asteroid
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Software Glitch Pushes Back NASA’s Psyche Mission Launch by at Least a Year
NASA announced late last week that the long-awaited mission to Psyche, a nearby metal-rich asteroid, will not launch this year. The next possible launch windows for the spacecraft are in 2023 and 2024, meaning that NASA won’t arrive at the asteroid until 2029 at the earliest.
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NASA’s Latest Plan to Fix Trojan Spacecraft’s Unlatched Solar Array Shows Signs of Promise
For nearly eight months, Lucy has been sailing its way to Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids while NASA engineers on the ground have been working to fix a pesky solar array that refuses to unfurl. The good news is that there now appears to be some progress.
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This Dinosaur ‘Graveyard’ May Offer a Look at Their Final Day on Earth
Buried in the rocks in North Dakota lies evidence of the exact day the dinosaurs were obliterated from the planet, some 66 million years ago. That’s the claim of palaeontologist Robert DePalma and colleagues, whose work was captured by the BBC in its recent landmark documentary Dinosaurs: The Final Day with David Attenborough. For the…
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What Are Asteroids Made Of?
Just over 12 months ago, we were sitting at Woomera, in the Australian outback, waiting for a streak of light in the sky to testify that the Hayabusa2 spacecraft had returned from its voyage to collect a little piece of a near-Earth asteroid called Ryugu. Unfortunately for us, it was cloudy in Woomera that day…