asteroids

NASA plans asteroid mission. First stop: Bennu

NASA's plan to go poking around on an asteroid, with the ultimate goal of snagging one of the space rocks and towing it closer to Earth, is moving forward, and a specific asteroid has been chosen to visit and sample in the next few years.

NASA has announced that the Origins-Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security Regolith Explorer (Osiris-Rex) passed a key confirmation review Wednesday, approving the spacecraft to move into development phase. Translation: we're building a new spaceship, y'all!… Read more

Enormous asteroid to zip by Earth

A giant asteroid will pass by Earth on May 31, according to NASA, but hold off before you start browsing survival gear on Amazon.

The 1.7-mile long asteroid, labeled 1998 QE2, will come within 3.6 million miles of Earth, or about 15 times the distance between our planet and the moon. It's a golden opportunity for astronomers, who plan to extensively image the temporary visitor.… Read more

NASA's asteroid lasso mission said to halt Apocalypse scenario

Shortly after a large meteor hit Russia in February, injuring about 1,000 people, President Obama's administration announced that the U.S. would work on asteroid tracking technology to avoid potentially more severe Earth collisions. On Monday, top NASA administrator Charles Bolden reiterated this pledge.

Bolden spoke at the Human to Mars Summit in Washington, D.C. on Monday and said that a robotic spacecraft mission currently being planned will "prepare efforts to prevent an asteroid from colliding with devastating force into our planet,"according to U.S. News & World Report.

The government's plan is … Read more

NASA to 'lasso' an asteroid

There could be a sequel in the works to that absurd scene from 1998's "Armageddon" in which Ben Affleck and friends land on a threatening near-Earth asteroid. But this time around it's a real-world NASA mission to kidnap, rather than obliterate, a space rock.

Part of the idea is to conduct research to help prevent just such an "Armageddon" scenario from ever cropping up in real life, according to a mission overview obtained by CBS News last week. The space agency is hoping to lasso an asteroid, space cowboy style, and tow it close enough to Earth so that it can be visited by astronauts. The astronauts then will conduct research that could one day assist in a mission to Mars or save Earth from a catastrophic collision, should Mr. Affleck be unavailable. … Read more

Was that a meteor over New York (and zipping across Twitter)?

Apparently the bright object that people reported seeing shooting over the East Coast of the United States last night -- and that left a glittery trail across Twitter -- may well have been a meteor.

Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environmental Office told the Associated Press that, "going on visual reports," the flash was "a single meteor event."

"The thing is probably a yard across. We basically have (had) a boulder enter the atmosphere over the northeast," he added.

The object lit up Twitter last night at about 8 p.m. East Coast … Read more

Parrot's Asteroid app platform lands in Volvo dashboards

Parrot's bringing the lessons learned when developing its Asteroid series of car stereos to the next generation of Volvo cars with the Android-based Sensus Connected Touch platform.

Like the Parrot Asteroid Smart that I recently reviewed, the Sensus Connected Touch is a touch-screen interface that is based on a heavily modified version of Android (likely version 2.3) and will connect to the Internet via a Bluetooth-paired smartphone, Wi-Fi tethered access point, or USB-connected 3G/4G dongle. Also like the Asteroid Smart, Sensus will give its users access to a variety of vehicle specific apps available in Parrot's Asteroid Market, … Read more

Canada orbits suitcase-size camera to hunt asteroids

Aside from giant laser beams, can eyes in the sky help save us from asteroid hits?

Canada thinks so, and it has launched a space telescope to track hazardous objects including asteroids, space junk, and satellites.

The Near-Earth Object Surveillance Satellite (NEOSSat) was launched from an Indian rocket this week as the first dedicated space-based sentinel of its kind.

Managed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) and Defence Research and Development Canada (DRDC), NEOSSat is about the size of a suitcase and orbits some 500 miles above Earth, circling every 100 minutes. … Read more

Google removes asteroid doodle before you can see it

It's not easy to celebrate a near miss on the day of an actual hit.

Google discovered this yesterday. The company was very keen to offer another of its highly involving doodles for your weekend enjoyment.

Its nerd-leaning artists thought it might be fun to create a little something that cheered the fact that Asteroid 2012 DA14 wasn't going to strike Earth and create havoc.

Sadly, an ill-timed meteorite did strike Earth and create havoc.… Read more

Crave Ep. 109: The greatest drinking game ever

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This week on Crave, William Shatner has some choice words for J.J. Abrams, and we toss one back in the greatest drinking game ever invented. Cheers! Plus, we dodge a bullet the size of a football field as an asteroid nearly collides with Earth. Phew. … Read more

Odds of dying from an asteroid strike: 1 in 74,817,414

It was a busy day for planet Earth. Asteroid 2012 DA14, a 45-meter wide space rock, sped past the Earth a mere 17,100 miles overhead. In the Ural mountains of Russia, a 15-meter wide, 7,000 metric ton asteroid hit the Earth's atmosphere, creating a 300-kiloton shock wave that injured more than 1,000 people and shattered 1 million square feet of glass.

What are the odds that an asteroid impact will destroy your being in a given year? Slim -- 1 in 74,817,414, according to data compiled by The Economist. For comparison, the odds of … Read more