Asteroids
Swarming Satellites Could Autonomous Characterize an Asteroid
An asteroid's size, shape, and rotational speed are clues to its internal properties and potential resources for mining operations. However,…
Swarms of Orbiting Sensors Could Map An Asteroid’s Surface
It seems like every month, a new story appears announcing the discovery of thousands of new asteroids. Tracking these small…
Dinkinesh's Moonlet is Only 2-3 Million Years Old
Last November, NASA's Lucy mission conducted a flyby of the asteroid Dinkinish, one of the Main Belt asteroids it will…
Hubble Has Accidentally Discovered Over a Thousand Asteroids
The venerable Hubble Space Telescope is like a gift that keeps on giving. Not only is it still making astronomical…
The Giant Planets Migrated Between 60-100 Million Years After the Solar System Formed
Untangling what happened in our Solar System tens or hundreds of millions of years ago is challenging. Millions of objects…
What Happens to Solar Systems When Stars Become White Dwarfs?
In a couple billion years, our Sun will be unrecognizable. It will swell up and become a red giant, then…
A 790,000 Year-Old Asteroid Impact Could Explain Seafloor Spherules
Researchers recently collected 850 millimeter-sized spherules from the seafloor near Papua New Guinea. They believed they were caused by an…
Water Found on the Surface of an Asteroid
Our Solar System is a collection of objects from planets and moons to comets and asteroids. It's thought there are…
Webb Directly Images Two Planets Orbiting White Dwarfs
In several billion years, our Sun will become a white dwarf. What will happen to Jupiter and Saturn when the…
Some of the Moon's Craters are From Interstellar Impacts. Can We Tell Which?
By discovering two interstellar objects (ISOs), we know that asteroids and comets from other star systems pass through the Solar…