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How Scientists Are Preparing for Apophis’s Unnervingly Close Brush With Earth
In about five years’ time, a potentially hazardous asteroid will swing by Earth at an eerily close distance of less than 20,000 miles (32,000 kilometers). During this rare encounter, Apophis will be ten times closer to Earth than the Moon and scientists want to take full advantage of its visit. Apophis is a on trajectory…
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Seeing Double: Lucy’s First Target Asteroid Has a Tiny Moon
As NASA’s Lucy spacecraft zoomed past its first asteroid on Wednesday, its mission scientists made a surprising discovery of a bonus space rock. The first images sent over by the Lucy mission of its brief rendezvous with the main asteroid belt revealed a binary pair, with a tiny satellite closely orbiting Dinkinesh, NASA announced on…
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NASA’s Lucy Probe Phones Home From 49-Million-Mile Journey to Asteroid
The Lucy spacecraft is on a 12-year journey to visit eight different asteroids, and it’s almost caught up with the first space rock on its checklist. Since it launched in October 2021, NASA’s Lucy mission has trekked through over 33 million miles (54 million kilometres) in space. The spacecraft is now 4.7 million miles (7.6…
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Ambitious Emirati Mission Seeks to Visit 7 Asteroids and Land on the Big Red One
The United Arab Emirates’ (UAE) space program may still be in its infancy, but the oil-rich country has big plans to surpass its inaugural Mars mission. For its upcoming mission to the main asteroid belt, the Arab nation has revealed the names of the seven space rocks to serve as its targets.