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, according to new research. NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) said in a press release that this "marks the first time a human-made object has measurably altered the path of a celestial body around the Sun." It's a promising result as scientists work to find a feasible method of defending Earth from hazardous space objects.The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission was designed to demonstrate one possible way of deflecting such an object, targeting the non-threatening moonlet Dimorphos, which is about 560 feet wide. NASA quickly declared it a success after its in [...]
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 earl [...]
Today's the day: A solar eclipse will darken the skies in the northeastern US and Canada in the early hours of Saturday. Unlike the “Great American Eclipse” of 2024, however, this will not be [...]
On Saturday, March 29, a solar eclipse will darken the skies. Unlike the “Great American Eclipse” of 2024, though, this will not be a total eclipse; instead, a partial eclipse will be visible in t [...]
At the start of the month, Elon Musk announced that two of his companies — SpaceX and xAI — were merging, and would jointly launch a constellation of 1 million satellites to operate as orbital d [...]