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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...

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...

Crater From 1908 Russian Space Impact Found, Team Says Maria Cristina Valsecchi in Rome, Italy for National Geographic NewsNovember 7, 2007 Almost a century after a mysterious explosion in Russia flattened a huge swath of Siberian forest, scientists have found what they believe is a crater made by the cosmic object that made the blast. The crater was discovered under a lake near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in western Siberia, where the cataclysm, known as the Tunguska event, took place (see map). On June 30, 1908, a ball of fire exploded about 6 miles (10 kilometers) above the ground in...

The so-called ‘Tunguska Event’ refers to a major explosion that occurred on 30 June 1908 in the Tunguska region of Siberia, causing the destruction of over 2000 km2 of taiga, globally detected pressure and seismic waves, and bright luminescence in the night skies of Europe and Central Asia, combined with other unusual phenomena. The ‘Tunguska Event’ may be related to the impact with the Earth of a cosmic body that exploded about 5–10 km above ground, releasing in the atmosphere 10–15 Mton of energy. Fragments of the impacting body have never been found, and its nature (comet or asteroid) is...

The asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs around 66 million years ago crashed into Earth at “the deadliest possible angle”, researchers have concluded. The giant impacter struck what is today Mexico’s Yucatán Peninsula at around 60 degrees — maximizing the production of climate-altering greenhouse gases. The global disaster caused by the space rock — which was bigger than Mount Everest — was far worse than once thought, Imperial College London experts said. Previous studies had suggested the asteroid came in at an angle of around 30 degrees, while others concluded that it crashed almost straight down. However, the team’s computer...

A previously unseen asteroid the size of a truck flew about 4,350 miles (7,000 kilometers) over the Pacific Ocean on Monday, making it one of the closest passes by our planet on record. Astronomers had no notice of asteroid 2020 JJ's existence, as it was discovered using the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona right around the time it reached its closest point to us. Had 2020 JJ actually struck Earth, most of it probably would have burned up in the atmosphere. In other words, this space rock wasn't any sort of existential threat, but it did fly closer than many...

Slooh will broadcast live telescope views of the near-Earth asteroid, called 1998 OR2, tonight (April 28) beginning at 7 p.m. EDT (2300 GMT). You can watch it live here on Space.com, courtesy of Slooh, or directly from Slooh.com and its YouTube page. This webcast will be free for anyone to watch, but paid members of Slooh can also tune in at Slooh.com and join a so-called "star party" on Zoom, where viewers will be able to join the discussion. Slooh astronomers will also be answering members' questions during this "star party." The one-hour public event will commence just 11 hours...