13 December 2019
NASA selects Nightingale site for asteroid sample collection
... exhaust plumes from the spacecraft’s thrusters could potentially disturb the surface of the site, due to the asteroid’s microgravity environment. In any situation where a follow-on attempt at Nightingale is not possible, the team will try to collect...
26 August 2015
No, an asteroid isn’t about to strike Puerto Rico in September, NASA says
... scientific basis – not one shred of evidence – that an asteroid or any other celestial object will impact Earth.” Meteor impacts, ...are claiming that the government knows about the approaching asteroid, while NASA is stressing that no “known object...
July 2018
The rise of interplanetary CubeSats
... integration costs. NEAScout, led by NASA Marshall and JPL, is a 6U CubeSat mission that will head to a near-Earth asteroid using cold-gas propulsion to perform imaging and spectroscopy. Three CubeSat missions onboard EM-1 were selected as finalists...
January 2020
Small body missions unveil interplanetary secrets
... how and when they may have been acquired by the Earth. Artist’s illustration of first touchdown at asteroid Ryugu. The Hayabusa 2 asteroid sample return mission will return samples of carbonaceous chondrites, allowing us to study how these materials...
February 2016
Searching for water in the Solar System
...of volatile-rich planetesimals migrated from the outer Solar System (ie, beyond Jupiter). Observations of increasing abundance of C-type asteroids across the main belt inferred from telescopic observations have led to the long-time leading assumption...
July 2019
Who owns outer space?
... in an attempt to answer the question of who owns the potential wealth of resources. Plans to mine the Moon and asteroids are in place, confronting scholars, politicians and space professionals with challenging legal, economic, scientific and ethical...
