Archive for 'Asteroids'
Two Asteroids Zip Past Today; Meanwhile, NASA Plans Killer Asteroid Defenses
Posted on 08. Sep, 2010 by Andrew Moseman.
Zoom, zoom: Today two asteroids make close flybys of the Earth, passing inside the orbit of the moon. We’re in no danger, NASA says, but these close passes are a reminder that the United States and the world need to figure out how we’re going to catch an asteroid that could be on a collision [...]
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Timelapse Video Illustrates 500,000 Asteroid Discoveries
Posted on 27. Aug, 2010 by Paul Adams.
In this amazing video of the solar system, the asteroids that were discovered from 1980 to 2010 appear in the sequence as they were discovered. It's very cool to watch the process of discovery. You can observe patterns, as technological innovations co...
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Found: One of Neptune’s Asteroid Stalkers
Posted on 13. Aug, 2010 by Joseph Calamia.
Astronomers have confirmed it: Neptune has a stalker. They have spotted, for the first time, an asteroid follower that keeps a fairly constant distance behind the planet in its orbit around the sun. And there may be many more. Asteroid 2008 LC18 can’t help itself. It’s caught between the gravitational tug from the sun, which is [...]
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That Killer Asteroid You Heard About Yesterday? We Knew About It Last Year
Posted on 29. Jul, 2010 by Andrew Moseman.
Beware death from above! So blared science headlines yesterday. Citing a study in the Journal Icarus that said a huge asteroid perhaps could have a 1 in 1,000 shot of striking earth late in the next century, stories broke such as, “Will a Giant Asteroid Kill Us All in 2182?” “Asteroid Could Destroy Human Life on Earth [...]
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Asteroid Photo Session: Rosetta Spacecraft Snaps Pics of Battered Lutetia
Posted on 12. Jul, 2010 by Joseph Calamia.
On Saturday, the European Space Agency’s Rosetta probe took the world’s closest pictures of the 80- by 50-mile-wide asteroid known as 21 Lutetia. Though the Lutetia visit is just a stop on the way to Rosetta’s real destination–a 2014 visit to the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko–Saturday’s pictures document the closest visit to this big asteroid, the largest [...]

















