Comets
Comet Impacts Could Have Brought the Raw Ingredients for Life to Europa’s Ocean
Jupiter is the most-visited planet in the Solar System, thanks largely to NASA. It all started with Pioneer 10 and…
We Could Spread Life to the Milky Way With Comets. But Should We?
Here's a thorny problem: What if life doesn't always appear on planets that can support it? What if we find…
Comets Leave Dusty Trails That Surround the Solar System
Comets are messy things. They scatter bits of dust as they travel through the solar system. If Earth happens to…
Astronomers Watched a “Near-Sun” Comet Disintegrate as it Flew too Close to the Sun
Comets that venture close to the Sun can transform into something beautiful, but sometimes they encounter incineration if they get…
ESA Gives Green Light on its Comet Interceptor Mission
Comets, with their long, beautiful, bright tails of ice, are some of the most spectacular sightings in the night sky.…
Hubble Confirms Comet C/2014 UN271 is an Absolute Unit, Astronomically Speaking
It’s official. Comet C/2014 UN271 (Bernardinelli-Bernstein) has the largest nucleus ever seen in a comet. The gargantuan comet was discovered…
Asteroid Ryugu Might Actually Be a Dead Comet
In 2014, the Japanese Space Agency JAXA launched the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to visit asteroid Ryugu. It arrived at the…
The Sun is Slowly Tearing This Comet Apart
Using ground-based and space-based observations, a team of researchers has been monitoring a difficult-to-see comet carefully. It's called Comet 323P/SOHO,…
We Already Have the Technology to Save Earth From a “Don’t Look Up” Comet or Asteroid
What if a 10 km (6.5 mile)-wide asteroid was on a bee-line towards Earth, with an impending, calamitous impact just…
Why don’t Green Comets Have Green Tails?
Comets with a green glow don't have green tails, and a new set of lab experiments tells us why.