We know that understanding Near-Earth Objects is vital not only for assessing future asteroid surveys and spacecraft missions, but also for tracking potential impactors on Earth. Projects like the Catalina Sky Survey and its now defunct southern hemisphere...
Search Results:
Alien Life or Chemistry? A New Approach
Working in the field has its limitations, as Alex Tolley reminds us in the essay that follows, but at least biologists have historically been on the same planet with their specimens. Today’s hottest news would be the discovery of life on another world, as we saw in...
Cometary Impacts: Looking for Life in the Right Places
If you had to choose, which planetary system would you gauge most likely to house a life-bearing planet: Proxima Centauri or TRAPPIST-1? The question is a bit loaded given that there are seven TRAPPIST-1 planets, hence a much higher chance for success there than in a...
M-Dwarfs: The Asteroid Problem
I hadn’t intended to return to habitability around red dwarf stars quite this soon, but on Saturday I read a new paper from Anna Childs (Northwestern University) and Mario Livio (STScI), the gist of which is that a potential challenge to life on such worlds is the...
Hayabusa2: Multiple Paths for Analyzing an Asteroid
Ryugu is classified as a carbonaceous, or C-type asteroid, a class of objects thought to incorporate water-bearing minerals and organic compounds. Carbonaceous chondrites, the dark carbon-bearing meteorites found on Earth, are thought to originate in such asteroids,...
Progress on Asteroid Discovery, Impact Mitigation
We have two stories with good news on the asteroid impact front this morning. The first, out of the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, is the announcement of the detection of a small asteroid prior to its entering the Earth’s atmosphere. That many not...
Asteroid Bennu: Changes in Rotation Rate
Tuesday’s post on asteroids and what it would take to deflect or destroy one has been usefully reinforced by a new paper from Mike Nolan (Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona) and colleagues, who discuss their findings in Geophysical Research Letters....
Asteroids in Collision: A New Model
If we were to find an asteroid on a trajectory to impact the Earth, what strategies would we use to stop it? Recent work from Johns Hopkins University shows that there is a wide range in our thinking on what happens to asteroids under various mitigation scenarios....
Hayabusa2: Successful Rover Deployment at Asteroid Ryugu
That small spacecraft can become game-changers, our topic last Friday, is nowhere more evident than in the success of Rover 1A and 1B, diminutive robot explorers that separated from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft at 0406 UTC on September 21 and landed soon after. Their...
Mission to an Interstellar Asteroid
On the matter of interstellar visitors, bear in mind that our friend ‘Oumuamua, the subject of yesterday’s post, was discovered at the University of Hawaii’s Institute for Astronomy, using the Pan-STARRS telescope. The Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response...