There have been rumors about NASA’s next major project ever since Senator Bill Nelson of Florida mentioned some jazz about wrangling an asteroid. Now a White House official has confirmed the plans to NBC, explaining the goal is to get samples within the decade, and then think about Mars. More »
Thanks to the crazy prevalence of dash-cams in Russia, we got an amazing, multi-viewpoint look at last month’s monster meteor strike just hours after it happened. But there’s more to see than just the flashes in the sky. PBS’s Nova dug in deep to figure out the details of the incident, and the disaster it could have been. The disaster it might be next time if we don’t keep a close watch on the skies. More »
Our planet’s recent close call with one asteroid, and direct visit from another has definitely made it seem important to consider how to avoid the pesky things in the future. One solution is to direct the Sun’s power into pulverizing lasers, but another option just involves covering incoming rocks with spray paint. Simple as that. More »
A 50-foot wide, 10,000-ton meteor that packs triple the force of the nuke dropped on Hiroshima is nothing to scoff at. But in the grand scheme of things, the meteor that hit Chelyabinsk, Russia, last week is a cosmological runt. Space rocks as much as 100 feet across are estimated to strike every hundred years or so and those like the 160-foot diameter Tunguska meteor of 1908 hit maybe once a century. More »
Most of us got a little distracted from uneventful passing of near-Earth asteroid DA14 after that unrelated meteorite decided to slam into Russia. Photographer Colin Legg keep his eyes—and camera—on DA14 though, and put together this time-lapse of its flyby that makes it seem like an insignificant little dot. More »
If we somehow get lucky and don’t kill ourselves first, we’re probably all going to die when a gigantic meteorite slams the crap out of our blue marble. Meteorites hit Earth more than you think! Since 2300 BC, you can see all the meteorites that have pockmarked Earth. More »
Two large flying space rocks have hit or almost hit Earth lately. I think everyone agrees that this needs to not be happening. So two California researchers are developing a plan for destroying asteroids in space. Get after it. More »
In case you felt like the Armageddon simulation we’ve been living in wasn’t realistic enough already, Congress’s Science, Space, and Technology Committee will soon hold a hearing “to examine ways to better identify and address asteroids that pose a potential threat to Earth.” Cue Aerosmith. More »
In case you’ve been been blissfully unaware, in just 24 hours, a 143,000 ton, obscenely expensive asteroid is going to buzz peacefully past Earth, giving us a nice little show and a new appreciation for our lives all at once. Or so they’ll have us believe. But even if NASA’s “scientists” are right about this one, there are still 500 meteorites that do strike our beloved space marble every year. So the question is not whether we should live our lives in fear (we should) but how much fear (a lot), based on our chances of being squished at any second. More »
The idea of mining nearby asteroids for resources we could use on Earth is fast becoming a possibility—and the asteroid set to buzz Earth on on February 15th could be worth up to $195 billion. If we could catch it. More »
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