Curated headlines and official announcements from NASA, ESA, and major observatories.
Humankind’s next space outpost, the lunar Gateway, will serve as a staging point to reach the surface of the Moon. A new ESA-backed study is considering whether it could also be used as a deployment point for planetary defence missions, to intercept asteroids approaching dangerou...
Video: 00:00:42 Europe’s space ministers gathered at Space19+ in Seville, Spain in November 2019 have approved ESA’s Hera asteroid mission for construction and launch, as part of the Agency's broader planetary defence initiatives that aim to protect European and world citizens. H...
Amateur astronomers around the world are being asked to help the proposed ESA asteroid mission. As well as exploring its final destination – the Didymos binary asteroid system – the Hera spacecraft could potentially fly past one or more bodies on the way. But the mission team req...
Planetary Society endorses Hera The Planetary Society urges ESA's Member States to fund the Hera mission
ESA’s Juventas is a tiny spacecraft assigned a very big goal. Small enough to fit in an aircraft carry-on bag, this nanosatellite would be carried to deep space by ESA’s proposed Hera mission, before diving down to perform the very first radar probe into the depths of an asteroid...
Having spent much of the 21st century developing planetary defence techniques, Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart is a strong supporter of ESA’s proposed Hera mission. In general, when it comes to asteroid deflection, he says, two spacecraft are better than one.
ESA’s proposed Hera asteroid mission for planetary defence will carry the smallest radar instrument ever flown in space – flying on a separate mini-spacecraft, it will approach two asteroids closer than its mothership and probe deep into their cores.
Image: Hera Mars flyby
Image: Hera: Target Deimos
Image: Moon waves goodbye to Hera
Image: Nearing Hera era in space
Image: View from Hera’s Asteroid Deck
In watching an impact's aftermath, scientists have confirmed that such large blasts shake up and cool wide swaths of the lunar surface. The post Once-in-a-Century Impact Made a “Cold Spot” on the Moon appeared first on Sky & Telescope .
Asteroids donât come with a warning label that they might one day hit Earth. While we donât know of any currently on course to do so, we are finding thousands of new ones each year, and thereâs always a potential that one could. We proved a viable technique for dealing with...
Scientists have known for a while that meteorites contain the âbuilding blocksâ of life - complex organic molecules such as amino acids, simple sugars, or even the chemical rungs of DNA. But anyone who has taken an organic chemistry class knows there are plenty of other carbo...
It's easy to think of the Moon as the static constant companion in the night sky. Its face hasnât visibly changed in millennia, and always faces us with the same side. But looks can be deceiving, as our closest companion is constantly bombarded by asteroids and comets that make...