Created Sunday 31 May 2020

See Also: Space

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday November 02, 2019 @09:34AM from the blaming-Borisov dept.

sciencehabit shares this article from Science magazine:

The comet is an alien intruder from another star system. But 2I/Borisov, the second known interstellar visitor after far smaller 'Oumuamua, discovered in 2017, looks remarkably like a normal comet from our own Solar System: an object a few kilometers across spewing carbon monoxide gas, water vapor, and dust. Researchers who announced their analysis this week say the size of the two objects, along with the rate of their discovery and other factors, suggests that at any given moment more than a dozen interstellar visitors at least as large as 'Oumuamua are passing through the Solar System.

“Our current telescopes are not powerful enough to detect all of these objects,” says Bryce Bolin, an astronomer at the California Institute of Technology in Pasadena and lead author of the new study. But in the future, he says, large telescopes will be able to catch these visitors more often, perhaps two or three times a year.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/19/11/02/0240206/second-oumuamua-like-comet-from-beyond-our-solar-system-suggests-alien-comets-may-be-common

Could a comet, not an asteroid, have killed the dinosaurs?

By Sean Raymond - March 10, 2021

You know what the plot of a show called CSI: Chicxulub would be? Finding out what killed the dinosaurs, of course. There’s now no question that the scene of the “crime” was the Yucatan Peninsula, in Mexico, where researchers found a massive crater. But what was the murder weapon—an asteroid, or a comet? A trivial difference, you might think, like whether that chocolate on the sidewalk is a smashed-up Snickers or Kit Kat bar. But knowing what sort of thing struck the Earth near the modern town of Chicxulub, clearing the way for mammals to rise up, affects how astronomers evaluate cosmic dangers to our planet.

Now comets, as you may know, come from far away, and spend little time in the inner solar system. Scientists, based on decades of work, consider it to be a minor risk for one to collide with Earth. A new study, however, hints that comets pose a much greater threat than previously thought.1 Specifically, it’s the long-period, rather than the short-period ones, we have to look out for.

https://nautil.us/issue/98/mind/comets-are-more-dangerous-than-we-thought

The icy objects appear strikingly similar to comets in our own solar system.

Isaac Schultz - 28 April 2022 9:55AM

A team of astronomers looking at a distant star system found 30 exocomets that look remarkably like the comets around our own local star. Down the line, more data from these comets could provide clues as to how water arrived on Earth.

The exocomets—“exo” meaning outside our solar system—were found around Beta Pictoris, a 1.75-solar-mass star that is 63 light-years away. Beta Pictoris is orbited by two gas giants and is shrouded in a sprawling disc of debris that includes the 30 recently discovered exocomets. In study published today in Scientific Reports, the team calculated the size of the comets’ nuclei—basically, the solid part of the space rocks, excluding their tails—and they believe the icy objects are comparable to our local comets.

“The large number of detections allowed us to determine the size distribution of these celestial objects, i.e. how many small comets there are relative to the number of large comets,” Alain Lecavelier, an astronomer at CNRS in France and lead author of the paper, wrote in an email to Gizmodo. “We found that the size of exocometary nuclei in the β Pictoris planetary system is strikingly similar to that observed in the Solar System comets.”

https://gizmodo.com/astronomers-spot-some-familiar-looking-comets-around-a-1848847437

Called the Comet Interceptor, the European probe will travel 930,000 miles from Earth and assume a holding position until astronomers find a suitable target.

Kevin Hurler -16 December 2022 1:10PM

The European Space Agency announced yesterday that it had signed a contract with private space company OHB to build the Comet Interceptor, a spacecraft to study a yet-to-be identified pristine comet from the Oort cloud, due for launch in 2029.

The partnership between ESA and OHB’s Italian arm will bring Comet Interceptor to life. The spacecraft will eventually work some 930,000 miles (1.5 million kilometers) from Earth at Lagrange point 2, which is behind our planet as viewed from the Sun (fun fact: the recently deployed Webb Telescope is currently working at L2). Once there it will lie in wait as astronomers search for a suitable target, at which time it will be dispatched and sent on an exploratory mission.

https://gizmodo.com/esa-comet-interceptor-pristine-comets-astronomy-1849903218

Posted by msmash on Monday January 02, 2023 04:01PM

The new year has just begun, but the cosmos are already set to make history in 2023. From a report:

A comet discovered less than a year ago has traveled billions of miles from its believed origins at the edge of our solar system and will be visible in just a few weeks during what will likely be its only recorded appearance. The comet, C/2022 E3 (ZTF), was first seen in March 2022 as it made its way through Jupiter's orbit. According to NASA, it's a long-period comet believed to come from the Oort Cloud, the most distant region of Earth's solar system that's “like a big, thick-walled bubble made of icy pieces of space debris” that can get even bigger than mountains. The inner edge of this region is thought to be between 2,000 and 5,000 astronomical units (AUs) from the sun – between 186 billion and 465 billion miles.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/02/1847239/comet-to-make-first-and-likely-only-appearance-in-recorded-history

They look like asteroids, but act like comets.

Passant Rabie - December 10, 2024

In 2017, an unexpected visitor with an oddly elongated shape zipped through the solar system. The interstellar object, later named ‘Oumuamua, was initially classified as an asteroid—until measurements revealed it was accelerating away from the Sun, like a comet. This hybrid behavior led scientists to identify it as a dark comet: an object that looks like an asteroid but acts like a comet. Now, new research has doubled the number of known dark comets and grouped them into two distinct populations.

A paper published this week in the Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences details the discovery of seven dark comets, bringing the total number of known dark comets to 14. The study also reveals that these mysterious objects fall into two distinct groups based on their orbit and size. With this latest discovery, scientists are learning more about dark comets and their potential for having delivered the building blocks of life to Earth.

https://gizmodo.com/enigmatic-dark-comets-come-in-two-distinct-types-study-finds-2000536723

Boffins ponder where space rock came from

Katyanna Quach - Tue 24 Aug 2021 / 06:33 UTC

Astronomers have discovered the Sun's fastest-orbiting asteroid yet, a one-kilometre-wide rock that completes a lap of our star every 113 Earth days.

That's “the shortest orbital period of any known asteroid in the Solar System,” according to the US National Science Foundation's NOIRLab.

The space boulder, known as 2021 PH27, was clocked on August 13 by Scott Sheppard of the Carnegie Institution for Science in the US. He noticed the object in images taken by Ian Dell’antonio and Shenming Fu, of Brown University, using the 570-megapixel Dark Energy Camera on the Victor M. Blanco telescope in Chile.

Rather than live in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, PH27 was observed much closer to our star. In fact, during its orbit, PH27 gets closer to the Sun than Mercury: the rock's shortest distance to the star is just 20 million kilometres (12 million miles), at which point its surface has the lead-melting temperature of 480°C (900°F). PH27's 113-day orbit has a semi-major axis of 70 million kilometres (43 million miles), and it crosses the orbits of Mercury and Venus. Mercury gets as close as 29 million miles (47 million kilometres), and has an orbital period of 88 days.

https://www.theregister.com/2021/08/24/fastest_asteroid_solar_system/

The newly deployed system can calculate impact odds as low as a few chances in 10 million.

George Dvorsky - 8 December 2021 8:55AM

A new asteroid impact monitoring system called Sentry-II is powerful, fast, and capable of handling difficult scenarios that continually baffled its predecessor.

NASA JPL’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) has been using the pre-existing monitoring system, called Sentry, to evaluate asteroid impact risks since 2002. Javier Roa Vicens, a former NASA navigation engineer who now works at SpaceX, said that, in under an hour, Sentry “could reliably get the impact probability for a newly discovered asteroid over the next 100 years—an incredible feat,” as he explained in a NASA press release.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-s-upgraded-impact-monitoring-system-could-prevent-1848175547

Posted by msmash on Wednesday February 02, 2022 02:45PM Astronomers have discovered a captive asteroid shadowing Earth in its orbit. From a report:

The asteroid, known as 2020 XL5, is only the second of its type ever seen, shepherded by Earth's gravity into an orbit that is locked in synchrony with our planet's. It has not shared our orbit for long – a few centuries, probably. And it will not be there in the far future. Simulations indicate that 2020 XL5 will slip out of Earth's grasp within 4,000 years and head into the wider solar system. But its presence offers a tantalizing glimpse of what else might be out there in the local gravitational whirlpools. Some bits might date back to the beginning of the solar system – shades of the building blocks that coalesced into our planet. “These objects are not as exotic as we think,” said Toni Santana-Ros, a postdoctoral researcher at the University of Barcelona in Spain and an author of a paper describing the discovery, which was published on Tuesday in the journal Nature Communications.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/02/02/2013248/astronomers-find-a-new-asteroid-sharing-earths-orbit

It's the fifth time that an asteroid has been detected in space prior to impacting our planet—and a sign that we're getting better at this sort of thing.

George Dvorsky - 15 March 2022 4:42PM

An asteroid measuring around 10 feet wide has burnt up in the skies north of Iceland. This sort of thing happens from time to time, but this incident was notable in that the asteroid was spotted less two hours before the impact.

Krisztián Sárneczky gets credit for the discovery, as the Hungarian astronomer spied the rock with a 24-inch (60-centimeter) telescope at the Piszkéstető observatory, according to the European Space Agency. His initial observation came at 7:24 p.m. UTC (3:24 p.m. EST) on March 11, 2022. A total of four observations were made of the bright, fast-moving object before Sárneczky reported his finding to the Minor Planet Center, which he did less than 15 minutes after the first sighting.

https://gizmodo.com/astronomer-spotted-asteroid-hours-before-it-hit-earth-1848656257

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday March 16, 2022 12:00AM

Two hours. That's about how much time elapsed between the discovery of asteroid 2022 EB5 and when it reached Earth's atmosphere. The asteroid is only the fifth one to have been detected before impact. CNET reports:

Astronomer Krisztian Sarneczky first spotted the asteroid on March 11 with a telescope at the Piszkesteto observatory in Hungary. He reported the sighting to the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center, which tracks near-Earth objects and comets. News of the asteroid spread from there, and calculations showed the space rock had a 100% chance of impact north of Iceland. Fortunately, the asteroid was very small, roughly 1 meter (3.3 feet) in diameter – that's half the height of basketball superstar Michael Jordan. An asteroid that small will safely burn up in our planet's atmosphere, but the dainty size also makes it hard to spot.

https://science.slashdat.org/story/22/03/15/2315240/asteroid-spotted-just-two-hours-before-impacting-earth

KIARA ALFONSECA - Fri, May 27, 2022, 8:51 AM

'Potentially hazardous' asteroid zooms close to Earth

An asteroid — the largest to get close to Earth this year — tumbled past the planet Friday.

According to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies, the “potentially hazardous” asteroid is 1.1 miles long and at least 3,280 feet wide. It crossed into Earth's orbit around 9 a.m. ET.

The asteroid, officially called 1989 JA, is roughly four times the size of the Empire State Building.

https://www.yahoo.com/gma/potentially-hazardous-asteroid-zooms-close-155150643.html

Researchers at the B612 Foundation’s Asteroid Institute developed a new tool for tracking space-rock trajectories—even with limited data.

Ramin Skibba, Science - Jun 3, 2022 7:00 AM

Gigantic asteroids have smashed into the Earth before—RIP dinosaurs—and if we’re not watching out for all those errant space rocks, they could crash into our world again, with devastating consequences. That’s why Ed Lu and Danica Remy of the Asteroid Institute started a new project to track as many of them as possible.

Lu, a former NASA astronaut and executive director of the institute, led a team that developed a novel algorithm called THOR, which harnesses massive computing power to compare points of light seen in different images of the night sky, then matches them to piece together an individual asteroid’s path through the solar system. They’ve already discovered 104 asteroids with the system, according to an announcement they released on Tuesday.

While NASA, the European Space Agency, and other organizations have their own ongoing asteroid searches, all of them face the challenge of parsing telescope images with thousands or even 100,000 asteroids in them. Some of those telescopes don’t or can’t take multiple images of the same region on the same night, which makes it hard to tell if the same asteroid is appearing in multiple photos taken at different times. But THOR can make the connection between them.

https://www.wired.com/story/the-first-privately-funded-killer-asteroid-spotter-is-here/

'Fossil' from early solar system advances understanding into origin of life

RYOSUKE MATSUZOE, Nikkei staff writer - June 10, 2022 03:03 JST

TOKYO – A total of 23 types of amino acids were found in asteroid samples brought back by Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe, according to new studies published in the journal Science and elsewhere, shedding further light on the origins of life on Earth.

Two teams – one including researchers at Japan's Hokkaido University and Tokyo Institute of Technology, and another including researchers at Okayama University – published two studies dated Friday.

Researchers in Japan and abroad have been analyzing the samples since they were recovered in late 2020. After sending the samples back to Earth, Hayabusa2 has gone on a mission to another asteroid.

https://asia.nikkei.com/Business/Science/Japan-asteroid-probe-finds-23-amino-acids-researchers-confirm

Tim Johnson - August 14, 2022

Earth is the only planet we know of with continents, the giant landmasses that provide homes to humankind and most of Earth’s biomass.

However, we still don’t have firm answers to some basic questions about continents: how did they come to be, and why did they form where they did?

One theory is that they were formed by giant meteorites crashing into Earth’s crust long ago. This idea has been proposed several times, but until now there has been little evidence to support it.

In new research published in Nature, we studied ancient minerals from Western Australia and found tantalizing clues suggesting the giant impact hypothesis might be right.

https://singularityhub.com/2022/08/14/new-evidence-suggests-giant-asteroid-impacts-created-earths-continents/

“Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely within Earth's orbit have been discovered to date because of the difficulty of observing near the glare of the sun.”

Tereza Pultarova - 31 October 2022

Astronomers have discovered a giant asteroid hiding in the glare of the sun that might one day cross paths with Earth

The 0.9-mile-wide (1.5 kilometers) asteroid is the largest potentially hazardous asteroid spotted in the past eight years and astronomers have dubbed it a “planet killer” because the effects of its impact would be felt across multiple continents.

The asteroid, named 2022 AP7, managed to avoid detection for so long because it orbits in the region between Earth and Venus. To spot space rocks in this area, astronomers have to look in the direction of the sun, and that is notoriously difficult due to the sun's luminosity. For example, flagship telescopes such as the James Webb Space Telescope and the Hubble Space Telescope never look toward the sun, as the star's brightness would fry their sensitive optics.

https://www.space.com/dangerous-asteroid-discovered-in-sun-glare

Good luck blowing up a pile of rubble. Boffins suggest we'll need to create a diversion instead

Katyanna Quach - Wed 25 Jan 2023 06:30 UTC

An asteroid named Itokawa that's been identified as potentially hazardous to Earth would be difficult to destroy, according to new research analyzing dust particles collected from the ancient rock.

Measuring 330 metres across, Itokawa is the first-ever asteroid to be sampled in a space mission. Japan's Aerospace Exploration Agency launched its Hayabusa 1 probe in 2003 to study Itokawa, and managed to return about a milligram of stuff taken from the asteroid's surface to Earth seven years later.

Now, an international team of researchers led by Curtin University, Australia, has studied three dust particles from the sample to estimate Itokawa's age and disposition. Argon dating revealed the asteroid is older than 4.2 billion years, and has been described as having a cushion-like structure. The team discovered Itokawa is older and tougher than previously thought.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/25/space_dust_asteroid/

The 1,600-foot-long space rock will come within three million miles of Earth.

Isaac Schultz - 14 June 2023

An asteroid roughly as long as Chicago’s Willis Tower is tall is set to pass by Earth tomorrow. It poses no threat to our world, like it or not.

“Potentially hazardous” asteroids are routine interlopers in Earth’s neck of the solar system. Despite their alarming name, they typically pose no threat to Earth. They are asteroids considered large enough to survive passing through our planet’s atmosphere and cause regional (or larger) damage on the ground, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

Potentially hazardous asteroids make near approaches with some regularity and range in size from truck-size to house-size to skyscraper-size (and so on—headlines will ballpark the numbers in a variety of silly ways).

https://gizmodo.com/skyscraper-asteroid-passing-earth-nasa-1850540111

Armed with this promising new tool, a cutting-edge observatory in Chile will sweep the cosmos for all sorts of transient objects.

Isaac Schultz - 1 August 2023

An asteroid-hunting algorithm set to be implemented in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s 10-year survey spotted its first potentially hazardous asteroid, proving the algorithm’s capabilities in advance of the observatory’s opening.

The asteroid is 2022 SF289, a 600-foot-long space rock that’s currently about 4 astronomical units from Earth (that is, 4 times the distance Earth is from the Sun). But the asteroid swings by Earth on the opposite side of its orbit, classifying it as a potentially hazardous asteroid (or PHA).

https://gizmodo.com/algorithm-spots-potentially-hazardous-asteroid-1850695634

The small object orbiting around main-belt asteroid 5457 Queen’s is the second confirmed asteroid moon discovered during a stellar occultation.

Jan Hattenbach - November 27, 2023

When the small main-belt asteroid 5457 Queen’s was moving to eclipse a 12.5-magnitude star in the constellation Pisces on September 4, 2023, amateur astronomers came prepared. Czech astronomer Jan Mánek, together with five colleagues from Poland to Switzerland, had their telescopes and video cameras to time the exact moment the star winked out, as seen from various locations. From those data, astronomers could derive the size and shape of the asteroid.

The observations worked out well — even better than expected: Mánek managed to capture not only the 1.67-second occultation of the star as the asteroid passed in front of it, but also another eclipse that occurred just 0.87 seconds later. For a mere 0.2 seconds the star disappeared again — as if another object were following close behind Queen's.

No one else captured that second occultation that night. But on September 20th, Serge Dramonis from Greece observed the same asteroid occult another star. He, too, saw a “double” eclipse, consistent with Mánek’s observation. The second observations confirmed what the first had hinted at: The amateurs had discovered that the asteroid Queen’s has a moon!

https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy-news/amateur-astronomers-discover-an-asteroids-moon/

The tiny asteroid will complete a wide orbit over the course of 53 days, but don't get your hopes up about seeing it.

Adam Kovac - September 12, 2024

Starting at the end of September, Earth will have two moons, but don’t get too used to it. The situation is going to last less than two months, and it’s unlikely you’ll be able to actually see this transient second moon.

The mini-moon will actually be a small asteroid, named 2024 PT5, that was discovered on August 7 by the Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System (ATLAS). The object is on a trajectory in which it will be temporarily caught by Earth’s gravity. According to calculations made by Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos, both researchers at Spain’s Universidad Complutense de Madrid, the asteroid will orbit the Earth from September 29 until November 25. It will complete just one orbit over that time before careening away.

2024 PT5 is very tiny, measuring just 33 feet (10 meters) wide, so don’t expect to see it with the naked eye. Even those of you equipped with backyard telescopes probably won’t get a glimpse, as the asteroid will at best have a relatively dim magnitude value of 22, according to EarthSky (objects become visible to the unaided eye at magnitudes of 6 or lower)

https://gizmodo.com/an-asteroid-will-become-earths-mini-moon-for-two-months-2000498076

NASASpaceNews - Sep 16, 2024

“Earth is getting a new mini-moon! Asteroid 2024 PT5, a 10-meter rock, will be captured by Earth’s gravity for about 53 days starting in late September 2024. This rare event gives scientists a unique opportunity to study a near-Earth object up close and refine our asteroid detection systems. Learn why this mini-moon is important, what it means for our planet, and how it fits into the bigger picture of space exploration and planetary defense.”

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HnXtPQY5Yxw

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.2% chance of striking Earth in seven years, but recent updates keep pushing the odds in the wrong direction.

Passant Rabie - February 10, 2025

The odds of an asteroid crashing into Earth in 2032 keep changing, and not in a good way. Asteroid 2024 YR4 now has a 1-in-45 chance of impacting our planet in seven years. The odds are not a huge concern, at least not yet; this estimate is very preliminary, and if history repeats itself, these odds will continue to decrease over time.

The odds of newly discovered asteroid 2024 YR4 impacting Earth in 2032 have risen from 1.3% to 2.2%, according to NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). This figure is as of Monday morning, February 10, and has been fluctuating regularly.

The asteroid was first spotted on December 27, 2024 when it was 515,116 miles (829,000 kilometers) from Earth. At the time, the chances of 2024 YR4 hitting our pale blue dot was 1-in-83, and were upped to 1-in-63 earlier this month. The odds of collision are preliminary, as astronomers gather more data on the asteroid to refine its chances of impact. Normally, the odds decrease over time until it’s close to zero.

https://gizmodo.com/the-odds-of-a-newly-discovered-asteroid-hitting-earth-in-2032-keep-rising-2000561165

Very unlikely, but could make for a neat light show if it does

Richard Speed - Mon 17 Feb 2025 14:31 UTC

There is a chance, albeit slim, that asteroid 2024 YR4 could hit the Moon, creating a new crater and an explosion that might just be visible from Earth.

The possibility was floated by space boffins in a New Scientist article, and would leave the Moon with a crater measuring anywhere from 500 to 2,000 meters across. The Moon lacks the Earth's atmosphere, so asteroids impact the lunar surface unimpeded.

According to the discussion, this would result in “an explosion 343 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.”

Readers of a certain vintage may remember the 1970s British science-fiction television series Space 1999, in which the Moon is knocked out of orbit after nuclear waste stored on its far side explodes. The result of an impact of 2024 YR4 will not have anywhere near the same dire consequences, but might just be visible from Earth.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/17/asteroid_2024_yr4_might_hit/

Scientists refine estimates, but can't yet rule out an impact

Richard Speed - Tue 18 Feb 2025 16:15 UTC

The latest figures from the European Space Agency (ESA) on the trajectory of asteroid 2024 YR4 show a reduction in uncertainty around the object's orbit while the probability of impact remains low.

The estimates from ESA's Near-Earth Object Coordination Centre show a marked reduction in close approach uncertainty based on observations made up to February 17.

The probability of Earth impact remains at 2.4 percent, and the estimated size of the asteroid is still anywhere from 40 to 90 meters. However, the close approach uncertainty – a range of trajectories that the asteroid could be on – has narrowed as observations continue.

The Earth remains in the risk corridor for now, but as uncertainty is whittled away, the probability of impact will likely eventually decrease and reach zero, although it might initially grow as the corridor narrows.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/02/18/2024_yr4_risk_corridor/

For only the eighth time in history, scientists detected an asteroid before it made its fiery appearance over Earth. The tiny fireball exploded near Berlin early on Jan. 21.

Kiley Price - 22 January 2024

In the wee morning hours on Sunday (Jan. 21), a tiny asteroid came hurtling through the sky and smashed into Earth's atmosphere near Berlin, producing a bright but harmless fireball visible for miles around. Such sightings typically occur a few times a year — but this one was unique because it was first detected by scientists roughly three hours before impact — only the eighth time that researchers have spotted one of these space rocks before it hit.

The asteroid, dubbed 2024 BXI, was first discovered by self-proclaimed asteroid hunter Krisztián Sárneczky, an astronomer at the Piszkéstető Mountain Station, part of Konkoly Observatory in Hungary. He identified the cosmic rock using the 60-cm Schmidt telescope at the observatory. Shortly after the space rock's discovery, NASA gave a detailed prediction of where and when the meteor would strike.

“Heads Up: A tiny asteroid will disintegrate as a harmless fireball west of Berlin near Nennhausen shortly at 1:32am CET. Overseers will see it if it's clear!” NASA tweeted on the night of Jan. 20.

https://www.livescience.com/space/asteroids/scientists-discover-near-earth-asteroid-hours-before-it-exploded-over-berlin

Last year it was over France. This year it was over Germany. Where will the rocks strike next?

Richard Speed - Thu 25 Jan 2024 16:15 UTC

A NASA system has accurately predicted where and when an asteroid entered the Earth's atmosphere.

The asteroid in question, 2024 BX1, was only a meter in size and disintegrated harmlessly over Germany on January 21. Still, NASA's Scout impact hazard assessment system was able to give advance warning on where and when the asteroid would hit.

According to NASA: “This is the eighth time in history that a small Earth-bound asteroid has been detected while still in space, before entering and disintegrating in our atmosphere.”

Boffins reckon that the entry fireball could have showered an area approximately 37 miles (60 kilometers) west of Berlin with a scattering of smaller meteorites.

2024 BX1 was spotted less than three hours before impact by Krisztián Sárneczky at Piszkéstető Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory near Budapest, Hungary.

Those and subsequent observations eventually found their way to Scout, which calculated the possible trajectory of the object and the likelihood of an Earth impact. As more data was added, the location and time were refined.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/01/25/nasa_scout_asteroid_prediction/

Posted by BeauHD on Wednesday August 17, 2022 07:02PM

Researchers have discovered a second impact crater on the other side of the Atlantic that could have finished off what was left of the dinosaurs, after an asteroid known as Chicxulub slammed into what is now the Gulf of Mexico 66 million years ago. The BBC reports:

Dubbed Nadir Crater, the new feature sits more than 300m below the seabed, some 400km off the coast of Guinea, west Africa. With a diameter of 8.5km, it's likely the asteroid that created it was a little under half a kilometre across. The hidden depression was identified by Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, UK. […] “Our simulations suggest this crater was caused by the collision of a 400m-wide asteroid in 500-800m of water,” explained Dr Veronica Bray from the University of Arizona, US. “This would have generated a tsunami over one kilometre high, as well as an earthquake of Magnitude 6.5 or so. “The energy released would have been around 1,000 times greater than that from the January 2022 eruption and tsunami in Tonga.”

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/08/17/2150228/impact-crater-may-be-dinosaur-killers-baby-cousin

The newly discovered Nadir crater off the coast of Africa dates to the same time as the famous Chicxulub impact, which killed off most life on Earth.

Isaac Schultz - 22 August 2022 2:41PM

Researchers say they’ve discovered a large impact crater on the Atlantic seafloor that appears to be 66 million years old. That means whatever made this crater would have hit Earth around the same time as the rock that famously slammed into the Yucatán Peninsula, ending the reign of the dinosaurs.

The newly discovered geological feature—off the coast of Guinea and Guinea-Bissau in West Africa—is called the Nadir crater; it is well over 5 miles wide and sits a quarter-mile beneath the seafloor and nearly 3,000 feet of water. A paper describing the crater’s geological structure and likely origins is published in Science Advances.

https://gizmodo.com/nadir-impact-crater-66-million-years-ago-1849440738

https://neal.fun/asteroid-launcher/

A new asteroid deflection method would use the space rock's own regolith to alter its trajectory.

Passant Rabie - 30 June 2023

In February 2013, an asteroid about the size of a house punched its way through Earth’s atmosphere and broke apart over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia. The blast was so strong, it left a bright streak in the skies and triggered a powerful shockwave, shattering glass and resulting in the injury of over a 1,000 people.

Sure, it wasn’t armageddon, but even asteroids as small as Chelyabinsk—which measured roughly 62 feet (19 meters) across—can cause some major damage to Earth and are more likely to pass through the inner Solar System than their larger counterparts.

A California-based nonprofit is gearing up to fight these smaller, albeit more common, threats by designing a new asteroid deflection system that would use the space rock’s own regolith to alter its trajectory away from Earth.

https://gizmodo.com/nonprofit-aims-catapult-asteroid-materials-earth-defens-1850592844

Fine dust in impact deposits would have chilled the planet, shut down photosynthesis.

John Timmer - 10/31/2023, 11:05 AM

Classic whodunit mysteries work because just about every character ends up being a murder suspect. The demise of non-avian dinosaurs is a lot like that. The Chicxulub impact and its aftereffects created a huge range of potentially lethal suspects. Whodunit? A giant fireball and massive tsunamis? Wild swings in the climate? Global wildfires? A blackened sky that shut down photosynthesis? All of the above?

Modeling these impacts, combined with data on the pattern of extinctions, has led to various opinions on what proved decisive regarding the extermination of so many species. In the latest look at the end-Cretaceous extinction, a team of scientists largely based in Brussels has revisited deposits laid down in the aftermath of the impact and found that much of the debris came from fine dust. When that dust is plugged into climate models, global temperatures plunge by as much as 25° C, and photosynthesis shuts down for almost two years.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/10/dust-of-death-did-it-do-in-the-dinosaurs/

Posted by BeauHD on Tuesday October 31, 2023 12:00AM

Around 66 million years ago, the Chicxulub asteroid caused a mass extinction event, killing three-quarters of life on Earth, including the dinosaurs. A new study suggests that fine silicate dust from the asteroid, which remained in the atmosphere for up to 15 years, played a more significant role in causing the impact winter and extinction than previously thought. Phys.Org reports:

Fine silicate dust from pulverized rock would have stayed in the atmosphere for 15 years, dropping global temperatures by up to 15 degrees Celsius, researchers said in a study in the journal Nature Geoscience. […] For the study, the international team of researchers was able to measure dust particles thought to be from right after the asteroid struck. The particles were found at the Tanis fossil site in the US state of North Dakota.

https://news.slashdot.org/story/23/10/31/0133200/asteroid-dust-caused-15-year-winter-that-killed-dinosaurs-scientists-say

A team of researchers posit that silicate dust had an outsized impact on our prehistoric predecessors.

Isaac Schultz - 2 November 2023

We all know how the story goes: a large asteroid falls to Earth from space, slamming into the Yucatán Peninsula with 100 million megatons of force. The impact spawned tsunami waves best measured in miles and kicked up dust, soot, and sulfur that blotted out the Sun, causing the death of about 75% of Earth’s species, including all dinosaurs but the ancestors of birds.

Now, a team of scientists posit that silicate dust played a larger role in the mass extinction than previously estimated. Using paleoclimate simulations and details of the material kicked up by the impact, the researchers determined that fine dust may have stayed in Earth’s atmosphere for up to 15 years following the asteroid impact, which could have cooled the Earth significantly—by about 27°F (15°C). The team’s research was published this week in Nature Geoscience.

https://gizmodo.com/dust-dinosaur-extinction-climate-simulations-chicxulub-1850985083

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday April 07, 2022 08:30PM

An anonymous reader quotes a report from Motherboard:

An object from another star system crashed into Earth in 2014, the United States Space Command (USSC) confirmed in a newly-released memo. The meteor ignited in a fireball in the skies near Papua New Guinea, the memo states, and scientists believe it possibly sprinkled interstellar debris into the South Pacific Ocean. The confirmation backs up the breakthrough discovery of the first interstellar meteor – and, retroactively, the first known interstellar object of any kind to reach our solar system – which was initially flagged by a pair of Harvard University researchers in a study posted on the preprint server arXiv in 2019.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/04/07/2237257/secret-government-info-confirms-first-known-interstellar-object-on-earth-scientists-say

Classified data prevented scientists from verifying their discovery for 3 years.

Brandon Specktor - 11 April 2022

A fireball that blazed through the skies over Papua New Guinea in 2014 was actually a fast-moving object from another star system, according to a recent memo (opens in new tab) released by the U.S. Space Command (USSC).

The object, a small meteorite measuring just 1.5 feet (0.45 meter) across, slammed into Earth's atmosphere on Jan. 8, 2014, after traveling through space at more than 130,000 mph (210,000 km/h) — a speed that far exceeds the average velocity of meteors that orbit within the solar system, according to a 2019 study of the object published in the preprint database arXiv.

https://www.livescience.com/first-interstellar-object-detected

U.S. Space Command says a rock that hit Earth in 2014 came from another star system, but researchers told Gizmodo the claim “isn’t science.”

Isaac Schultz - 13 April 2202 11:00AM

A new U.S. Space Command memo says that a meteor that fell to Earth in 2014 came from interstellar space. That would make it the first known interstellar object in our solar system, preceding ‘Oumuamua, a cigar-shaped object that first appeared in 2017 and seemed to come from another star system. But some scientists aren’t satisfied with this bold proclamation.

The memo, dated March 1, describes a 2019 paper on the meteor and the subsequent analysis of the information by Joel Mozer, the director of science, technology, and research for the U.S. Space Force. The paper, written by astrophysicists Avi Loeb and Amir Siraj of Harvard University and hosted on the pre-print server aRxiv, details a foot-and-a-half-wide, half-ton meteor that was detected shortly after 1 p.m. ET on January 8, 2014. The object’s high speed “implies a possible origin from the deep interior of a planetary system or a star in the thick disk of the Milky Way galaxy,” Siraj and Loeb wrote.

https://gizmodo.com/interstellar-meteor-2014-scientists-skeptical-1848782995

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday April 16, 2022 09:34PM

“The U.S. Space Command announced this week that it determined a 2014 meteor hit that hit Earth was from outside the solar system,” reports CBS News. “The meteor streaked across the sky off the coast of Manus Island, Papua New Guinea three years earlier than what was believed to be the first confirmed interstellar object detected entering our solar system.”

After Oumuamua was spotted in 2017, the interstellar comet Borisov appeared in 2019 — discovered in Crimea, Ukraine at a “personal observatory” built by amateur astronomer Gennadiy Borisov”

But CBS notes that despite their theory about a first interstellar meteor in 2014, the two Harvard astronomers — Dr. Amir Siraj and Dr. Abraham Loeb — “had trouble getting their paper published, because they used classified information from the government.” Specifically, data from a classified U.S. government satellite designed to detect foreign missiles…

The meteor was unusual because of its very high speed and unusual direction — which suggested it came from interstellar space…. Any space object traveling more than about 42 kilometers per second may come from interstellar space. The data showed the 2014 Manus Island fireball hit the Earth's atmosphere at about 45 kilometers per second, which was “very promising” in identifying it as interstellar, Siraj said….

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/04/17/0426203/us-space-command-releases-decades-of-secret-military-data-confirms-interstellar-meteor-in-2014

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday September 24, 2022 12:00AM

A pair of researchers who previously identified what may be the first known interstellar meteor to impact Earth have now presented evidence of a second object that could have originated beyond the solar system, before it burned up in our planet's skies and potentially fell to the surface, according to a new study. Motherboard reports:

Amir Siraj, a student in astrophysics at Harvard University, and astronomer Avi Loeb, who serves as Harvard's Frank B. Baird Jr. Professor of Science, suggest that a fast-moving meteor that burst into a fireball hundreds of miles off the coast of Portugal on March 9, 2017, is an “additional interstellar object candidate” that they call interstellar meteor 2 (IM2) in a study posted to the preprint server arXiv this week. The paper has not been peer-reviewed. In addition to their potential origin beyond the solar system, these objects appear to be extraordinarily robust, as they rank as the first- and third-highest meteors in material strength in a NASA catalog that has collected data about hundreds of fireballs.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/09/23/2222252/alien-hunting-astronomer-says-there-may-be-a-second-interstellar-object-on-earth-in-new-study

Scientists believe Kamo’oalewa will remain alongside Earth for millions of years.

October 25, 2023 - Space Chatter Wire

Could a near-Earth asteroid be a piece of the moon? Astronomers from the University of Arizona believe so. In a captivating cosmic discovery, scientists uncovered evidence suggesting that a near-Earth asteroid called Kamo’oalewa might be a fragment of the moon.

The finding challenges previous assumptions about the origins of near-Earth asteroids and could have significant implications for our understanding of celestial bodies close to our planet.

The research builds upon a 2021 study that first proposed the intriguing idea that Kamo’oalewa could be lunar in origin.

“We are now establishing that the moon is a more likely source of Kamo’oalewa,” says study senior author Renu Malhotra, Regents Professor of planetary sciences at the University of Arizona, in a university release.

https://www.spacechatter.com/2023/10/25/moon-fragment-near-earth-asteroid-kamooalewa/

Scheduled for launch in October, AstroForge’s prospector spacecraft will seek to inspect an asteroid located 22 million miles from Earth.

George Dvorsky - 25 January 2023

AstroForge has announced an ambitious commercial mission to observe a distant asteroid—an important step for the California startup as it strives to become the world’s first deep space mining company.

AstroForge seeks to capitalize on the rapidly evolving state of the spaceflight industry and become the first firm to mine for metals in deep space. The California startup raised $13 million in seed funding last year—its first year of existence—and has now formally announced two mining-related missions that are scheduled to launch within the calendar year. The company is partnering with several others to make it happen, including OrbAstro, Dawn Aerospace, and Intuitive Machines.

https://gizmodo.com/astroforge-asteroid-mining-spacex-orbastro-1850029340

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday March 18, 2023 01:34PM from the yours-and-mining dept.

RockDoctor (Slashdot reader #15,477) writes:

A recent paper on ArXiv reports new spectroscopic analyses of the surfaces of 42 asteroids. The main result for space enthusiasts is that there is not one “M” class asteroid (metal-rich) surface in the collection.

The imagery that (many) people grow up with from Hollywood and TV “science” “documentaries” is that the Solar system is full of asteroids which are made of metal ready for mining to produce solid ingots of precious metals. That's Hollywood, not reality. This result is about what you'd expect from the proportion of metallic asteroids — otherwise estimated at about 0.5% of the population.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/03/18/0341259/small-near-earth-asteroid-surfaces-have-few-precious-metals-study-finds

New observations of the rock show its comet-like tail is not made of dust, possibly altering the origin story of the Geminid meteor shower.

Passant Rabie - 26 April 2023

A comet-like asteroid has been flaunting a tail of material as it approaches the Sun. But unlike its cometary counterparts, a fresh look at asteroid Phaethon reveals, this tail is made of sodium rather than dust, as was previously thought.

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO), a joint mission between NASA and the European Space Agency, recorded new observations of Phaethon as it passed near the Sun in May 2022. SOHO’s Large Angle and Spectrometric Coronagraph imaged the asteroid using different filters: one that detects dust and another that detects sodium.

In the recently captured images, the asteroid’s tail appears bright in the orange, sodium-sensitive filter, while not appearing in the blue, dust-detecting filter. This suggests that Phaethon’s tail is the result of the emission of sodium atoms rather than dust escaping the surface of the asteroid during its solar flyby. The findings are detailed in a paper published Tuesday in the Planetary Science Journal.

https://gizmodo.com/phaethon-asteroid-tail-sodium-geminid-meteor-shower-1850374590

A chunk of rock collected from the asteroid Ryugu contains bacteria—but, unfortunately, it's not evidence of alien life.

Passant Rabie - November 23, 2024

Researchers found evidence of microbial life in what should have been a pristine sample of an asteroid, a frustrating sign that avoiding earthly contamination may be harder than we thought.

A team from Imperial College London discovered a population of microorganisms in samples of the asteroid Ryugu, which were retrieved by Japan’s Hayabusa2 mission in 2019. The microbial life turned out to have terrestrial origins, indicating that the asteroid sample was contaminated during its time on our planet. The findings are detailed in a study published in Meteoritics and Planetary Science.

Usually, studies of space rocks involve meteorites, which have plunged through Earth’s atmosphere and hit the ground. Those samples can tell us a lot about the composition of objects in space, but by the time scientists study them, they’ve been thoroughly contaminated by the environment of Earth. But two recent missions—Japan’s Hayabusa2 and NASA’s OSIRIS-REx—collected bits of asteroid directly from outer space. Those samples were brought to Earth and intensely protected, in the hopes that researchers would have a chance to study material unaffected by our atmosphere and microbial life.

https://gizmodo.com/rare-asteroid-sample-contaminated-by-microorganisms-despite-scientists-best-efforts-2000528691

Posted by BeauHD on Friday February 16, 2024 11:00PM

For the first time, scientists say they've detected water molecules on the surface of an asteroid. Space.com reports:

Scientists studied four silicate-rich asteroids using data gathered by the now-retired Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA), a telescope-outfitted plane operated by NASA and the German Aerospace Center. Observations by SOFIA's Faint Object InfraRed Camera (FORCAST) instrument showed that two of the asteroids – named Iris and Massalia – exhibit a specific wavelength of light that indicated the presence of water molecules at their surface, a new study reports.

While water molecules have previously been detected in asteroid samples returned to Earth, this is the first time that water molecules have been found on the surface of an asteroid in space. In a previous study, SOFIA found similar traces of water on the surface of the moon, in one of the largest craters in its southern hemisphere. […]

https://science.slashdot.org/story/24/02/17/021220/scientists-discover-water-on-surface-of-an-asteroid

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday January 26, 2023 11:00PM

A small asteroid is flying very close to Earth on Thursday night, less than a week after astronomers discovered the object. The New York Times reports:

The asteroid, named 2023 BU, was scheduled to pass over the southern tip of South America at 7:27 p.m. Eastern time. The asteroid is fairly small – less than 30 feet across, about the size of a truck – and will be best visible in the skies to the west of southern Chile. For space watchers unable to view 2023 BU firsthand, the Virtual Telescope Project will be broadcasting the event on its website and YouTube channel. The asteroid will not hit Earth but will make one of the closest approaches ever by such an object, hurtling past Earth at just 2,200 miles above its surface, according to a news release from the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. This encounter puts the asteroid “well within the orbit of geosynchronous satellites,” the statement noted, but the asteroid is not on track to hit any.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/01/26/2349258/newly-discovered-asteroid-to-pass-close-to-earth-tonight

What a tease

Katyanna Quach - Fri 27 Jan 2023 07:28 UTC

A box-truck-sized asteroid has made one of the closest approaches by a near-Earth object ever recorded, brushing past our home world at a distance of a couple of thousand miles on Thursday.

Codenamed 2023 BU, the space rock is estimated to be between 11.5 and 28 feet (3.5 to 8.5 metres) across. Although it's fairly sizable, most of the asteroid would burn up in our atmosphere, with any larger surviving parts falling as meteorites, if it were to barrel head-first into Earth.

The asteroid thus didn't and doesn't pose any danger. NASA earlier confirmed 2023 BU will not hit Earth. Astronomers observed the object and calculated the risk using the Scout impact hazard assessment system, which takes into account various factors including an asteroid's trajectory, size, and speed.

“Scout quickly ruled out 2023 BU as an impactor, but despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, who developed Scout, said earlier this week.

https://www.theregister.com/2023/01/27/asteroid_2023_bu/

The potentially hazardous asteroid is on its way for an uncomfortably close flyby of Earth in 2029.

Passant Rabie - 25 April 2024

In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit.

Apophis is a on trajectory towards an Earth flyby on April 13, 2029. When it was first discovered in 2004, the 1,100-foot-wide (335 meters) near-Earth object was designated as a hazardous asteroid that could impact our planet. Later observations, however, reassured scientists that there’s no need to panic just yet, and that the asteroid has no chance of crashing into Earth for at least another century.

That’s very good news given the size of this object and the serious damage it would inflict should it some day strike our planet. Hopefully that’ll never happen, but objects of this size tend to hit Earth about once every 80,000 years, unleashing catastrophic damage and global-scale impact winters.

https://gizmodo.com/how-scientists-preparing-asteroid-apophis-flyby-earth-1851433340

Asteroid Apophis will come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029, which makes it very much worth a visit

Laura Dobberstein - Wed 17 Jul 2024 06:32 UTC

The European Space Agency has begun work on a planetary defence mission that will intercept an asteroid predicted to come within 32,000km of Earth in 2029.

The Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (RAMSES) mission targets asteroid 99942, aka Apophis, which is about 375 meters wide – the length of 30 giant squid – and expected to pass closer to Earth than some geosynchronous satellites.

“Astronomers have ruled out any chance that the asteroid will collide with our planet for at least the next 100 years,” explained the ESA, which added that another rock of this size typically would not approach so closely for another 5,000 to 10,000 years.

This fly-by is therefore an opportunity to observe Apophis in the hope doing so helps humanity to learn how future visitors of this sort might be deflected.

The ESA's Space Safety program – its team dedicated to gathering and publishing info about threats from space – green-lit initial work on the mission on Tuesday, meaning the agency can “kickstart mission prep using current resources,” according to ESA director general Josef Aschbacher.

RAMSES is not, however, cleared to fly. Commitment from the space agency's Ministerial Council Meeting in November 2025 is needed before the mission will be certain.

https://www.theregister.com/2024/07/17/esa_ramses_prelim_approval/

Even if the one-in-a-billion situation were to happen, it wouldn't spell the end of humanity. Probably.

Adam Kovac - September 12, 2024

Asteroid Apophis doesn’t currently pose a threat to Earth when it passes by in a few years, but an astrophysicist has envisioned a scenario where that could change.

The good news is that an utterly wild series of events—like cosmic bullets colliding at full speed and deflecting one at an incredibly precise angle—would have to occur for this potential catastrophe to happen.

In 2021, NASA released an analysis of Apophis’ trajectory, concluding that the asteroid doesn’t pose a threat to Earth in the immediate future. While there will be close passes in 2029 and 2036, and an even closer approach in 2068, NASA’s calculations found no risk of direct impact. In fact, NASA officials said our planet should be safe from Apophis for another 100 years.

A paper published in The Planetary Science Journal this past March supported that conclusion—mostly. In the paper, Paul Wiegert, an astrophysicist at Canada’s Western University, said that, while Apophis’ current trajectory poses no threat, the asteroid will have a near-encounter in December 2026 with another asteroid, 4544 Xanthus. The two orbits will bring the asteroids within less than 6,200 miles (10,000 kilometers) of each other, but they will reach that closest point about four hours apart, eliminating the risk of a direct collision. However, any material accompanying Xanthus could still strike Apophis, potentially altering its path and sending it towards Earth. Gulp.

https://gizmodo.com/asteroid-apophis-wont-hit-earth-in-2029-unless-this-freaky-scenario-plays-out-2000497732

The 1,640-foot-wide object could collide with Earth in 161 years, but the odds remain exceptionally low.

George Dvorsky - 11 August 2021

Data gathered during the years NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spent zipping around asteroid Bennu has allowed scientists to update the risk posed by this potentially hazardous near-Earth object.

The spacecraft OSIRIS-REx is currently en route to Earth, carrying surface samples it collected from asteroid Bennu. From December 2018 to May 2021, the NASA spacecraft studied the gigantic rubble pile from every angle, measuring its size, shape, mass, composition, spin, orbital trajectory, and other important characteristics. Bennu is a primitive carbonaceous asteroid, so by studying this object, scientists can make inferences about what our solar system was like during its formative period.

But there’s more to this $800 million mission than just looking for organic molecules or signs of water and heavy elements. Bennu is currently ranked second on the list of potentially dangerous asteroids, highlighting the importance of learning as much as we can about it—especially the orbital dynamics that dictate its future movements.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-refines-threat-posed-by-potentially-hazardous-aste-1847468761

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday August 12, 2021 03:00AM

NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft has been orbiting an asteroid called Bennu for more than two years to fine-tune the agency's existing models of its trajectory. “As a result, scientists behind new research now say they're confident that the asteroid's total impact probability through 2300 is just 1 in 1,750,” reports Space.com. From the report:

Estimates produced before OSIRIS-REx arrived at the space rock tallied the cumulative probability of a Bennu impact between the years 2175 and 2199 at 1 in 2,700, according to NASA. While a slightly higher risk than past estimates, it represents a minuscule change in an already minuscule risk, NASA said. Technically, that's a small increase in risk, but the scientists behind the new research say they aren't worried about a potential impact. And besides, the lessons the research offers for asteroid trajectory calculation could reduce concerns about potential impacts by other asteroids more than enough to compensate.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/08/11/2342246/scientists-fine-tune-odds-of-asteroid-bennu-hitting-earth

Posted by BeauHD on Saturday July 09, 2022 12:00AM

In October 2020, the agency's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft nearly sank into the surface of the rubbly asteroid while picking up rocks for shipment to Earth in 2023, team members revealed Thursday (July 7). The spacecraft only escaped getting stuck or sinking into oblivion within Bennu by firing its thrusters at the right moment. Space.com reports:

“We expected the surface to be pretty rigid,” principal investigator Dante Lauretta, a planetary scientist at the University of Arizona, told Space.com. “We saw a giant wall of debris flying away from the sample site. For spacecraft operators, it was really frightening.” Now that the spacecraft (more formally known as Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer) is safely on its way back to our planet to deliver its precious cargo, scientists are digging into the science implications of the dramatic moment.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/22/07/09/0354215/asteroid-bennu-nearly-swallowed-up-nasas-sampling-spacecraft

The asteroid could've swallowed the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, according to a new study.

Passant Rabie - 11 July 2022 4:40PM

In October 2020, a small spacecraft briefly touched down on an asteroid to snag a piece of it to bring to Earth. Almost two years later, scientists have learned that if the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft had extended its stay even a tiny bit longer, it would have sunk right into the asteroid.

That’s because asteroid Bennu is nothing like scientists had predicted. Rather than being a solid, flying rock, Bennu is actually made up of small, pebble-like particles that are not strongly bound together, creating lots of space on its surface. It’s most comparable to a plastic ball pit, NASA writes in a new release. “Our expectations about the asteroid’s surface were completely wrong” Dante Lauretta, principal investigator of OSIRIS-REx and lead author of a recent paper detailing the findings, said in the release.

https://gizmodo.com/asteroid-bennu-surface-ball-pit-nasa-osiris-rex-1849165331

The asteroid sample return mission is scheduled to drop off pieces of a space rock in September.

Passant Rabie - 21 July 2023

After landing on an asteroid nearly three years ago to scoop up a sample from its rocky surface, the OSIRIS-REx mission is finally in the homestretch. NASA is preparing for the special delivery of the rocky sample next month and the agency just pulled off the most realistic rehearsal for the big day.

From July 18 to 20, the team behind the mission practiced the recovery of a mock sample return capsule at the Department of Defense’s Utah Test and Training Range, the same location where the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will drop off the real asteroid sample, NASA wrote in a blog post.

The OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is scheduled to drop off the sample from asteroid Bennu on September 24. The plan is for the spacecraft to drop off its precious cargo during its flyby, after which the capsule containing the asteroid samples will perform a parachute-assisted landing in the Utah desert. The capsule has to land within a 37-mile by 9-mile ellipse (59 km by 15 km) about 13 minutes after it is released by the spacecraft, but that’s not even the hard part.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-rehearsal-asteroid-sample-osiris-rex-bennu-1850664789

The museum will unveil the first public display of the OSIRIS-REx mission samples on November 3.

Passant Rabie - 26 October 2023

After traveling through space for 200 million miles, rocky pieces from asteroid Bennu were dropped off on Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in late September. Now, some of those fragments will be put on display for museum-goers to observe firsthand.

The Smithsonian’s National Museum of Natural History will unveil the first public display of the asteroid sample on Friday, November 3. The museum, located in Washington, D.C., will be the first to offer eager space nerds a look at the pristine dark rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu.

The sample will be on display at the museum’s Janet Annenberg Hooker Hall of Geology, Gems, and Minerals meteorite gallery. The display will also include scale models of the OSIRIS-Rex spacecraft, on loan from Lockheed Martin, and the Atlas V 411 rocket that carried the spacecraft, on loan courtesy of United Launch Alliance.

https://gizmodo.com/pieces-asteroid-bennu-smithsonian-nasa-osiris-rex-1850963488

Clues as to how building blocks of life on Earth may have been seeded.

Timothy J McCoy and Sara Russell, The Conversation – Jan 30, 2025 6:59 AM

A bright fireball streaked across the sky above mountains, glaciers, and spruce forest near the town of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada, on the evening of March 31, 1965. Fragments of this meteorite, discovered by beaver trappers, fell over a lake. A layer of ice saved them from the depths and allowed scientists a peek into the birth of the solar system.

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has published a chemical analysis of those samples, providing insight into how some of the ingredients for life may have first arrived on Earth.

Born in the years bracketing the Revelstoke meteorite’s fall, the two of us have spent our careers in the meteorite collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Natural History Museum in London. We’ve dreamed of studying samples from a Revelstoke-like asteroid collected by a spacecraft.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2025/01/bennu-asteroid-samples-yield-watery-history-key-molecules-for-life/

It's a 65-million-year-old space rock stuffed with amino acids, DNA bases, and more, boffins report

Brandon Vigliarolo - Thu 30 Jan 2025 07:34 UTC

Scientists analyzing samples from asteroid Bennu have found something remarkable: Despite being a cold, lifeless rubble pile that formed around 65 million years ago, it holds a rich inventory of organic molecules - key ingredients for life.

Returned to Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft in late 2023 - and sealed inside its capsule until NASA worked out how to safely open it - the first two scientific papers detailing the makeup of organic matter (Nature Astronomy) and hydrated salts (Nature) harvested from the surface of Bennu were published Wednesday. While no signs of life were found, the results provide valuable insights into the chemistry of the early solar system.

The Nature Astronomy paper reports that Bennu contains 14 of the 20 amino acids essential for life on Earth, along with all five nucleobases that form DNA and RNA. The samples also included ammonia and formaldehyde, which can combine to form complex molecules like the amino acids found in the sample, indicating multiple stages of development being present.

Along with those compounds, around 10,000 nitrogen-bearing chemicals were found in the Bennu samples. Like amino acids and nucleobases, nitrogen-bearing compounds play a critical role in life.

All those organic compounds need a proper environment to develop in, and Bennu shows evidence of containing that, too. The Nature paper found evidence of evaporated brine minerals, suggesting that Bennu's parent body - a larger proto-planet or asteroid - once contained liquid water and compounds critical to life, including sodium-bearing phosphates and carbonates, as well as sulfates, chlorides, and fluorides.

https://www.theregister.com/2025/01/30/asteroid_bennu_life/

Posted by BeauHD on Thursday January 30, 2025 02:00AM

Mr. Dollar Ton shares a report from the BBC:

The chemical building blocks of life have been found, among many other complex chemical compounds, in the grainy dust of an asteroid called Bennu, an analysis reveals. Samples of the space rock, which were scooped up by a Nasa spacecraft and brought to Earth, contain a rich array of minerals and thousands of organic compounds. These include amino acids, which are the molecules that make up proteins, as well as nucleobases – the fundamental components of DNA.

The findings are published in two papers in the journal nature.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/25/01/30/0520218/asteroid-contains-building-blocks-of-life-say-scientists

Jessica Taveau - Jan 29, 2025

Studies of rock and dust from asteroid Bennu delivered to Earth by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification and Security–Regolith Explorer) spacecraft have revealed molecules that, on our planet, are key to life, as well as a history of saltwater that could have served as the “broth” for these compounds to interact and combine.

The findings do not show evidence for life itself, but they do suggest the conditions necessary for the emergence of life were widespread across the early solar system, increasing the odds life could have formed on other planets and moons.

“NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission already is rewriting the textbook on what we understand about the beginnings of our solar system,” said Nicky Fox, associate administrator, Science Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Asteroids provide a time capsule into our home planet’s history, and Bennu’s samples are pivotal in our understanding of what ingredients in our solar system existed before life started on Earth.”

In research papers published Wednesday in the journals Nature and Nature Astronomy, scientists from NASA and other institutions shared results of the first in-depth analyses of the minerals and molecules in the Bennu samples, which OSIRIS-REx delivered to Earth in 2023.

Detailed in the Nature Astronomy paper, among the most compelling detections were amino acids – 14 of the 20 that life on Earth uses to make proteins – and all five nucleobases that life on Earth uses to store and transmit genetic instructions in more complex terrestrial biomolecules, such as DNA and RNA, including how to arrange amino acids into proteins.

https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasas-asteroid-bennu-sample-reveals-mix-of-lifes-ingredients/

Bennu has a 1-in-2,700 chance of colliding with Earth in 2182, causing a global winter and drought.

Passant Rabie - February 5, 2025

On September 24, 2182, a relatively large space rock has a 0.037% chance of crashing onto the surface of Earth. Although the chances of impact are slim, Bennu is still one of the most potentially hazardous known asteroids in our solar system, and we need to be prepared for what could come. A first-of-its-kind study simulated the planet-wide damage that would be caused by Bennu’s unlikely impact, leading to a sudden onset of winter and global food shortages.

A group of researchers based in South Korea drew up scenarios indicating how Earth’s climate and life on our planet would be affected by the impact of a medium-sized asteroid like Bennu. The team found that such an impact would cause massive disruptions that could last up to three or four years. In the most intense scenario the team described, several hundred million tons of dust would significantly reduce the sunlight that reaches Earth’s surface, causing temperatures to drop around the world and affecting how plants grow on Earth. The researchers published their study, which is the first to model Earth’s climate after an asteroid impact, in Science Advances.

https://gizmodo.com/heres-what-would-happen-if-asteroid-bennu-hit-earth-2000559740

If NASA ever manages to pry open the sample canister, that is.

Isaac Schultz - 4 November 2023

We’ve all been there: You’re getting some peanut butter, or looking to nosh a nice pickle, when you find your wrist strength is insufficient to get at the jar’s delicious contents. That’s more or less NASA’s vexing issue with the OSIRIS-REx asteroid samples—though, of course, that canister’s contents aren’t for eating.

That’s right. NASA was able to launch a $1.16 billion mission to an asteroid 200 million miles from Earth, retrieve crumbly bits of space rock, and bring them all the way back to our humble habitable world. And now it can’t open the jar. Specifically, two fasteners on TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) are refusing to yield to the currently available tools. Scientists hope the samples asteroid Bennu could hold clues to the formation of the solar system and the origins of life, so they’re understandably eager to get things moving.

https://gizmodo.com/bennu-asteroid-samples-expected-to-fundamentally-shift-1850987200

Posted by EditorDavid on Saturday December 16, 2023 10:34AM

In 2020 a NASA spacecraft visited the asteroid Bennu. In October it returned to earth with a sample. Monday scientists got their first data about it at a meeting of the American Geophysical Union — which is a truly big deal.

“Before Earth had biology, it had chemistry,” writes the Washington Post. “How the one followed from the other — how a bunch of boring molecules transformed themselves into this special thing we call life — is arguably the greatest unknown in science.”

The mission's top scientist, Dante Lauretta… showed slides with a long list of intriguing molecules, including carbon-based organics, in the grains and pebbles retrieved from Bennu. They will shine light on the molecular building blocks of the solar system and “maybe — still early phase — maybe insights into the origin of life.” This analysis has only just started. The team has not yet released a formal scientific paper. In his lecture, Lauretta cited one interesting triangular, light-colored stone, which he said contained something he'd never seen before in a meteorite. “It's a head-scratcher right now. What is this material?” he said.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/12/16/0440221/asteroid-pieces-brought-to-earth-may-offer-a-clue-to-lifes-origin

The space agency is having to develop new tools to crack open the canister containing bits from asteroid Bennu.

Passant Rabie - 15 December 2023

In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly answer crucial questions about how our planet came to be—if only we can get to them first.

NASA has been struggling to open the canister containing rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu ever since the container landed on Earth. The space agency now anticipates that the asteroid sample canister will be opened sometime in early 2024, as engineers fashion new tools to help crank it open while still preserving the pristine rocks.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-bennu-stuck-container-1851102598

Researchers have begun examining the pristine space rocks collected by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission.

Alexandra Witze - 12 December 2023

In the 2.5 months since NASA’s first asteroid sample-return mission landed safely on Earth, technicians have carefully plucked more than 70 grams of asteroid dust and pebbles from the spacecraft’s canister. That’s more than ten times the amount brought back from an asteroid previously, and more than NASA declared necessary to call the mission a success. Some of the pebbles even seem to contain a combination of chemical elements that is puzzling researchers.

https://www.nature.com/articles/d41586-023-03978-4

The space agency is having to develop new tools to crack open the canister containing bits from asteroid Bennu.

Passant Rabie - 15 December 2023 12:40PM

In September, fragments of a near-Earth asteroid were carefully dropped off in the Utah desert. The space rocks hold clues to the origin of the solar system and can possibly answer crucial questions about how our planet came to be—if only we can get to them first.

NASA has been struggling to open the canister containing rocks and dust collected from asteroid Bennu ever since the container landed on Earth. The space agency now anticipates that the asteroid sample canister will be opened sometime in early 2024, as engineers fashion new tools to help crank it open while still preserving the pristine rocks.

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-osiris-rex-asteroid-samples-bennu-stuck-container-1851102598

The space agency has been struggling with two pesky fasteners that, for months, stood in the way of the precious Bennu sample.

Passant Rabie - 11 January 2024

After months of fidgeting with a canister that contained rocky samples from an ancient asteroid, NASA engineers have finally removed two stubborn fasteners that appeared to be preventing the space agency from collecting the full amount of Bennu’s debris.

The OSIRIS-REx curation team managed to remove the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head, where the bulk of the asteroid sample is stored, NASA announced in a blog post on Thursday. The team was forced to develop new tools to help remove the two fasteners that held the sampler head shut since it landed on Earth in September 2023. Engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston freed the fasteners on January 10.

“Our engineers and scientists have worked tirelessly behind the scenes for months to not only process the more than 70 grams of material we were able to access previously, but also design, develop, and test new tools that allowed us to move past this hurdle,” Eileen Stansbery, division chief for ARES (Astromaterials Research and Exploration Science) at NASA, said in a statement. “The innovation and dedication of this team has been remarkable. We are all excited to see the remaining treasure OSIRIS-REx holds.”

https://gizmodo.com/nasa-osiris-rex-bennu-asteroid-samples-canister-1851159732

The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.

Isaac Schultz - January 29, 2025

Asteroid Bennu not only held water at some point in its distant past but also contains briny residue that harbors some of the crucial building blocks for life, according to a team of scientists that studied samples of the space rock.

The brine contains compounds that have never been previously observed in asteroid samples, including compounds of sodium carbonate. The brine can also be distinguished from brine samples on Earth, as it is much richer in phosphorus—an element abundant on asteroids but uncommon on Earth. The team’s findings shake up the story of Bennu, whose rocky bits were valiantly collected by NASA in 2020, and hint at the ways life may have taken root from the chemical cocktail of the cosmos.

Two studies published today in Nature and Nature Astronomy reveal some of the first analyses done of the Bennu samples. The papers describe briny residue found in the samples, which differs from the composition of Earth’s brines, as well as protein-building amino acids and the five nucleobases that form the building blocks of RNA and DNA. In other words, the sample contains a wealth of material showing that critical ingredients for life as we know it exist on a space rock roughly the same age as Earth. The only thing missing, it would seem, were little green men.

https://gizmodo.com/briny-residue-scooped-from-asteroid-bennu-holds-clues-to-lifes-cosmic-origins-2000556326

Posted by BeauHD on Friday December 03, 2021 02:00AM

schwit1 shares a report from ScienceAlert:

The comet Bernardinelli-Bernstein (BB) – the largest our telescopes have ever spotted – is on a journey from the outer reaches of our Solar System that will see it flying relatively close to Saturn's orbit. Now, a new analysis of the data we've collected on BB has revealed something rather surprising. Digging into readings logged by the Transient Exoplanet Survey Satellite (TESS) between 2018 and 2020, researchers have discovered that BB became active much earlier, and much farther out from the Sun, than was previously thought.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/21/12/03/0331250/the-largest-comet-weve-ever-seen-just-delivered-a-curious-surprise

Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas) won't be this close to Earth again for over 80,000 years, assuming it survives its approach to the Sun.

Adam Kovac - Updated September 23, 2024

Earth’s sky is about to gain a bright object, one that could briefly rival the North Star in visibility—if it doesn’t melt first.

China’s Tsuchinshan Observatory discovered Comet C/2023 A3 (Tsuchinan-Atlas) in January 2023, with the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) telescope in South Africa spotting it again a few weeks later. Since then, scientists and amateur astronomers around the world have been watching it through telescopes, but those instruments likely won’t be necessary when it reaches its closest point to Earth on October 12. On that date, it’s possible that Comet A3, as it’s known for the sake of brevity, will become the brightest comet of the year.

On September 27, A3 will reach its perihelion, the point in its orbit at which it passes closest to the Sun. When it does, it will be less than half the distance of Earth to the Sun. A few weeks later, it will reach its closest distance to our planet.

https://gizmodo.com/comet-a3-could-be-the-years-brightest-heres-how-to-see-it-2000502090

The Chelyabinsk meteor was the biggest space rock to hit Earth this century. Its shockwave shattered windows and injured hundreds of people.

Kevin Hurler - 15 February 2023

A decade ago today, the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia unexpectedly found itself under assault from space, as a roughly 60-foot-wide asteroid exploded over the region. It was a shocking reminder that our planet can be struck at any time—and future impacts could be a lot more serious.

The asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere on February 15, 2013, and the fireball was captured by security cameras, vehicle dashcams, and the smartphones of eyewitnesses around Chelyabinsk. Soon after came a deafening shockwave and sonic boom, which damaged buildings, set off car alarms, and injured around 1,600 people.

https://gizmodo.com/chelyabinsk-meteor-russia-photos-video-10-years-later-1850117534

A probe sent toward the Sun ran into the debris of an asteroid breakup.

Elizabeth Rayne - 6/27/2023, 3:56 PM

Each year, skywatchers get to gaze at the spectacle of the Geminids streaking through the night sky from mid-November through late December. However, this meteor shower is highly unusual, and not only because it is one of the easiest to view.

Meteor showers usually originate from comets that fly close to the Sun. Comets are made of frozen gasses, dust, and rock, and the Sun’s heat vaporizes some of that gas and releases it into space, dislodging debris that eventually falls to Earth. But the Geminids are exceptional because they originate from an asteroid instead of a comet. Asteroid 3200 Phaeton is the source of this trail of debris, but asteroids are not affected by solar heat the same way as comets, so it’s unclear why Phaeton has left a trail of debris.

NASA scientists who analyzed data from the space agency’s Parker Solar Probe have now finally found the most likely answer to the mystery of how the Geminids formed: a catastrophic event. “The Geminids may have formed via a more violent, catastrophic destruction of bodies that transited very near to the Sun,” the scientists said in a study recently published in The Planetary Science Journal.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2023/06/we-finally-know-how-the-mysterious-geminid-meteor-shower-originated/

Views of Leonard with the unaided eye are a distinct possibility, as the “ultrafast” comet makes a brief trip through the inner solar system.

George Dvorsky - 12/03/21 3:30PM

The time has arrived for skywatchers to look up and catch a glimpse of comet Leonard. Here’s how you can find this gigantic ball of ice and dust.

Senior research specialist Greg J. Leonard discovered the comet that now bears his name on January 3, from the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona. Comet Leonard (or more formally, C/2021 A1) is en route to the inner solar system, and, as is customary of inbound comets, it’s increasingly shedding its surface materials into space. Leonard’s closest approach to the Sun—its perihelion—will happen on January 3, 2022, after which time it will begin its long journey to the outer solar system.

https://gizmodo.com/how-to-spot-leonard-the-brightest-comet-of-the-year-1848157771

The mysterious object will be analyzed to determine if it is indeed of extraterrestrial origins.

Isaac Schultz - 18 July 2023

On July 6, a woman in the French town of Alsace was chatting with a friend on her terrace when she was struck by a small object. On further inspection, the black-and-gray concretion appeared to be a meteorite.

The news was first reported by Les Dernières Nouvelles d’Alsace. According to The Weather Channel, the object struck the woman in the ribs with enough force to leave a bruise.

If confirmed, it will be one of the exceedingly rare instances of a meteorite striking a person—at least, one of the instances in which the person lived to confirm it happened. The most famous instance was in 1954, when a woman in Alabama was struck by a meteorite that fell through the roof of her home, leaving a massive bruise on her torso.

https://gizmodo.com/french-woman-hit-apparent-meteorite-relaxing-terrace-1850651085

Scientists believe NWA 13188 initially sprung from Earth before finding its way back home, and after spending thousands of years in space.

Passant Rabie - 26 July 2023

Five years ago, a partially crusted, dark red meteorite crashed in the Sahara desert and was sold in Morocco. Meteorites, almost exclusively, are of extraterrestrial origin, but this chunk seemed weirdly familiar, leading scientists to believe that it originated from the same planet where it ended up thousands of years later.

During the 2023 Goldschmidt Conference on geochemistry, held from July 9 to 14 in Lyon, France, a team of international researchers presented data to suggest that “Northwest Africa 13188“ is a meteorite from Earth. The researchers have not yet published their work in a study.

https://gizmodo.com/unprecedented-meteorite-believed-originated-earth-1850671504

Posted by EditorDavid on Sunday September 17, 2023 12:34AM

In late August the blog of Harvard professor Avi Loeb declared he had “Wonderful news! For the first time in history, scientists analyzed materials from a meter-size object that originated from outside the solar system.”

In July Loeb retrieved parts of a meteor that landed in the waters off of Papua, New Guinea in 2014. A local New York newscast describes the find as “metallic marbles, less than a millimeter in diameter,” while Loeb called them “beautiful spheres that were colored — blue, brown or gold.”

Now USA Today reports:

Early analysis shows that some spherules from the meteor path contain “extremely high abundances” of an unheard-of composition of heavy elements. Researchers on the team say the composition of beryllium, lanthanum and uranium, labeled as a “BeLaU” composition, does not match terrestrial alloys natural to Earth or fallout from nuclear explosions. Additionally, the composition is not found in magma oceans of Earth, nor the moon, Mars or other natural bodies in the solar system.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/09/17/0251241/avi-loeb-says-meteor-analysis-shows-it-originated-outside-our-solar-system

Until now, only 6% of meteorites had a known source, but now we can trace the origin of more than 70% of these rocks.

Passant Rabie - October 16, 2024

About 466 million years ago, Earth was bombarded with a massive swarm of space rocks violently crashing on our planet, likely the result of a large asteroid breaking up into smaller fragments while traveling in orbit between Mars and Jupiter. The Massalia asteroid family, a population of asteroids that share similar orbits, may be the main culprit behind this massive infall. In fact, this particular asteroid family dominates nearly 40% of all meteorites that have fallen to Earth, with two other families of space rocks named as the source of most Earth-bound meteorites.

Thousands of meteorites have been recovered on Earth following a hectic journey through space. Now, new research is able to trace the origin of the majority of these fallen space rocks, suggesting that three young asteroid families are responsible for more than 70% of meteorites on Earth. The discovery is detailed in three studies published in Nature and Astronomy and Astrophysics, and the new findings could help scientists uncover mysteries of the early solar system.

https://gizmodo.com/scientists-discover-surprising-origin-of-most-meteorites-that-strike-earth-2000512615

Anthony King - 23 October 2024

A giant meteorite that slammed into Earth over 3 billion years ago devastated early microbial life in the oceans, but also freed up a nutrient bonanza.

This meteorite was far larger than the infamous Cretaceous era ending one. ‘We’re looking at a bolide that was 500 to 200 times bigger than the one that killed off the dinosaurs,’ says Nadja Drabon, a geologist at Harvard University.

The Archean eon 2.5–4 billion years ago suffered at least 16 major impacts by meteorites upwards of 10km across. Each would have vaporised enough rock to darken the ancient skies for years.

Drabon’s group say the impact 3.26 billion years ago triggered a giant tsunami, as well as clouding the oceans and darkening the skies for years to decades. The impact also evaporated tens of metres of seawater.

https://www.chemistryworld.com/news/meteorite-200-times-larger-than-one-that-killed-dinosaurs-reset-early-life/4020391.article

The brightness of comet Nishimura has increased since its discovery several weeks ago, leading to hopes that it’ll soon be visible to the unaided eye.

George Dvorsky - 1 September 2023

A comet recently discovered by Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura is garnering attention from NASA and skywatchers alike.

Using a standard digital camera, Nishimura detected the celestial body on August 11 during a series of 30-second exposures, according to NASA. Though currently not visible to the naked eye, this status may soon change. NASA has noted the comet’s steady increase in brightness since its discovery. Furthermore, astronomers have now charted the comet’s future trajectory through the inner solar system.

“As the comet dives toward the Sun, it will surely continue to intensify and possibly become a naked-eye object in early September,” stated NASA. However, there’s a caveat for potential observers: the comet’s proximity to the Sun will mean it is best visible during the times of sunset or sunrise when the Sun’s glare is least obtrusive.

https://gizmodo.com/nishimura-comet-may-soon-be-visible-without-telescopes-1850797275

Stargazers in the northern hemisphere get a once-in-437-year chance to observe the comet as it reaches peak visibility just weeks after being identified

Agence France-Presse - Wed 6 Sep 2023 20.24 EDT

A comet called Nishimura discovered just a month ago could be visible to the naked eye this weekend, offering stargazers a once-in-a-437-year chance to observe the celestial visitor.

The ball of rock and ice, whose exact size remains unknown, is named after the Japanese amateur astronomer Hideo Nishimura who first spotted it on 11 August.

It is rare that comets reach their moment of peak visibility so soon after being discovered, said Nicolas Biver, an astrophysicist at the Paris Observatory. “Most are discovered months, even years before they pass closest to the sun,” he told AFP.

The comet swings by the sun only every 437 years, he said, a long orbital period which sees it spend much of its time in the freezing outer solar system.

When comets approach the sun from the vastness of space, the heat causes its ice core to turn into dust and gas, which form a long tail. The sun’s light reflects off this tail, allowing us to view comets from Earth.

https://www.theguardian.com/science/2023/sep/07/nishimura-comet-could-be-visible-to-naked-eye-this-weekend

The comet won’t return for over 400 years, and tomorrow morning is your best chance to witness this celestial spectacle in our lifetime.

Isaac Schultz - 11 September 2023

Nishimura (2023 P1), a comet discovered just last month, is set to make its nearest approach to Earth in the next 400 years during tomorrow’s predawn sky.

Comets are frozen accumulations of rock, dust, and ices that grow tails when warmed up by objects like our Sun, occasionally making them stunning to behold in the night sky. Some comet tails can stretch millions of miles long, according to NASA.

The comet that may be visible tomorrow morning was discovered in early August by Hideo Nishimura, a space photographer and amateur astronomer, who captured the comet using a standard digital camera. It was Nishimura’s third comet discovery, after two observations in 2021 and 1994. Since then, the comet has brightened to the point that it may be visible to the naked eye.

https://gizmodo.com/comet-nishimura-astronomy-how-spot-1850825866

Posted by BeauHD on Friday March 24, 2023 03:00AM

Scientists have come up with a simple explanation for the strange movements of our solar system's first known visitor from another star. NPR reports:

Now, though, in the journal Nature, two researchers say the answer might be the release of hydrogen from trapped reserves inside water-rich ice. That was the notion of Jennifer Bergner, an astrochemist with the University of California, Berkeley, who recalls that she initially didn't spend much time thinking about 'Oumuamua when it was first discovered. “It's not that closely related to my field. So I was like, this is a really intriguing object, but sort of moved on with my life,” she says. Then she happened to attend a seminar that featured Cornell University's Darryl Seligman, who described the object's weirdness and what might account for it. One possibility he'd considered was that it was composed entirely of hydrogen ice. Others have suggested it might instead be composed of nitrogen ice.

https://science.slashdot.org/story/23/03/24/073242/interstellar-object-oumuamua-probably-moved-strangely-due-to-gas-study-says

NASA's Psyche mission to study the asteroid launches later this year.

Jennifer Ouellette - 6/16/2022, 1:56 PM

Astronomers have produced the most detailed map to date of the surface of 16-Psyche, an asteroid that scientists believe could hold clues to how planets formed in our Solar System. According to a paper published in the Journal of Geophysical Research, 16-Psyche has a highly varied surface of metal, sand, and rock that suggests its history could include metallic eruptions, as well as being hit by other celestial objects. The asteroid is the focus of NASA's Psyche mission, launching later this year.

As we've reported previously, 16 Psyche is an M-type asteroid (meaning it has high metallic content) orbiting the Sun in the main asteroid belt, with an unusual potato-like shape. The longstanding preferred hypothesis is that Psyche is the exposed metallic core of a protoplanet (planetesimal) from our Solar System's earliest days, with the crust and mantle stripped away by a collision (or multiple collisions) with other objects. In recent years, scientists concluded that the mass and density estimates aren't consistent with an entirely metallic remnant core. Rather, it's more likely a complex mix of metals and silicates.

https://arstechnica.com/science/2022/06/astronomers-reveal-the-most-detailed-map-of-the-asteroid-psyche-yet/

Tsuchinshan–ATLAS might become as brilliant as Venus.

Joe Rao - 22 May 2024

In a year in which we have already been treated to the “Great North American Solar Eclipse” in April and one of the greatest displays of Northern Lights in the past 500 years in May, what other amazing celestial attractions might 2024 have in store for us?

How about a bright naked-eye comet?

Over the last couple of years, two comets have made headlines in the mainstream media. In early February 2023, Comet C/2022 E3 (ZTF), informally called the “Great Green Comet”, passed near Earth and then during the past month, Comet 12P/Pons-Brooks drew attention because of its propensity for experiencing sudden flare-up in brightness and appearing to spout gaseous appendages resembling horns, thus giving rise to the moniker “Devil's Comet.”

The only problem so far as the person-on-the-street was concerned was that both comets were difficult to see unless you were located under a dark, non-light polluted sky. And even through good binoculars or a small telescope, both were rather unimpressive, appearing as nothing more than faint, fuzzy blobs of light.

https://www.space.com/comet-tsuchinshan-atlas-fall-2024