A well-known asteroid is spectacularly disintegrating before astronomers’ eyes.
What’s the difference between an asteroid and a meteorite?
The meteorite only lives as it is falling.
Building blocks of life can spontaneously form in outer space
Biology — it may literally be out of this world.
Key ingredient for life on Earth may have come from outer space
Phosphates forged in space made their way to Earth on comets and asteroid.
NASA’s brand new TESS telescope is already sending back impressive footage
Even before it actually started doing science, TESS sent back awesome footage of a passing comet.
Comet 67P harbors oxygen molecules as old as the Solar System
I wonder if it smells stale.
Pluto might have been formed by a billion comets
Pluto just got weirder.
Watch: real footage of cosmic particle ‘snow’ on comet 67P
Literally out of this world.
Biomarker molecule discovered “in abundance” around alien star, but still no life
Turns out, planet farts are just like ours, but with chlorine!
Hubble snaps the first binary-asteroid comet we’ve ever seen
Asteroids of a feather flock together. Sometimes into a comet.
Landslide spotted on comet for the first time using Rosetta’s images
Comets are far more geologically active than we thought.
Comet collision caused rapid carbon rise in ancient times
There may have been a bang.
Defunct Philae found on the surface of the comet
As Rosetta’s mission draws close to an end, its high-resolution camera snapped a few photos of the Philae lander.
What comet dust looks like, courtesy of ESA’s Rosetta mission
Researchers have documented a more familiar curiosity: what dust particles on a comet look like.
Remembering Edmond Halley!
November 8 – it is the birthday of the famous English astronomer, geophysicist, mathematician, meteorologist, and physicist who is best known for computing the orbit of the eponymous Halley’s Comet.
Big Surprise: Rosetta finds primordial oxygen on a comet
For the first time, astronomers have detected primordial oxygen gassing out from a comet
NASA plans hitching rides on comets to explore the solar system
It’s ludicrous, but it might just be crazy enough to work. On Monday, during the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics SPACE conference, Masahiro Ono unveiled one of NASA’s most recent concepts: hitching a ride on a comet. In short, once a spacecraft is close enough it would launch a tether with a harpoon on the other side, attach to the comet or asteroid then basically reel in until touch down. Once there the probe stays put, recharging its batteries by harvesting energy all while performing some science experiments. When it’s done, the probe can detach in search of a new piggyback ride.
Rosetta spacecraft finds huge sinkholes on comet’s surface
Rosetta is a robotic space probe built and launched by the European Space Agency. Along with Philae, its lander module, the craft is performing a detailed study of comet 67P/Churyumov–Gerasimenko. The probe usually orbits 67P at a distance of a few hundred kilometers. Footage received from Rosetta over the last year showed a number of dust jets coming from the comet,
Rosetta to continue its mission and land on a comet
The European Space Agency has confirmed that the Rosetta mission will continue until at least September 2016, when it will most likely land on a comet called Comet 67P.
Comets are like deep fried ice cream: cold in the core, crunchy and hard at the surface
Just like a deep fried scoop of ice cream, comets, such as the much heralded Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko which saw a spaceship land on it last year, are thought to be frozen on the inside, wheres the surface is hard and crystallized. The team of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) believe the findings further expand our knowledge on comets. Some suggest that life on Earth first emerged thanks to key organic molecules and compounds brought forth by comets colliding with our planet. The more we know, the better we can assess these sort of ideas and, if found viable, how often such events might happen in the Universe.
Pseudoscience is threatening our society.