Researchers studying meteorites from a large asteroid between Mars and Jupiter have discovered evidence that an event known as the late heavy bombardment happened differently than scientists believe. The time period was marked by a large number of impacts on planets like Earth, but it may have happened much earlier than previously thought. The study …
A newly-detected asteroid has been spotted by a pair of schoolgirls in India. The two teenagers found the asteroid in images collected by a telescope in Hawaii. The asteroid is currently orbiting near Mars, but that orbit will change and bring it within a close distance to Earth in roughly a million years’ time. When …
An asteroid bombardment impacted both the Moon and Earth roughly 800 million years ago, new research suggests. By dating the craters on the Moon, researchers were able to estimate when the Earth-Moon system was nailed by an asteroid storm. The scientists believe the bombardment dramatically affected Earth and everything living here at the time. When …
An asteroid considered “potentially hazardous” by NASA will pass by Earth on May 21st. The rock, which might be up to a mile in diameter, is expected to safely sail by at a distance of around 4 million miles. Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories. An asteroid estimated to be up to nearly a mile …
NASA’s DART mission will test the feasibility of redirecting an asteroid, but the debris it creates could generate the first-ever manmade meteor shower. The DART mission includes a spacecraft that will slam into one of the rocks that makes up the binary asteroid Didymos. A new study suggests we might see some of the debris …
Japan’s Hayabusa-2 asteroid probe snapped some gorgeous images of the surface of Ryugu. The photos show the color contrast of Ryugu’s surface, with the redder areas getting their color to an intense run-in with the Sun at some point in the asteroid’s past. Visit BGR’s homepage for more stories. The Japanese space agency JAXA sent …
An asteroid up to 100 feet in diameter passed closely by Earth early on Wednesday morning. The space rock named 2020 GH2 came closer to the Earth than the distance between the Earth and the Moon, making it a rather close call. The object is now being tracked by scientists. Visit BGR’s homepage for more …
If science fiction movies have taught us anything, it’s that saving Earth from a killer asteroid is going to take some big drills and probably nuclear weapons. Thankfully, if a particularly large space rock ever were to threaten Earth, our plan of attack would probably be a bit more level-headed. That is, as long as …
There are lots and lots of space rocks hanging out in our solar system. Most of them will never pose a threat to our planet, but a very tiny percentage will indeed come close. Inevitably, Earth will be on a collision course with a dangerous asteroid at some point in the future, and identifying the …
Jupiter has long been credited with protecting the inner solar system from pesky asteroids and other objects that could potentially cause a problem for us here on Earth. That theory has come under increasing scrutiny in recent years, and some researchers are now arguing that the opposite is actually true, and that the mighty gas …
