Asteroid Day is the official United Nations’ day of global awareness and education about asteroids. The World will celebrate the fifth anniversary on June 30, 2019. There will be thousands of independent events organized by citizens around the world on all five continents. Asteroid Day global programs, including Asteroid Day LIVE, are programs of the …
Newly released NASA images contain important scientific information about the shape of Ultima Thule double asteroid. Above – Scientists’ understanding of Ultima Thule has changed as they review additional data. The “old view” in this illustration is based on images taken within a day of New Horizons’ closest approach to the Kuiper Belt object on …
Exploration of small bodies, namely comets and asteroids remain a challenging endeavor due to their low gravity. The risk is so high that missions such as Hayabusa II and OSIRIS-REx will be performing touch and go missions to obtain samples. The next logical step is to perform longer-term mobility on the surface of these asteroid. …
NASA OSIRIS-REx Will Sample Return from an Asteroid On the afternoon of December 31, NASA OSIRIS-REx entered orbit around asteroid Bennu. About 70 million miles away from Earth, Bennu broke the record for becoming the smallest object in space to have a human-made spacecraft in its orbit. The NASA OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, …
In 2014 the New Horizons team found an object that is now called Ultima Thule. It is located in the Kuiper belt in the outermost regions of the Solar System, beyond the orbit of Neptune. On January 1, 2019, New Horizons will flyby Ultima Thule at a distance of 3500 km (2200 miles). It will …
Arecibo Observatory has observed near-Earth asteroid (NEA) 2003 SD220, which will have its closest approach to Earth on December 24. Although designated as “potentially hazardous,” this asteroid will be 28 times further away than our Moon and therefore poses no present danger to Earth. There is neither chance of impact nor any other effects due …
Blockchain venture production studio ConsenSys has bought space asteroid mining company. Planetary Resources. The acquisition was by an asset-purchase transaction. Planetary Resources’ President and CEO Chris Lewicki and General Counsel Brian Israel have joined ConsenSys in connection with the acquisition. Brian Israel served in the U.S. State Department’s Office of the Legal Adviser, where he …
The mass of Kuiper belt has been estimated as 2% of the mass of the Earth. This is based upon 800,000 positional observations of planets and spacecraft. The total mass of the Kuiper belt is two orders of magnitude larger than the mass of the Main asteroid belt. It is almost three orders of magnitude …
The Carnival of Space 581 is up at Photon Fishing. Universe Today – Musk Gives an Update on When a Mars Colony Could be Built On Monday, Sept. 17th), Elon Musk revealed new information about the Big Falcon Rocket (BFR) and who its first passenger would be when it conducts its first lunar mission (which …
Japan deployed the MINERVA-II1 rovers on September 21 to explore the surface of asteroid Ryugu. Brian WangBrian Wang is a Futurist Thought Leader and a popular Science blogger with 1 million readers per month. His blog Nextbigfuture.com is ranked #1 Science News Blog. It covers many disruptive technology and trends including Space, Robotics, Artificial Intelligence, …
Swarm Flyby Gravimetry is a concept to determine the mass of asteroid or comets during flyby using a collection of small, disposable tracking targets called probes. The probes are deployed from a spacecraft and tracked as they pass near to the small body. By measuring the deflection in each probe’s motion, we can achieve a …