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Comet & Asteroid News 35 minutes ago
Japan's Hayabusa2 Achieves First-Ever Laser Ranging Experiment with an Asteroid

On Sunday July 5th, 2026, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) achieved the first-ever successful laser ranging experiment while making a fly...

Source: Universe Today

Comet & Asteroid News 2 hours ago
Icy Exocomets Around a Distant Star Help Explain Earth's Water

Did icy comets deliver water to the young Earth? That idea won't go away. Now, astronomers at Lund University in Sweden have found evidence of ex...

Source: Universe Today

Comet & Asteroid News 10 hours ago
A New Mission Could Rendezvous With Halley's Comet In 2061

Halley’s comet captures the imagination in a way that few other astronomical objects do. When it last made its approach toward the Sun (admittedly whe...

Source: Universe Today

This NASA-funded 'Slingshot' spacecraft idea could map minerals on planets and moons across our solar system
Comet & Asteroid News 3 days ago
This NASA-funded 'Slingshot' spacecraft idea could map minerals on planets and moons across our solar system

NASA funded an early-stage concept aiming to show new techniques for mapping minerals on the moon, asteroids or Martian moons.

Source: Space.com

How did the infant sun form? Scientists get surprising new insights from 4.6-billion-year-old space dust
Comet & Asteroid News 4 days ago
How did the infant sun form? Scientists get surprising new insights from 4.6-billion-year-old space dust

New research suggests that dust from meteorites contains a "fossil record" dating back 4.6 billion years to the formation of the sun, reveal...

Source: Space.com

Scientists watch a comet being born 3 billion miles away
Comet & Asteroid News 4 days ago
Scientists watch a comet being born 3 billion miles away

A rare look at a centaur transforming into a comet with coma is providing a missing link in the evolution of small, icy solar system bodies.

Source: Space.com

Comet & Asteroid News 5 days ago
Astronomers See How a Centaur Can Become a Comet

In 1992, Centaur 450P/LONEOS had a close encounter with Saturn, shifting its orbit closer to the Sun. Now astronomers can observe how a small icy body...

Source: Universe Today

Comet McNaught put on a surprise show this summer: Here's how to spot it before it fades
Comet & Asteroid News 5 days ago
Comet McNaught put on a surprise show this summer: Here's how to spot it before it fades

Comet McNaught brightened dramatically during two outbursts around perihelion as it made a close approach to the sun.

Source: Space.com

A satellite sent up in 1995 to watch the sun has found more comets than anything else in history, and most of the 5,000 in its tally were spotted by volunteer citizen scientists, many with no formal scientific training, clicking through the free pictures
Comet & Asteroid News 6 days ago
A satellite sent up in 1995 to watch the sun has found more comets than anything else in history, and most of the 5,000 in its tally were spotted by volunteer citizen scientists, many with no formal scientific training, clicking through the free pictures

A sun-watching satellite designed nearly 30 years ago has become history's greatest comet hunter, with amateur astronomers crowdsourcing its disc...

Source: Space Daily

On this day in space! Sept. 2, 2016: Rosetta spacecraft finds long-lost Philae lander on Comet 67P after 2-year search
Comet & Asteroid News 6 days ago
On this day in space! Sept. 2, 2016: Rosetta spacecraft finds long-lost Philae lander on Comet 67P after 2-year search

On Sept. 2, 2016, the European Space Agency finally located Philae, its long-lost comet lander on the surface of the Comet 67P. Here's why it mat...

Source: Space.com

Comet & Asteroid News 6 days ago
NASA Rocket Takes First Multi-Point Look Inside Radio-Disrupting Clouds

High above Earth, thin veils of metallic haze drift through the edge of space. Known as sporadic E layers, these high-altitude “clouds” form from the ...

Source: NASA

Comet & Asteroid News 1 week ago
7-stage journey reveals how falling space rocks survive air

At least once in our lives, we’ve all seen a bright streak of light briefly blaze across the sky and have quickly referred to it as an asteroid, meteo...

Source: Universe Today

On January 27, 2025, asteroid 2024 YR4 crossed the 1% impact-probability threshold; two days later, the International Asteroid Warning Network sent its first-ever formal asteroid warning to the UN’s space office—activating a planetary-defence protocol cre
Comet & Asteroid News 1 week ago
On January 27, 2025, asteroid 2024 YR4 crossed the 1% impact-probability threshold; two days later, the International Asteroid Warning Network sent its first-ever formal asteroid warning to the UN’s space office—activating a planetary-defence protocol cre

Asteroid 2024 YR4 became the first object to trigger IAWN's formal UN notification protocol, testing a warning system whose successful end point ...

Source: Space Daily

On this day in space! Aug. 28, 1993: Galileo spacecraft flies by asteroid Ida on the way to Jupiter only to find a tiny moon!
Comet & Asteroid News 1 week ago
On this day in space! Aug. 28, 1993: Galileo spacecraft flies by asteroid Ida on the way to Jupiter only to find a tiny moon!

On Aug. 28, 1993, NASA's Galileo spacecraft flew by the asteroid Ida on its way to Jupiter. Here's why it mattered.

Source: Space.com

China’s Tianwen‑2 travelled roughly one billion kilometres over 400 days before returning the first close-up image of Kamoʻoalewa in July 2026—a tiny, fast-spinning asteroid perhaps only 20 metres wide whose unusual spectrum once made it look like a fragm
Comet & Asteroid News 1 week ago
China’s Tianwen‑2 travelled roughly one billion kilometres over 400 days before returning the first close-up image of Kamoʻoalewa in July 2026—a tiny, fast-spinning asteroid perhaps only 20 metres wide whose unusual spectrum once made it look like a fragm

Tianwen-2 has reached a fast-spinning asteroid that Webb estimates at only 18 plus or minus 2 metres wide, just as new spectra and models reopen its p...

Source: Space Daily

'Romance on Moon': In 2002, a NASA intern stole $21 million lunar rocks and put them under the sheets to spend the night with girlfriend
Comet & Asteroid News 1 week ago
'Romance on Moon': In 2002, a NASA intern stole $21 million lunar rocks and put them under the sheets to spend the night with girlfriend

In 2002, NASA intern Thad Roberts and accomplices stole about 17 pounds of lunar samples and a meteorite from the Johnson Space Center, with the mater...

Source: The Times of India

Comet & Asteroid News 2 weeks ago
Comet 220P McNaught Puts On An Encore Performance

It has been a busy month for astronomy. In the midst of an eclipse season bookended by the total solar eclipse on August 12th and the deep partial lun...

Source: Universe Today

Comet & Asteroid News 2 weeks ago
APOD: 2026 August 24 – Comet 220P in Outburst

APOD Science APOD APOD: 2026 August 24 – Comet… Today’s APOD Archive Submissions Index Search Calendar RSS Education About Discuss   APOD Astronomy Pi...

Source: NASA

Comet & Asteroid News 2 weeks ago
Dry Martian Meteorite Reveals Early Water in Mars's Crust

Billions of years ago, Mars was hypothesized to have been a habitable world with flowing liquid water and the potential for life. But directly studyin...

Source: Universe Today

Comet & Asteroid News 2 weeks ago
Mars's Funky Moon Deimos was Shaped by an Impact

Mars' moon Deimos has a large crater on its southern pole. It's also covered by a layer of regolith so deep it buries many other, smaller cr...

Source: Universe Today