All articles tagged with #asteroids
Researchers reframed visiting multiple moving asteroids as the Asteroid Routing Problem and used Decision Diagrams to optimize inter-asteroid paths, solving Lambert’s problem more efficiently and delivering about 20% improvements in travel time and fuel; the method could aid missions like Lucy and Dawn and even terrestrial routing.
Asteroid 2026 JH2, roughly 14–30 meters across, will pass within about 57,000 miles (92,000 km) of Earth today—closer than a quarter of the Moon’s distance. It poses no threat, but scientists will use the Virtual Telescope Project 2.0 livestream to study its orbit and physical properties as it whizzes by, with closest approach around 5:58 p.m. ET. The rock completes an orbit around the Sun every 3.76 years; the next close pass won’t occur until 2090.
A roughly 20-meter asteroid named 2026 JH2 will pass about 57,000 miles from Earth on May 18, closer than the Moon. It’s an Apollo-type near-Earth object and is not considered a threat; observers can view it with a telescope or via a Virtual Telescope live broadcast.
The Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile launches a decade-long all-sky survey that will produce the largest time-lapse of the night sky, generating millions of alerts each night as it uncovers giant asteroids (including ultra-fast rotators), tracks countless supernovas to help probe dark energy and the Hubble tension, and hunts for interstellar visitors, all while creating a vast data flood that scientists will need to manage and interpret.
A Live Science report describes a Brazilian cosmologist's idea that early asteroid trajectory data—once used for impact risk assessment—could guide much faster Earth-to-Mars transfers. In simulations tied to Mars oppositions in 2031, a round trip could be as short as about 153 days (roughly 33 days to Mars, 30 days on the surface, and 90 days back), or a longer 226-day option, both far shorter than today’s timelines. Feasibility depends on mission specifics, propulsion, and spacecraft design, but the study notes that next‑gen rockets such as SpaceX’s Starship or Blue Origin’s New Glenn could potentially enable such fast trajectories.
The Vatican Observatory announced four asteroids named after important figures in its history, including Pope Leo XIII who re-founded the institute in 1891. The names were based on discoveries with the Vatican Advanced Technology Telescope and approved by the IAU's Working Group for Small Body Nomenclature (WGSBN).
A Swiss EPFL study models an in-space mining-and-delivery network that would use metals from M-type asteroids to build and maintain a Mars colony, and even manufacture rocket propellant from carbonaceous asteroids in space to cut the need for return-fuel from Earth; success hinges on selecting targets with the lowest energy costs to reach and return, showing a viable path for a space-based supply chain.
In an early data release from the Vera C. Rubin Observatory, scientists identified 11,097 new asteroids (along with 33 near-Earth objects and about 380 trans-Neptunian objects), with results confirmed by the MPC. The findings demonstrate Rubin's unprecedented survey power and foreshadow a dramatic expansion of the Solar System inventory during the ten-year LSST era, with data openly available for ongoing research.
Earth is experiencing an unusual surge of large daytime fireballs in early 2026, with 2,046 fireball events in Q1 and several bright, high‑energy events visible from multiple continents, including a 3,229‑report Western Europe daytime bolide and a 7‑ton asteroid over Ohio/Pennsylvania. Trajectories cluster around the Anthelion direction and high‑declination radiants, suggesting debris from multiple inner‑solar‑system sources rather than a single shower or alien activity. Recovered meteorites are eucrites/diogenites (achondrites) from differentiated asteroids, implying a possible recent breakup of a large parent body. Scientists emphasize gaps in current monitoring and call for expanded automated all‑sky cameras and cross‑referencing with radar and infrasound to improve near‑Earth defense.
A car-sized asteroid, roughly 4–8 meters wide and known as 2026FM3, passed about 147,000 miles from Earth (closer than the Moon) on March 24–25. NASA tracked the object after its discovery just days earlier and confirmed it posed no threat. Such small near-Earth objects frequently fly by, and studying these close approaches helps scientists refine detection and planetary defense for larger objects in the future.
New high-sensitivity analyses of asteroid samples confirm all five nucleobases (A, C, G, T, U) in Ryugu, adding to prior Bennu detections and resolving earlier Ryugu results. The finding reinforces the idea that space-based chemistry can produce nucleotides and informs potential prebiotic pathways, though it does not imply life, and contamination concerns are addressed. The study also notes a correlation between purine/pyrimidine levels and ammonia across asteroids, offering clues about the reactions that could occur in space and feed theories on how Earth's life's building blocks arrived.
Blue Origin, in collaboration with NASA's JPL and Caltech, introduced the NEO Hunter mission concept to defend Earth from hazardous near-Earth objects, leveraging the Blue Ring platform. The plan envisions a two-phase approach: first deploying cubesats to study and characterize the target asteroid to guide deflection, including an ion-beam method; if needed, a second phase would perform a robust direct kinetic disruption (inspired by NASA’s DART) with a Slamcam to document the impact. The mission is planned to launch its first phase in spring 2026.
NASA's DART spacecraft slammed into the Didymos system’s moon Dimorphos in 2022, creating ejecta that boosted momentum and slowed the system’s orbit by about two inches per hour, shortening its solar orbit by roughly 0.15 seconds over 770 days. The result shows we can alter an asteroid’s path, but a much larger or multiple impacts would likely be needed to deflect a real threat; the event provides essential data for improving planetary defense as near-Earth objects remain a vulnerability.
MIT researchers unveil a JWST-based method to detect and track decameter-scale asteroids that are too faint for ground-based telescopes, enabling earlier threat assessment to protect satellites and space infrastructure; the approach, demonstrated with asteroid 2024 YR4, is part of a broader planetary-defense effort that leverages collaborations with observatories like Vera Rubin and MIT facilities to accelerate detection-to-mitigation.
Astronomers using the James Webb Space Telescope refined 2024 YR4's orbit, ruling out an Earth impact and showing the asteroid will pass the Moon at about 14,229 miles, a result that reduces risk to Earth and future lunar missions while demonstrating JWST's ability to track faint near-Earth objects.