteroid will come to our planet for the next year. However, if you measure by the...

Two Indian schoolgirls have discovered an asteroid which is slowly shifting its orbit and moving toward Earth. Radhika Lakhani and Vaidehi Vekariya, both studying in 10th grade, were working on a school project when they discovered the asteroid, which they named HLV2514. The girls, from the city of Surat in the western Indian state of Gujarat, were participating in a Space India and NASA project, which allows students to analyze images taken by a telescope positioned at the University of Hawaii. Aakash Dwivedi, senior educator and astronomer at Space India, told CNN that students across India were taught how to...

A mysterious origin and Arthur C. Clarke-level science-fiction speculation about the 17-mile-wide, deeply-grooved moon as an alien artifact captured in the ancient past by Mars gravitational field, may explain Russia’s almost mystical obsession with Phobos. First the Soviet Union, then more recently, Russia, made three attempts to reach the enigmatic object, but software errors and launch disasters have aborted each attempt. In 2016 the BBC reported that a mysterious monolith object was spotted several years ago by a NASA probe, and to this day nobody is quite sure what it is or how it got there. Japan is on deck,...

Videos of the event show a spectacular light with green and purplish hues flying across the sky for just a few seconds at around 2:30 a.m. local time, before the light fizzles out. The impact of what was likely a small asteroid colliding with our atmosphere was picked up by a few of the infrasound monitoring stations set up around the world and overseen by the Comprehensive Nuclear-Test-Ban Treaty Organization. The International Meteor Organization reports that the meteoroid was visible from a large part of Japan's Kanto region. The IMO estimates the space rock could've been around 5 feet (1.6...

By harnessing the innovation unleashed by the free enterprise system, private space enterprise is ready to explore the next untapped horizon: asteroids. We’re going to the moon. We’re going to Mars. And, before you know it, we’ll be going to the asteroid belt.Space is back, baby. It’s back in the news, back in our thoughts, and back in the culture. America, and the world, are better for it.Over the past few years, space exploration has returned to public consciousness in ways not since the first shuttle mission in 1981, or even since Americans landed men on the moon then brought...

The probe has been orbiting the asteroid since 2018 and has been preparing to collect a chunk of asteroid rock, which it will bring back to Earth in 2023. OSIRIS-REx is set to take the sample from the site named Nightingale on Oct. 20, 2020, but on May 26 the spacecraft took a dive toward Osprey, the backup sample collection site for the mission. OSIRIS-REx dropped down to just 820 feet (250 meters) above the site, which is the closest the spacecraft has been to Osprey. During the operation, the probe took 347 images from PolyCam, one of three cameras...

On the morning of 30 June 1908, a large explosion occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Yeniseysk Governorate (now Krasnoyarsk Krai), Russia. That event is known as the Tunguska event that leveled trees across more than 2,000 square kilometers. It is classified as an impact event, even though no impact crater has been found. Due to the remoteness of the site and the limited instrumentation available at the time of the event, modern scientific interpretations of its cause and magnitude have relied chiefly on damage assessments, and geological studies conducted many years after the fact. The most likely cause...

At 7.17am on June 30, 1908, an explosion like a hydrogen bomb erupted in Siberia - and until now, scientists have offered no conclusive explanation for the event.The Tunguska event occurred near the Tunguska River in SiberiaItalian scientists claim to have found chunks of a meteorite in nearby Lake Cheko Seismic reflection and magnetic data revealed an anomaly close to the lake center, about 30ft below the lake floor compatible with the presence of a buried stony object and supports the impact crater origin for Lake Cheko.' 'The sky split in two and fire appeared high and wide over the...

Explanation: Yes, but can your meteor do this? The most powerful natural explosion in recent Earth history occurred on 1908 June 30 when a meteor exploded above the Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia. Detonating with an estimated power 1,000 times greater than the atomic bomb dropped over Hiroshima, the Tunguska event leveled trees over 40 kilometers away and shook the ground in a tremendous earthquake. Eyewitness reports are astounding. The above picture was taken by a Russian expedition to the Tunguska site almost 20 years after the event, finding trees littering the ground like toothpicks. Estimates of the meteor's size...