A NASA spacecraft will make a close approach to an asteroid in the main belt on Sunday afternoon, in the second of several asteroid flybys planned for its 12-year mission to study remnants of the early solar system. The Lucy spacecraft will be 596 miles (960 km) from asteroid Donaldjohanson — named after the paleoanthropologist who discovered the “Lucy” hominin fossil — at the closest point of its pass, which will occur at 1:51PM ET, according to NASA. Lucy will use three instruments to capture detailed observations as the object gets closer, rotating with the asteroid over a few hours to get the full picture. It will stop tracking just before the asteroid is nearest, when it’ll have to shield its instruments due to the position of the sun to prevent damaging them.<br /> Th [...]
When NASA crashed a spacecraft into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos in 2022, it altered both Dimorphos' orbit around its parent asteroid, Didymos, and the two objects' orbit around the sun, a [...]
After a tumultuous 2025 that saw it lose around 4,000 employees, NASA finally has an operating budget for 2026, and one that largely preserves its scientific capabilities. On Thursday, the Senate pass [...]
It looks like a March launch is no longer in the cards for Artemis II, NASA's first crewed trip to the moon's vicinity since the final Apollo mission over 50 years ago. While preparations we [...]
Intuitive Machines, the company that pulled off the first-ever commercial moon landing this time last year with its Odysseus spacecraft, is gearing up for another shot at touching the lunar surface. I [...]