On Thursday, JPL published the above photo with graphic, which depicts the first time the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, or any asteroid for that matter, have been photographed from the surface of the Red Planet. There is an interesting lesson in perspective here, as the release gives a brief mention of the NASA’s truly remarkable […]
Note: First it was an asteroid with its own tiny moon, now rings. What an amazing era for studying our own solar system. From the European Southern Observatory Top News “Observations at many sites in South America, including ESO’s La Silla Observatory, have made the surprise discovery that the remote asteroid Chariklo is surrounded by […]
NASA Press Release: An asteroid about 25 feet (8 meters) across will safely pass Earth at about 1:21 p.m. PST (4:21 p.m. EST) today, March 6, approaching us six times closer than the moon. This distance, though not unusual, is closer than the Earth flyby of a larger asteroid on Wednesday afternoon, March 5. This […]
JPL News Release February 25, 2014 A collage of radar images of near-Earth asteroid 2006 DP14 was generated by NASA scientists using the 230-foot (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, Calif., on the night of Feb. 11, 2014. Delay-Doppler radar imaging revealed that the asteroid is about 1,300 feet (400 meters) long, 660 feet […]
With most of NASA having gone dark through the government shutdown, the normally steady flow of information released by the agency’s diverse array of ongoing space probes, as well as ongoing interpretation of data from spacecraft which are no longer active, trickled to a near halt. On the bright side, as the agency begins to […]
The end of the week was marked by the discovery of two interesting new bodies in space. The first, and in some ways most compelling was that of an isolated planet, bereft of a companion star, drifting alone through the cosmos at a relatively close distance of 80 light years away from Earth. The planet, […]
NASA Press Release: NASA Sees Enthusiastic Response on Grand Asteroid Challenge ASA Sees Enthusiastic Response to Asteroid Call for Ideas WASHINGTON — NASA has received more than 400 responses to its request for information (RFI) on the agency’s asteroid initiative, Deputy Administrator Lori Garver announced Friday. “Under our plan, we’re increasing the identification, tracking and […]
A Future in Space Operations presentation earlier this week by Dan Adamo, which can be found here, highlights a potential serious problem with NASA’s proposed asteroid capture mission. The presentation focuses on a “V” plot which shows a range of Near Earth Asteroids grouped into three different classes by their orbital characteristics. Some NEAs falling within […]
Planetary Resources, which recently made news by entering into a collaborative partnership with engineering and construction mega corporation Bechtel to advance its plans for asteroid mining, will be holding a press conference at 10:00 AM PDT today, to announce a new project apparently aimed at expanding its outreach through crowdsourcing, a plan which will “change the way humanity […]
What a coincidence. Only a few hours before a uncomfortably close call with asteroid 2012 DA14, which will pass within the orbit of geostationary satellites, a much smaller, and very unwelcome visitor from space shot across the Russian sky before detonating in a mid-air explosion which blew out windows and injured hundreds in the Chelyabink region, approximately 900 […]
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