Organic molecules delivered from extraterrestrial materials may have played a key role in supplying building blocks for life on Earth. Scientists have found all five canonical nucleobases—purines (adenine and guanine) and pyrimidines (cytosine, thymine and uracil)—in samples returned from the C-type asteroid (162173) Ryugu by JAXA’s Hayabusa2 mission. This likely means that organic molecule building …
We need an enhanced version of SUNSET to establish a space-based, combined discovery and early-warning system for NEOs (Near Earth Objects). If we use multiple satellites traveling ahead of Earth on its orbit we improve detections of sunward objects over satellites in NEO-Surveyor-like orbits by tens of percent and enables seamless, automatic follow-ups. A University …
AstroForge announced it has raised $40 million in a Series A funding round led by Nova Threshold, including investments from 776, Initialized, Caladan, YC, Uncorrelated Ventures, and Jed McCaleb. The funding brought AstroForge’s total capital to $55 million. AstroForge has several upcoming missions, including the development of its third mission, Vestri. Scheduled to launch in …
Moons and asteroids with a global ocean are tending to become relatively common objects in the Solar System. There have been at least nine and now ten with Saturn’s tiny (250 mile across Mimas). Give of the moon’s of Uranus are also likely having deep buried oceans. The presence of these long-lived global oceans is …
NASA has a catalog of many large comets and some of them are nearly as large or larger than the Chicxulub impactor (Dinosaur killer). Comet 109P/Swift-Tuttle takes 133 years to orbit the Sun once. Swift-Tuttle last reached perihelion (closest approach to the Sun) in 1992 and will return again in 2125. Swift-Tuttle is a large …
NASA OSIRIS-REx mission is returning on September 24, 2023 with 250 grams of the Bennu asteroid. The samples were collected in 2020 but it has taken this long for the mission to return. China will attempt to collect the first samples from the far side of the moon next year with its Chang’e 6 mission. …
Philip Lubin has been funded by NASA NIAC to study a practical and effective method of planetary asteroid defense that allows for extremely short mitigation time scales if required. The method involves an array of small hypervelocity kinetic penetrators that pulverize and disassemble an asteroid or small comet. This effectively mitigates the threat using the …
Sutter Ultra is a NASA NIAC phase 2 study to find smaller and slower asteroids up to 350 times faster than all existing surveys combined. They will use sensor configuration with many low cost, high performance Compound Telescopes with Matched Filter (CTMF) technology, arrayed into a fully integrated system. They are making a ground demo …
A Phase 1 NASA NIAC study proposes to create soil from carbon-rich asteroid material, using fungi to physically break down the material and chemically degrade toxic substances. They will use fungi to help turn asteroid material into soil. The basic idea is to inoculate carbonaceous asteroid material with fungi to initiate soil formation. Fungi are …
Space Telescope Design That Will Be 400 Times Better at Finding Asteroids
Dave Tholen and collaborators have detected light from the sun is moving the 300 meter near-Earth asteroid Apophis by 170 meters per year. This acceleration means that Apophis might hit the earth in 2068. Detailed analysis on the next close pass in 2029 will determine if Apophis is a risk. The Sentry Risk Table estimates …