University of Western Ontario cameras capture 'fireball'
For the second time this year, The University of Western Ontario Meteor Group has captured incredibly rare video footage of a meteor falling to Earth. The team of astronomers suspects the fireball dropped meteorites in a region north of Guelph, Ontario, Canada, that may total as much as a few hundred grams in mass. view more (2008-10-27)
Insect attack may have finished off dinosaurs
Asteroid impacts or massive volcanic flows might have occurred around the time dinosaurs became extinct, but a new book argues that the mightiest creatures the world has ever known may have been brought down by a tiny, much less dramatic force - biting, disease-carrying insects. view more (2008-01-03)
Rosetta bound for outer Solar System after final Earth swingby
This morning, mission controllers confirmed that ESA's comet chaser Rosetta had swung by Earth at 8:45 CET as planned, skimming past our planet to pick up a gravitational boost for an epic journey to rendezvous with comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014. view more (2009-11-16)
UCLA's Christopher Russell leads NASA's Dawn Mission, set for July 7 launch
Christopher T. Russell, UCLA professor of geophysics and space physics, has spent 15 years working on NASA's Dawn mission to the doughnut-shaped asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. As the scheduled July 7 launch from Cape Canaveral nears, Russell is ready, and so is Dawn. view more (2007-06-28)
Lunar rocks suggest meteorite shower
New age measurements of lunar rocks returned by the Apollo space missions have revealed that a surprising number of the rocks show signs of melting about 3.9 billion years ago, suggesting that the moon - and its nearby neighbor Earth - were bombarded by a series of large meteorites at that time. view more (2006-04-13)
UAF geologist studies Chicxulub impact crater
About 65 million years ago, a massive disruption led to worldwide extinction of dinosaurs. The impact of a giant asteroid created massive tsunamis and spewed forth a global cloud of carbon gases that altered Earth's atmosphere and blocked the light for weeks, possibly years. In recent years, that impact event has been linked to a 112-mile-wide... view more... (2007-01-19)
Deep Space Brine
Scientists from The University of Manchester have found traces of sea water in a meteorite that fell in Morocco in 1998. This discovery shows that the necessary conditions for life in the Universe may have existed much earlier than previously believed. The team found salt crystals containing pockets of brine within the... view more... (2000-06-08)
Haptics technology makes the impossible possible
How would it feel to pick up a Boeing 777 while standing on an asteroid? Or to play with a yo-yo on Mars? Or even to explore a box that is larger on the inside than on the outside? All these things are now possible as scientists at the University of Reading are developing technology which allows computer users to touch, grip and even manipulate... view more... (2004-05-26)
Plutoid chosen as name for Solar System objects like Pluto
Almost two years after the International Astronomical Union (IAU) General Assembly introduced the category of dwarf planets, the IAU, as promised, has decided on a name for transneptunian dwarf planets similar to Pluto. view more (2008-06-12)
MESSENGER discovers an unusual impact basin on Mercury
A previously unknown, large impact basin has been discovered by the MErcury Surface, Space ENvironment, GEochemistry, and Ranging (MESSENGER) spacecraft during its second flyby of Mercury in October 2008. view more (2009-05-01)
Saturn's rings have own atmosphere
Data from the NASA/ESA/ASI Cassini spacecraft indicate that Saturn's majestic ring system has its own atmosphere-separate from that of the planet itself. view more (2005-08-18)
First extrasolar planets, now extrasolar moons
ESA is now planning a mission that can detect moons around planets outside our Solar System, those orbiting other stars! Everyone knows our Moon: lovers stare at it, wolves howl at it, and ESA recently sent SMART-1 to study it. But there are over a hundred other moons in our Solar System, each a world in its own right. A moon is a natural body... view more... (2003-10-09)
Stardust comet dust resembles asteroid materials
Contrary to expectations for a small icy body, much of the comet dust returned by the Stardust mission formed very close to the young sun and was altered from the solar system's early materials. view more (2008-01-25)
Rosetta begins its 10-year journey to the origins of the Solar System
Europe's Rosetta cometary probe has been successfully launched into an orbit around the Sun, which will allow it to reach the comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko in 2014 after three flybys of the Earth and one of Mars. During this 10-year journey, the probe will pass close to at least one asteroid. Rosetta is the first probe ever designed to enter... view more... (2004-03-02)
Meteorite search update
Investigation of the fireball that lit up the skies of Alberta and Saskatchewan on November 20 has determined that an asteroid fragment weighing approximately 10 tonnes entered the Earth's atmosphere over the prairie provinces last Thursday evening. view more (2008-11-26)
50 years after Sputnik
In cosmic terms, half a century is a mere blink of an eyelid. But for mankind, much has happened in the 50 years since Sputnik 1, the first artificial satellite, was launched by the Soviet Union on 4 October 1957. view more (2007-10-03)
Where are the other `Earths` beyond the Solar System?
One of the most fascinating areas of astronomical research in recent years has been the search for other `Earths` circling Sun-like stars far beyond our Solar System. In recent years nearly 100 planets have been discovered in orbits around other stars, but none of these `exoplanets` remotely resembles the Earth. However, according to the latest... view more... (2002-04-03)
Tunguska - making an impact @ the London `Catastrophes` conference
The "Tunguska Event" refers to the tremendous explosion on the morning of June 30, 1908, that laid waste to about 2150 square kilometres of Siberia in the region to the north and north-west of Lake Baikal in Russia. The event is widely attributed to be the impact of a comet or asteroid. view more (2002-08-17)
Tiny diamonds on Santa Rosa Island give evidence of cosmic impact
Nanosized diamonds found just a few meters below the surface of Santa Rosa Island off the coast of Santa Barbara provide strong evidence of a cosmic impact event in North America approximately 12,900 years ago. view more (2009-07-22)
UK Astronomers Watch the Skies for Threat from Space
British astronomers are providing a vital component to the world-wide effort of identifying and monitoring rogue asteroids and comets. From this month, the UK Astrometry and Photometry Programme (UKAPP) for Near-Earth Objects, based at Queens University, Belfast, will track Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) and feed their crucial information into the... view more... (2004-10-13)
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