All posts tagged: asteroid

A Probe Took Incredible Pictures of Mars on Its Way to a Far-Off Asteroid

A Probe Took Incredible Pictures of Mars on Its Way to a Far-Off Asteroid

Published by skeptic

The Psyche probe, launched in October 2023 on its way to the metallic asteroid it studies, recently performed a flyby of Mars to take advantage of its gravitational pull and continue its trajectory toward the asteroid belt. During the maneuver, the spacecraft obtained new images of the red planet. Psyche passed within 4,609 kilometers, or 2,864 miles, of the Martian surface, and was boosted to a higher velocity after completing the gravity assist. On the approach, NASA activated onboard cameras, magnetometers, and gamma ray and neutron spectrometers to calibrate each instrument using the planet’s atmosphere and terrain. In recent images released by the space agency, the rugged Martian surface can be seen in detail, along with traces of the solar wind that, around craters and the south polar cap, is rich in water ice. “We’ve captured thousands of images of the approach to Mars and of the planet’s surface and atmosphere at close approach. This dataset provides unique and important opportunities for us to calibrate and characterize the performance of the cameras, as well as …

Asteroid the size of a blue whale to skim past Earth today – and you can see it

Asteroid the size of a blue whale to skim past Earth today – and you can see it

Published by Sam Flores

A newly-discovered asteroid will make an unusually close pass of Earth on Monday evening. Asteroid 2026 JH2, which was only discovered last week by astronomers based at the Mount Lemmon Observatory in Arizona, will make its closest approach at just after 10pm BST (5pm EDT) on 18 May. It is expected to reach a minimum distance of just 91,000 kilometres (57,000 miles) from Earth, which is less than a quarter of the distance to the Moon. At this height, Asteroid 2026 JH2 is closer to Earth than some satellites, including the Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite. Measuring up to 35 metres (115 feet) across, the asteroid is larger than a blue whale and could cause significant damage if it actually hit Earth. It is similar in size to the Chelyabinsk meteor, which exploded in the atmosphere above Russia in 2013. The shockwave from the event was powerful enough to shatter windows across the Russian city, causing injuries to about 1,500 people. Some fragments reached the Earth’s surface, though none near any populated areas. The Chelyabinsk meteor …

Asteroid 2026 JH2 Is About to Fly Right Past Earth—Relatively Speaking

Asteroid 2026 JH2 Is About to Fly Right Past Earth—Relatively Speaking

Published by skeptic

look up! Asteroid 2026 JH2 is now approaching Earth; the object, which is about 20 meters (66 feet) in diameter—comparable to Chicago’s Cloud Gate sculpture—will pass by on May 18. Enthusiasts will be able to observe it using a telescope or during a live broadcast organized by Virtual Telescope. The object will pass at a minimum distance from Earth of about 57,000 miles—much closer than the moon, which is about four times farther away. Among the tracked near-earth objects, or NEOs, that will pass near the planet over the next few months, it will come the closest. There are tens of thousands of NEOs, which are generally of no particular concern; they are, of course, monitored, and some do have a (small) risk of impacting Earth in the next few years. According to New Scientist, 2026 JH2 is not among them, despite the widespread use of hyperbolic terms like “grazing” to describe how near it will come. An Apollo-Type Neo Asteroid 2026 JH2 is technically an Apollo-type NEO, according to a classification system that takes …

NASA’s Psyche probe nears Mars for gravity boost en route to metal-rich asteroid

NASA’s Psyche probe nears Mars for gravity boost en route to metal-rich asteroid

Published by Sam Flores

LOS ANGELES, May 14 : NASA’s Psyche probe was headed for a close encounter with Mars on Friday and a planned gravity boost to set the spacecraft on its final course to the solar system’s largest known metallic asteroid, thought to be the remnant core of an ancient protoplanet. The Psyche probe, named for the asteroid it was designed to explore, was launched in October 2023 on a planned voyage of 2.2 billion miles and is expected to reach its destination on the outer fringes of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in about three years. On Friday, the spacecraft is expected to pass within 2,800 miles (4,500 km) of Mars at 12,333 miles per hour (19,848 kph) as it harnesses the gravitational pull of the Red Planet to speed up and adjust the probe’s trajectory en route to its asteroid target, according to NASA. The Mars slingshot flyby was built into the Psyche flight plan as a way of conserving its supply of xenon gas propellant in the vehicle’s solar-electric ion thruster …

Asteroid to miss Earth by a quarter of the length from us to the moon

Asteroid to miss Earth by a quarter of the length from us to the moon

Published by skeptic

An asteroid in our solar system will come close to Earth, but don’t worry, it won’t be that close MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images An asteroid with the potential to ruin a city will pass Earth next week. 2026JH2, as it has been labelled by the astronomy community, is predicted to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of 90,917 kilometres – only a quarter of the distance between us and the moon. “In astronomical terms, it’s as close as you can get without hitting,” says Mark Norris at the University of Lancashire, UK. Within the next year, there are only five known asteroids that will pass within the orbit of the moon, and only one other will come closer than 2026JH2. 2026JH2 – which was spotted only this week by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and the Farpoint Observatory in Kansas – will pass closest to Earth at 9.38pm UTC on 18 May. Norris says it will only be visible from the northern hemisphere very briefly and that even astronomers …

Asteroid to miss Earth by a quarter of the length from us to the moon

Asteroid set to fly very close to Earth

Published by skeptic

An asteroid in our solar system will come close to Earth, but don’t worry, it won’t be that close MARK GARLICK/SCIENCE PHOTO LIBRARY/Getty Images An asteroid with the potential to ruin a city will pass Earth next week. 2026JH2, as it has been labelled by the astronomy community, is predicted to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of 90,917 kilometres – only a quarter of the distance between us and the moon. “In astronomical terms, it’s as close as you can get without hitting,” says Mark Norris at the University of Lancashire, UK. Within the next year, there are only five known asteroids that will pass within the orbit of the moon, and only one other will come closer than 2026JH2. 2026JH2 – which was spotted only this week by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and the Farpoint Observatory in Kansas – will pass closest to Earth at 9.38pm UTC on 18 May. Norris says it will only be visible from the northern hemisphere very briefly and that even astronomers …

Dante’s Inferno suggests Hell and Purgatory mirror the physics of a massive asteroid impact

Dante’s Inferno suggests Hell and Purgatory mirror the physics of a massive asteroid impact

Published by Jenni Sidey

For centuries, Dante Alighieri’s Inferno has been read as a moral and spiritual descent, a journey into sin, punishment, and divine justice. Timothy Burbery of Marshall University now argues that the poem also carries something far more physical. In his reading, Dante did not simply imagine Satan falling from Heaven. He pictured that fall as a violent planetary impact. That idea changes the scale of the story at once. Instead of treating Satan’s plunge as a symbolic collapse, Burbery proposes that Dante envisioned him as a fast-moving body striking the Southern Hemisphere and boring all the way to Earth’s center. In that scenario, Hell is not just a spiritual realm beneath the surface. It is the crater left behind by the collision, formed from the ground up as matter is forced outward and downward. The image is startling because it makes Dante sound less like a poet working in allegory and more like someone running a thought experiment about impact physics centuries before modern meteoritics existed. Dante and Virgil reach the ninth and lowest circle …

‘God of chaos’ asteroid Apophis will pass very close to Earth in 2029

‘God of chaos’ asteroid Apophis will pass very close to Earth in 2029

Published by Jenni Sidey

For a brief stretch on April 13, 2029, a giant space rock will slip closer to Earth than some of the satellites parked high above the planet. That object is Apophis, an asteroid once treated as a serious threat. Now it is viewed as one of the most unusual scientific opportunities in modern astronomy. Apophis is not headed for impact. That part is settled. But the asteroid’s close flyby is still extraordinary because of what Earth itself may do to it on the way past. The asteroid, officially known as 99942 Apophis, is expected to pass about 20,000 miles, or 32,000 kilometers, above Earth’s surface. At roughly 375 meters across on average, it is large enough to command attention and close enough to become visible to the naked eye in parts of Europe, Africa, and Asia, weather permitting. In fact, space agencies say it will be the closest approach of an asteroid this size that scientists have known about in advance. That makes the 2029 event more than a sky show. It turns Earth into …

After the dino-killer asteroid, rapid evolution helped life bounce back quickly

After the dino-killer asteroid, rapid evolution helped life bounce back quickly

Published by skeptic

asteroid: A rocky object in orbit around the sun. Most asteroids orbit in a region that falls between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. Astronomers refer to this region as the asteroid belt. atmosphere: The envelope of gases surrounding Earth, another planet or a moon. average: (in science) A term for the arithmetic mean, which is the sum of a group of numbers that is then divided by the size of the group. biology: The study of living things. The scientists who study them are known as biologists. Chicxulub: The name given an asteroid (or possibly a comet) that crashed into Earth around 66 million years ago. It left a crater more than 180 kilometers (110 miles) wide near the town of Chicxulub in what is now Mexico. The collision released an immense amount of energy — equivalent to billions of atom bombs the size of those dropped on Japan during World War II. This event changed the planet’s climate and is widely believed to have triggered a mass extinction of species — including the …