Asteroids Archives

February 8, 2024February 8, 2024 by Matt Williams

Fragments From That Asteroid That Exploded Above Berlin Have Been Recovered and They're Really Special

Artist's impression of a Near-Earth Asteroid passing by Earth. Credit: ESA

On January 21st, 2024, a meter-sized asteroid (2024 BX1) entered Earth’s atmosphere and exploded over Berlin at 12:33 am UTC (07:45 pm EST; 04:33 pm PST). Before it reached Earth, 2024 BX₁ was a Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) with an orbit that suggests it was part of the Apollo group. The fragments have since been located by a team of scientists from the Freie Universität Berlin, the Museum für Naturkunde (MfN), the German Aerospace Center (DLR), the Technische Universität Berlin, and the SETI Institute and identified as a rare type of asteroid known as “aubrites.”

January 26, 2024January 26, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Another Asteroid Discovered Hours Before it Impacts the Earth

What were you doing last Saturday? As it turns out, I was doing something rather unexciting… Trying to fix my washing machine (I did – in case you are interested). At the same time, Hungarian geography teacher by day and asteroid hunter by night Krisztián Sárneczky was out observing and detected a small asteroid which it transpired was on a collision course with Earth!

January 22, 2024January 22, 2024 by Evan Gough

Finally, Let’s Look at the Asteroid Treasure Returned to Earth by OSIRIS-REx

A top-down view of the OSIRIS-REx Touch-and-Go-Sample-Acquisition-Mechanism (TAGSAM) head with the lid removed, revealing the remainder of the asteroid sample inside. Photo: NASA/Erika Blumenfeld & Joseph Aebersold

NASA’s OSIRIS-REx delivered its precious cargo to Earth on September 24th, 2023. The sample from asteroid Bennu is contained inside the spacecraft’s sampling head, and it’s in safe hands at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. Two stubborn fasteners delayed the opening of the sampling head, but they’ve been removed, and now we can see inside.

What looks like unremarkable dirt is primordial asteroidal material that’s billions of years old, a natural treasure trove that eager scientists can’t wait to begin studying.

January 16, 2024January 16, 2024 by Mark Thompson

Engineers Finally Open OSIRIS-REx’s Sample Container

OSIRIS REx curation team attempting to remove the two stuck fasteners that are currently prohibiting the complete opening of the TAGSAM head. Photo Date: January 10, 2024. Location: Bldg. 31 - 2nd Floor - OSIRIS-REx lab. Photographer: Robert Markowitz

We have all been there, had that one stubborn jar of jam that we just can’t open. Maybe you grab a rubber band or run it under warm water and its an easy fix but just imagine when the jar is a module from a $1.16 billion interplanetary probe! That’s what happened to NASA engineers when they were trying to recover samples from the OSIRIS-REx module when they discovered the clamps had cold welded shut!

December 23, 2023December 23, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Miniaturized Jumping Robots Could Study An Asteroid’s Gravity

Missions focusing on small bodies in the solar system have been coming thick and fast lately. OSIRIS-Rex, Psyche, and Rosetta are all examples of projects that planned or did rendezvous with a small body in the solar system. But one of their biggest challenges is understanding the gravity of these bodies – which was especially evident when Philae, Rosetta’s lander, had a hard time staying on the surface of its intended comet. A new idea from researchers at the University of Colorado Boulder and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory could help solve that problem – by bouncing small probes around.

December 21, 2023December 21, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

Finally. A Productive Use for Nuclear Weapons: Asteroid Defense

Four different asteroids and how nuclear ablation affects asteroids of different makeups. — A modeling tool developed by scientists at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory shows the progression an asteroid being broken up by a theoretical nuclear device detonated near the the surface of the near-Earth object. Graphic illustration courtesy of Mary Burkey.

While it has been a favorite disaster movie theme, nuking an incoming asteroid in the real world has been touted as a very bad idea. While a nuclear bomb could possibly obliterate a smaller asteroid, nuking a larger asteroid would only break it into pieces. Those pieces would still threaten our planet, and perhaps even makes things worse by producing multiple impacts across the planet.

But is using nuclear weapons on an incoming asteroid really a bad idea? If the right technique is used, a nuclear blast could possibly be used as an asteroid deflection device.

December 11, 2023December 11, 2023 by Evan Gough

Psyche Gives Us Its First Images of Space

NASA's Psyche spacecraft has released its first images. The spacecraft is firing on all cylinders as it makes its way toward its target, the metal-rich asteroid with the same name. Image Credit: NASA

NASA’s Psyche mission began eight weeks ago when it launched from the Kennedy Space Center. While it won’t reach its objective, the metal-rich asteroid Psyche, until 2029, the spacecraft has already travelled 26 million km (16 million miles.) During that time, it’s already had its share of success as it ticks off items on its checklist of tests.

Now, we have our first images from Psyche. And while they don’t show us anything about its eventual target, they give us a behind-the-scenes look at how complex spacecraft prepare themselves as they cruise toward their destinations.

November 30, 2023November 30, 2023 by Nancy Atkinson

The New Asteroid Moon Discovered by Lucy Just Got its Own Name

Asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite companions, the "kissing moons". These appear to be a contact binary. Courtesy NASA/JPL/SWRI — Asteroid Dinkinesh and its satellite companions, the "kissing moons" now named Selam. The moon is a contact binary. Courtesy NASA/JPL/SWRI

When NASA’s Lucy mission flew past asteroid Dinkinesh on November 1, 2023, it made the surprising discovery the asteroid had a tiny moon. Then came another surprise. This wasn’t just any moon, but a contact binary moon, where two space rocks are gently resting against each other. Of course, this new and unique moon needed a name, so the International Astronomical Union (IAU) has just approved approved “Selam,” which means peace in Ethiopia’s language.

But, everything’s connected here. Dinkinesh is the Ethiopian name for the Lucy fossil, and Selam is named after another fossil from the same species of human ancestor.

November 29, 2023December 7, 2023 by Andy Tomaswick

Contact Binary Asteroids are Common, but We’ve Never Seen One Form. So Let’s Make One

Ever want to play a game of cosmic billiards? That’s commonly how the DART mission was described when it successfully changed the orbit of a near-Earth asteroid last year. If you want an idea of how it works, just Google it and an Easter egg from the search giant will give you a general idea. But DART was more like trying to brute force a billiards break – there are many other things you can do with a set of asteroids and impactors on the galactic stage. One of the more interesting is to try to force two asteroids together to form a “contact binary” – the goal of a mission design put forward by a group of scientists from Cornell in a recent paper in Acta Astronautica.

November 21, 2023November 21, 2023 by Evan Gough

If You’re Trying to Prevent an Asteroid Impact, the Technical and Political Challenges are Staggering

Asteroids are out there, and some pose a threat to Earth. How will we react when we determine that one's coming for us? Credit: N. Bartmann (ESA/Webb), ESO/M. Kornmesser and S. Brunier, N. Risinger (skysurvey.org)

While preparing for the threat of an asteroid strike might seem like a hypothetical exercise, it’s really not. The Solar System has calmed down a lot from earlier times when impacts were more frequent. But it is only a matter of time before an asteroid heads straight for Earth. The probability of an impact is not zero.

Equally as difficult as determining when one will come for us is the task of getting humanity to cooperate and prepare for it.