near earth asteroid

Orion Capsule Accelerating to 2014 Launch and Eventual Asteroid Exploration

April 14, 2013

Want to stay on top of all the space news? Follow @universetoday on Twitter NASA is picking up the construction pace on the inaugural space-bound Orion crew capsule at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida – and accelerating towards blastoff on the unmanned Exploration Flight Test-1 mission (EFT-1) slated for September 2014 atop a [...]

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Asteroid 2012 DA14: Observing Prospects and How to See It

February 11, 2013

Mark your calendars: this Friday, February 15, 2013, is the close flyby of Near Earth Asteroid 2012 DA14, passing just 27,630 kilometers (17,168 miles) from the surface of the Earth. About 50 meters (164 feet) in size, 2012 DA14 and its close shave marks the the first time there has been passage of an asteroid [...]

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Will Asteroid 2011 AG5 Hit Earth in 2040?

March 1, 2012

You may have heard about an asteroid in the news this week that has a 1 in 625 chance of hitting Earth on Feb. 5, 2040. So, will this asteroid, named 2011 AG5, really hit our planet? The quick answer is, probably not. But astronomers will need more observations of this asteroid to say one [...]

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Near-Earth Asteroid Eros by Efrain Morales

February 15, 2012

Efrain Morales captured this image of four sequences of the NEA Eros (Asteroid) from the night of February 1, 2012. Eros, also known as 433 Eros, is the second-largest near-Earth asteroid. The orbit of asteroid Eros is known to cross that of Mars. It was visited by the NEAR-Shoemaker space probe twice in 1998 and [...]

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Hayabusa

October 2, 2011

Hayabusa was an unmanned spacecraft designed and developed by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency(JAXA). Its mission was to return a sample from the near Earth asteroid 25143 Itokawa for analysis. The spacecraft was launched on May 9, 2003 with rendezvous taking place in September 2005. After arriving at the asteroid, Hayabusa studied its shape, spin, [...]

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