asteroid

Asteroids are minor planets (small Solar System bodies and dwarf planets) that are not comets, especially those of the inner Solar System. They have also been called planetoids, especially the larger ones. These terms have historically been applied to any astronomical object orbiting the Sun that did not show the disk of a planet and was not observed to have the characteristics of an active comet, but as small objects in the outer Solar System were discovered, their volatile-based surfaces were found to more closely resemble comets, and so were often distinguished from traditional asteroids.[1] Thus the term asteroid has come increasingly to refer specifically to the small bodies of the inner Solar System out to the orbit of Jupiter. They are grouped with the outer bodies—centaurs, Neptune trojans, and trans-Neptunian objects—as minor planets, which is the term preferred in astronomical circles.[2] In this article the term "asteroid" refers to the minor planets of the inner Solar System.

For more information about asteroid check the Wikipedia article here

ZME Science posts about asteroid

Dinosaur wipeout caused by comet, not asteroid – new study finds

Mon, Mar 25, 2013

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The current leading theory that explains the mass extinction of the dinosaurs – once the dominant group of animals on Earth for millions of years – states that an asteroid impact some 65 million years ago brought their demise, wiping them out along with 70% of all life on the planet. A new study, however, [...]

Early asteroids in our solar system may have been giant mudballs, not rocks

Wed, Mar 20, 2013

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There are millions of asteroids in our solar system. Be them the size of France or a small bus, these space rocks can be found through out the solar system, and have recently become the subject of entrepreneurial discussions, since even a single medium-sized asteroid is thought to carry trillions of dollars worth of rare [...]

ESA announces asteroid set for spaceship crash

Wed, Feb 27, 2013

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The European Space Agency just announced the asteroid they chose for an upcoming controlled crash landing of one of their spacecraft. The objective? Well, more or less, they just want to see what happens. The Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission will intercept the asteroid, called Didymos, in 2022, when the asteroid gets within [...]

NASA radar observation shows asteroid 2012 DA14 flyby [VIDEO]

Thu, Feb 21, 2013

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I realize we’re maybe bugging some of you with these constant asteroid/meteor pieces here on ZME Science, but for what’s it worth we found this recently released NASA video comprised of radar images during 2012 DA14′s recent flyby very interesting. The movie, which combines 73 radar-images  captured over the course of eight hours on the [...]

Videos of asteroid 2012 DA14 making its flyby past Earth

Mon, Feb 18, 2013

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The weekend that has just passed was a tight one for asteroid news. At the center was of course the much raved about “2012 DA14″ - the closest asteroid of this significant size to flyby Earth since recorded history – which actually speared passed Earth at an altitude of 27,700km, a few thousand kilometers below  the [...]

Asteroid 2012 DA14 close flyby today, meanwhile unrelated meteorite blazes over Russia

Fri, Feb 15, 2013

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Tonight a historical event is about to occur after an asteroid half the size of a football field, called “2012 DA14″, is set to make the closest flyby to Earth any asteroid of its kind has ever made, since we know of. NASA along with all the other space programs in the world positively dismiss [...]

Asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs may have been a set of binary asteroids

Tue, Feb 5, 2013

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The (still debated) asteroid that slammed into the Earth 65 million years ago and played a crucial role in wiping dinosaurs out, may have actually been a binary system- 2 asteroids engaged in an orbit around each other. Double trouble The surprising claim comes from analyzing the proportion of asteroid craters on Earth that were [...]

Asteroid ’2012 DA14′ set for closest flyby in modern history

Mon, Feb 4, 2013

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That’s what NASA officials have been telling the press recently, at least. If you haven’t heard yet, a football field-sized asteroid called 2012 DA14 is expected to come buzzing past Earth later this month, making it, in NASA’s own words, a ‘record-setter’ in terms of asteroid proximity. The asteroid will pass so closely by Earth [...]

Asteroid to make close fly-by on Feb 15, no reason to worry

Wed, Jan 30, 2013

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Close, but not too close – an asteroid like that can crash on our planet every 1200 years, but there’s no reason to worry, even though it will make a flyby on February 15, passing at a distance of only 26.780 km. For comparison, the distance to the Moon varies from around 356,400 km to [...]

Spacecraft fleet planned for asteroid exploration

Tue, Jan 22, 2013

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Deep Space Industries (DSI), a private space ventures company, has recently announced plans of launching a fleet of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft set to touch base with near-Earth space rocks. The small sized, light weight spacecraft would analyze and sample asteroids for those rich enough in resources like fuel, water and rare minerals. The first launch is scheduled [...]

Asteroid Vesta is a lot like Earth, study shows

Mon, Jan 21, 2013

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The cold, lifeless Vesta asteroid might be a lot more like our planet than astronomers believed – having a very active life in the early stages of the solar system evolution, a study of a Saharan meteorite shows. The planet that wasn’t Vesta might host a magmatic layer under its rocky exterior, allowing minerals to [...]

A Better Glipse of “Doomsday-asteroid” Apophis as seen by Herschel

Thu, Jan 10, 2013

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Due to a “closer” approach of asteroid Apophis this month of just 40 Earth-Moon distances, astronomers were able to get a better glimpse of the much talked about asteroid in order to better understand it. Thomas Müller of the Max Planck Institute for Extraterrestrial Physics in Garching, Germany, who is leading the analysis of the [...]

NASA considers capturing and pulling an asteroid into lunar orbit

Tue, Jan 8, 2013

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An ambitious project is currently being considered by NASA consisting of capturing and dragging a small-scale asteroid into the moon’s orbit. This would allow for a valuable footing where asteroid research might become a lot more accessible, one of NASA’s main objectives for the upcoming decades. The proposition has been made by the Keck Institute for [...]

Doomsday part 6: asteroid strike

Thu, Dec 20, 2012

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You’ve seen it on the news, so you know it’s true. Your 8 o’clock special news report showcases in a Mayan Apocalypse special a computer simulation of a massive meteor or asteroid impacting Earth causing world doom. There’s no mention anywhere in any Mayan records or myths that the end of the Mayan calendar is [...]

Radar images of an asteroid during its closest flyby

Wed, Nov 7, 2012

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Between Oct. 28 and Oct. 30, NASA‘s Deep Space Network antenna in California was directed on “2007 PA8“, a one mile wide asteroid. In these few days the asteroid came the closest it will ever get to Earth in 200 years, which was still a few million miles away. Nevertheless, NASA released composite images of [...]

Vesta covered in carbon by gentle asteroids

Wed, Oct 31, 2012

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Vesta is “peppered” with carbon materials which researchers believe were left behind by asteroids gently striking its surface. Vesta is an asteroid itself – but one so large that some astronauts were actually thinking about declaring it a planet, or at least a protoplanet. It is the second largest asteroid in our solar system, second [...]

Forget about nukes, dangerous asteroids could be deflected with paintball pellets

Mon, Oct 29, 2012

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No, this isn’t one of those misleading headlines. A MIT graduate student has recently proposed that bombarding an asteroid’s surface with paintballs could throw it off course from a possible collision orbit with our planet, by harnessing solar pressure. The paintball cloud would hit the targeted asteroid and cover it in paint – white paint to [...]

Reducing global warming using an asteroid cloud dust

Mon, Oct 1, 2012

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According to the UN Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change, climate change models suggest that average global temperatures will likely rise by 2 to 11.5 degrees F (1.1 to 6.4 degrees C) by the end of this century. The consequences of an increase of just a few degrees are dire. Apparently, taking clear and effective steps [...]

NASA’s Dawn spaceship departs Vesta asteroid, heads for Ceres

Thu, Sep 6, 2012

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It’s one asteroid down and one to go, for NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. After spending a year studying the Vesta asteroid and retrieving valuable information to Earth, Dawn is now ready to head for its next destination: Ceres. A different world Scientists expect Ceres to be very different from Vesta. Ceres is considered to be the [...]

NASA: students will name asteroid which might head for Earth in a century

Wed, Sep 5, 2012

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While NASA gives all sort of fun names to missions, projects, telescopes – asteroids is not their slickest field. Names like (101955) 1999 RQ36 don’t exactly roll off the tip of your tongue. This is why the people at NASA decided to hold a contest for students, which will decide how an asteroid will be [...]

First private space telescope is set to safeguard humanity from asteroid threats

Fri, Jun 29, 2012

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There are millions of asteroids currently residing in our Solar System, of which some 500 thousand orbit in the inner solar system, where our planet also lies. Space agencies in the world have only mapped so far a mere 1% of these. Clearly, an asteroid impact with Earth poses a serious and realistic threat to [...]

No more worries – computer simulation shows nuclear bomb can save Earth from an asteroid

Wed, Mar 14, 2012

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The plot of the Hollywood blockbuster flick Armageddon is fairly simple – a giant asteroid is hurling towards Earth, threatening to obliterate all life on the planet as we know it. A team of brave oil-drillers is sent on the space rock to diffuse the threat by detonating a nuclear warhead placed inside the asteroid itself. Apparently, a group [...]

Comet might have catastrophically collided with Earth 13,000 years ago

Wed, Mar 7, 2012

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A recently published study suggests that the Earth might have been visited by a giant space rock 13,000 years ago, an event which might have sparked an unusual cold period in the planet’s climate history. The Younger Dryas, also known as the Big Freeze, was a brief period of cold climatic conditions and drought which occurred [...]

A large asteroid will pass Earth, closer than Moon

Mon, Nov 7, 2011

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According to NASA, a large asteroid called 2005 YU55 is expected to pass at some 201,700 miles of Earth on Tuesday – closer than the Moon, and definitely closer than the Elenin comet. Now, before people start going all 2012 armageddon on me, let it be said that asteroids often pass at this distance from [...]

Half of supermassive black holes are surrounded by ‘dust clouds’

Mon, Oct 31, 2011

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Black holes are perhaps the most fascinating and staggering objects in the known Universe, and we are just now beginning to uncover their secrets. Dr. Sergei Nayakshin of the University of Leicester and his team found that doughnut-shaped dust shrouds that cover about half of supermassive black holes may very well be the result of [...]

Shorties: Asteroid has mountain three times bigger than Everest

Tue, Oct 11, 2011

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A giant mountain, three times taller than Earth’s highest peak marks the southern polar regions of Vesta, a relatively well studied asteroid spotted by NASA’s Dawn Science Probe. The mountain is depicted in the picture below. Dawn orbited around Vesta, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter in July, and since [...]

Gamma-ray bursts might cause mass extinction on Earth

Mon, Oct 10, 2011

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Most of us tend to believe the Earth is a safe heaven, with little regard to outerwordly consequences. The truth is our planet, although without a doubt a true gem within our galaxy, is susceptible to a slew of events triggered from within or well beyond our solar system. A lot of them are very [...]

NASA maps 93% of all near-Earth asteroids. In other news, Dinosaurs wish they had science.

Fri, Sep 30, 2011

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Armageddon can wait, NASA‘s in charge for a little while longer. The space agency recently released to the general public a report which censuses more than 93% of the total number of asteroids in the vicinity of Earth’s orbit, meaning they’re all tagged and tracked – risk of undetected collision to a minimum. That’s not all either, [...]

New dinosaur extinction theory: an ocean of lava

Thu, Jul 28, 2011

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It wasn’t just a devastating asteroid that killed off all the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Scientists from Boston University now claim that a massive eruption of lava fronts around the world, coinciding with the asteroid impact, sealed their fate forever. The controversial theory is betting on two unusually hot blobs of mantle 1,700 miles [...]

NASA’s DAWN spacecraft successfully enters Vesta’s orbit. Snaps detailed photo

Tue, Jul 19, 2011

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This weekend, NASA‘s DAWN spacecraft finally put a lot of tension and nerves to rest after it successfully entered Vesta’s orbit, the second largest object in the Asteroid Belt. The whole event took place at 1 a.m. EDT Saturday (0500 GMT), marking the first time a man made spacecraft entered the orbit of an object [...]

NASA spacecraft set to visit giant asteroid this weekend

Fri, Jul 15, 2011

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After a four year journey, NASA’s Dawn spacecraft will finally reach the orbit of Vesta, the second largest asteroid in our solar system. The object, located 117 million miles from Earth and spanning across a circumference of 329 miles, will be visited in premiere by Dawn this weekend when the latter will hover over on [...]

Bus-sized Asteroid barely misses Earth

Mon, Jun 27, 2011

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This Monday (June 27), an asteroid the size of a bus just buzzed our planet after a flyby which brought it closer to Earth than most satellites. Dubbed asteroid 2011 MD, it was first spotted by MIT’s Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) program just last week on June 22, but there never was any [...]

NASA to collect samples from near-Earth asteroid

Thu, May 26, 2011

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NASA announced that it will launch an unmaned ship to a nearby asteroid, in an attempt to figure out more about both the asteroid itself, and how life started on our planet. The mission, named Origins-Spectral Interpretation-Resource Identification-Security-Regolith Explorer – or, as always, with an easier more manageable name, Osiris-Rex was chosen to take place [...]

Stalker asteroid could be Earth’s close relative

Tue, May 10, 2011

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Astronomers from the the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland declared that a recently discovered asteroid has been following our planet in the past 250.000 years, and it may be in fact closely related to Earth. Two months after it was discovered with the WISE survey satellite, the asteroid caught the attention of two scientists: Apostolos [...]

Huge asteroid to pass near Earth in November

Fri, Apr 8, 2011

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Researchers and astronomy amateurs alike should leave a few days open in their November calendar and prepare for something awesome; one of the major and potentially perilous (in time) asteroids will be making a flyby this year. The asteroid, 2005 YU55 is a round small world with a diameter of 400 meters. The asteroid will [...]

NASA rejects Russian report: Apophis asteroid extremely unlikely to hit earth

Tue, Feb 8, 2011

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In 2004, NASA researchers identified the Apophis asteroid and after some quick calculations they states there is a chance the asteroid will hit our homey planet in 2029. A few observations and some other calculations later, they explained that that chance is extremely small for 2029, as well as other years to come. However, reports [...]

Japanese probe returns home with asteroid dust

Tue, Nov 16, 2010

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JAXA, the Japanese space agency is becoming more and more active these days, as Japanese researchers are getting involved in more and more ambitious projects. Recently, a probe they sent out returned home with grains of dust gathered from an asteroid, a feat without precedent in history. The finding could provide valuable insight into the [...]

How to deflect an asteroid with today’s technology

Fri, Oct 15, 2010

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An asteroid threat to Earth seems like something we are going to have to face, sooner or later – and people are starting to aknowledge this fact; take Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart for example. He is among a group of people that are championing the need to be prepared in case of such an [...]

The 8 coolest ways the Earth might be destroyed

Fri, Oct 9, 2009

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We’ve all seen at least one movie in which our planet is destroyed, but most of them were quite repetitive and kind of uninteresting. Our planet deserves so much more! Black holes Well, it seems the more we understand things about black holes, the more we find out things we don’t know, and the more [...]

Life had a big rebound following marine mass extinction event

Tue, Oct 6, 2009

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In 1980, Luis Alvarez and his team shocked the whole world when they announced their theory that an asteroid impact that took place 65 millions years ago was responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs and much of that time’s living organisms. Despite the fact that they delivered substantial evidence, there are still some minor [...]

10 of the most impressive asteroid impact sites

Sat, Nov 1, 2008

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Many people refer to these structures as “Meteorite Craters”, but that’s at least partially incorrect. Meteor is the term used to describe an object that goes through our planet’s atmosphere, and meteorite is used after the object hit the planet. These are just some of the most amazing ones, and easy to see for an [...]

First firm prediction of an incoming space rock confirmed

Thu, Oct 9, 2008

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A very small asteroid exploded over the continent of Africa this week, confirming the prediction of astronomers. Despite the fact that nobody has seen and photographed the asteroid due to the fact that it entered in a very remote area, it was detected with an infrasound array in Kenya; it exploded without striking the Earth. [...]

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