asteroid
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NASA to Reveal What’s Inside the Asteroid Canister: Live Stream
After being dropped off on Earth by the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft, pieces of asteroid Bennu will be revealed to the public for the first time on Wednesday. NASA will be showing off its first asteroid sample at the Johnson Space Center in Houston on October 11 at 11:00 a.m. ET (that translates to October 12 at…
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Returned Asteroid Sample Canister Contains Way More Asteroid Than Expected
Scientists working to open up the sample canister containing rock and dust from asteroid Bennu have run into a problem: there’s just too much of it. The process of disassembling the TAGSAM (Touch-and-Go Sample Acquisition Mechanism) head is taking longer than anticipated due to the abundance of material found when the canister lid was removed…
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Will Mining the Moon and Asteroids Be Worth the Trouble?
The new era of space exploration is opening entirely new possibilities, including the tantalising prospect of mining for resources on the Moon and asteroids. Sounds exciting—and potentially very profitable—but the reality of the situation is that space mining is completely uncharted territory. Plenty of prospecting needs to be done first to determine if these resources…
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Space-Scanning Algorithm Spots ‘Potentially Hazardous’ 600-Foot Asteroid
An asteroid-hunting algorithm set to be implemented in the Vera C. Rubin Observatory’s 10-year survey spotted its first potentially hazardous asteroid, proving the algorithm’s capabilities in advance of the observatory’s opening. The asteroid is 2022 SF289, a 600-foot-long space rock that’s currently about 4 astronomical units from Earth (that is, 4 times the distance Earth…