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Reworked images reveal hot Venus By Dr David Whitehouse Mars it is not: Reprocessed Venus image As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick layer of cloud. Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven. Original digital...

ODD ASTEROID: On April 7th, astronomers discovered a near-Earth asteroid following a curious path around the Sun. The orbit of 2003 GQ22 is nestled almost entirely inside Earth's own. "2003 GQ22 is nearly a member of the elusive inner-Earth object group, for which there is thought to be several members, but only one discovered to date (2003 CP20)," says Donald Yeomans, the manager of JPL's Near Earth Object Program. Inner-Earth asteroids start out like most space rocks--orbiting the Sun in the asteroid belt beyond Mars. But over the course of time, perhaps hundreds of millions of years or longer, they...

Cat-and-mouse asteroid pulls close to Earth January 03 2003 at 07:25PM Washington - An asteroid playing a cat-and-mouse game with Earth will pull to its closest point in almost a century on Monday before swinging away for another 95 years, Nasa said in a statement. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is like a mouse teasing a cat, approaching Earth first on one side and then on another, without ever making contact or actually passing our planet as the two bodies circle the sun, the astronomers said on Thursday. At just 60m, the tiny asteroid will get within 6 000 000km on Monday....

Monday, 21 October, 2002, 16:27 GMT 17:27 UKEarth's little brother found The asteroid was found almost by accident By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers have discovered the first object ever that is in a companion orbit to the Earth. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is only about 100 metres wide and never comes closer than 3.6 million miles to our planet. But it shares the Earth's orbit around the Sun, at first on one side of the Earth and then escaping to travel along our planet's path around the Sun until it encounters the Earth from the other...

Newly Discovered Object Could be a Leftover Apollo Rocket Stage An analysis of the orbital motion of the newly discovered object J002E3 indicates that it could be a leftover Saturn V third stage from one of the Apollo missions, most likely the Apollo 12 mission, launched on November 14, 1969. The new object was discovered on September 3 by Bill Yeung, who noted that it was moving quite rapidly. Initial orbit computations by the Minor Planet Center indicated that the object was only about twice as far away as the Moon, and was actually in orbit about our planet....

...the item is now believed to be a rocket booster from NASA’s Surveyor 2 mission which crash landed on the Moon in 1966... Of course, there’s still a chance that 2020 SO is actually an asteroid, in which case it would be considered a minimoon while in direct orbit around the Earth. However, an old rocket booster finding would merely be considered ‘space junk’ and join the 57,000-plus pieces of human debris currently being tracked by various entities. One astronomer’s space ‘trash’ is a vintage space collector’s treasure? You decide. You can watch more on NASA’s Surveyor missions below:...

Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago that's finally making its way back home, according to NASA's leading asteroid expert. Observations should help nail its identity. 2020 SO, as it is formally known, is actually the Centaur upper rocket stage that successfully propelled NASA's Surveyor 2 lander to the moon in 1966 before it was discarded. The lander ended up crashing into the moon after one of its thrusters failed to ignite on the way there. The rocket, meanwhile, swept past the moon and...

The object, dubbed 2020 SO by astronomers, will come within "just" 31,605 miles of our planet at 3:50 a.m. ET on December 1, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS.) This is an "extremely close," albeit safe, approach... The object, which is estimated to measure between 15-33 feet across, was discovered by the Pan-STARRS survey based in Maui, Hawaii, on September 17, 2020. This find was confirmed two days later by the Minor Planet Center, which is responsible for the designation of minor bodies in the solar system. Initial observations suggested that the object was an asteroid....

A mysterious object temporarily orbiting Earth is a 54-year-old rocket, not an asteroid after all, astronomers confirmed Wednesday. Observations by a telescope in Hawaii clinched its identity, according to NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. The object was classified as an asteroid after its discovery in September. But NASA’s top asteroid expert, Paul Chodas, quickly suspected it was the Centaur upper rocket stage from Surveyor 2, a failed 1966 moon-landing mission. Size estimates had put it in the range of the old Centaur, which was about 32 feet (10 meters) long and 10 feet (3 meters) in diameter. Chodas...