The European Space Agency’s Hera mission is expected to launch in late 2024, marking the second time a spacecraft has been sent to an asteroid. The main target will be the asteroid Didymos, about 390 meters in size. NASA’s DART mission was designed to test a planetary defense method by...
A team of astronomers has discovered a new clue that the recently discovered near-Earth asteroid Kamo?oalewa may be a piece of lunar debris. They suggested that the asteroid was ejected from the lunar surface as a result of a meteorite impact – and its trajectory allowed the asteroid to end...
One of the reasons why the idea of mining asteroids is popular is because they contain large amounts of heavy elements. This month, NASA’s Psyche spacecraft headed toward an asteroid containing ten to thirty quintillion dollars worth of rare earths and other heavy metals. During the formation of our planet,...
Most known asteroids live in the asteroid belt between Jupiter and Mars. Some of them sometimes come within just a few hundred thousand kilometers of Earth, raising concerns about possible collision scenarios. Generated image of asteroid 2008 QY. Source: Pixabay An asteroid is classified as potentially hazardous if it is...
For comparison, the US GPS navigation and positioning system satellites orbit at an altitude of 20,200 kilometers. According to representatives of the European Space Agency (ESA), this asteroid is so small that it did not pose a danger to Earth. If the asteroid’s orbit intersected with Earth’s, it would have...
