#asteroid

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Heat-trapping asteroid dust may have incinerated the dinosaurs within hours

Scientists have spent decades debating what killed the dinosaurs. Some say volcanoes triggered the dinosaurs’ decline a million years before the infamous asteroid hit 66 million years ago. Others say the dinosaurs slowly starved after the asteroid’s impact generated a dust cloud so thick it blocked out the sun for months. But land-dwelling dinosaurs may not have had time to starve. Many would have been incinerated by thermal radiation in the hours after impact, researchers report July 28 in the Journal of Geophysical Research: Biogeosciences. When the asteroid hit, it vaporized the surrounding rock, creating the 200-kilometer-wide Chicxulub crater underneath the Gulf of Mexico. Some of the vapor cooled in the atmosphere and condensed into droplets of molten rock. The rest became a cloud of fine dust. What happened next has been a long-standing question, says planetary scientist Brandon Johnson of Purdue University in Lafayette, Indiana. Using deposits of asteroid material from North Dakota, Johnson and his collaborators simulated what would have happened as this dust spread around the globe. The results painted a frightening picture. Molten rock would have rained down with the force of a bullet, generating a lot of heat. Instead of escaping into space, that heat...

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In April 2029, a Massive Asteroid Will Just Miss Earth. Scientists Are Worried There Could Still Be Major Consequences

In April 2029, a rare visitor is going to swing through near-Earth space.

www.sciencedaily.com

The key to colonizing Mars may be hidden inside asteroids

The most valuable answer may have nothing to do with destroying it. Sorry, Bruce. Asteroids could instead help us build an entirely new world. The Supply Problem Facing Mars Establishing a colony on Mars would involve far more than solving difficult engineering challenges. It would also require a reliable system for moving supplies, equipment, and raw materials across the Solar System. Logistics may not sound especially exciting, but it could determine whether humans ever become a multiplanetary species or remain permanently tied to Earth. A settlement on Mars would need more than food, water, and oxygen. It would require enormous amounts of metal, including structural steel for habitats, aluminum for machinery, and iron for tools. Equipment would also wear down, break, and eventually need to be replaced. Regularly shipping all of those materials from Earth would not be a practical long-term solution. Launching a tonne of cargo can cost tens of millions of pounds, while a trip to Mars usually takes between six and nine months, depending on the positions of Earth and Mars in their orbits. That is far too slow and expensive for a dependable hardware supply system. Mining Asteroids for Martian Metals Researchers at EPFL in Switzerland...

www.spreaker.com

911-Comet Brightness Explosion

Comet 220P/McNaught orbits the Sun once every 5.5 years on a path which is between Mars and Jupiter. At that extreme distance, more than 1.5 times the Earth’s distance from the Sun, it still receives a significant amount of solar radiation. In 2026 Comet 220P/McNaught had an outburst which caused it to brighten 600 times in about 13 hours and then to continue to brighten to about 8,000 times brighter than in was in its pre-outburst state.

www.esa.int

Your chance to run software in deep space on ESA's asteroid mission

The European Space Agency is offering European researchers and companies a rare and exciting opportunity to run their innovative software directly in deep space aboard ESA’s Hera mission, millions of kilometres distant. In mid-2027, ESA’s Hera mission is set to complete its primary planetary defence goals around the Didymos and Dimorphos asteroids. The spacecraft will then take on a new role – it will become a unique flying software laboratory 150 million km from Earth. From this exceptional vantage point in deep space, Hera will enable European innovators to test next-generation approaches for onboard intelligence, image processing and AI-based operations and autonomy directly on the spacecraft in flight. Dietmar Pilz, ESA’s Director of Technology, Engineering and Quality, comments. “This is an exceptional opportunity that will help accelerate European innovation, enabling researchers and industry to push the boundaries of onboard intelligence and autonomy. We invite Europe’s innovators to shape the next generation of intelligent, robust and autonomous space missions. “We are looking for targeted, innovative experiments that push onboard intelligence beyond today’s procedural boundaries, while running safely alongside Hera’s flight-critical systems in a protected ‘sandbox’ environment. These ideas will help ESA mature technologies that reduce reliance on ground control, increase mission...

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In April 2029, a Massive Asteroid Will Just Miss Earth. Scientists Are Worried There Could Still Be Major Consequences

In April 2029, a rare visitor is going to swing through near-Earth space.

www.technologyreview.com

NASA's new dark energy space telescope can also detect killer asteroids

Roman was not built for this purpose, but last summer, it was (once again) threatened with significant funding cuts by the Trump administration. “My colleague Rick Cosentino [a planetary scientist at NASA] said to me in July 2025 that we need to show what Roman can do for planetary defense as a way to further increase the visibility of the mission with lawmakers and taxpayers,” says Bryan Holler, a researcher at the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, Maryland. Holler and his colleagues’ proposal, which will be presented at the Europlanet Science Congress at The Hague in The Netherlands, reveals that Roman’s epic field-of-view and infrared vision allows it to spot small asteroids up to 60 feet long. This is comparable to the asteroid that exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, unleashing the force of 500,000 tons of TNT and sending 1,500 people to the hospital. Roman’s software will need some tweaking to spy space rocks. The telescope, as designed, will see through – and beyond – the solar system in order to gather the clearest possible pictures of the rest of the universe. “Streaks, whether caused by cosmic rays or glitches or asteroids, are caught by...

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400E-441-Carson's Pair

My Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls was observing, in the constellation Lynx, with our Schmidt telescope on Mt. Bigelow, Arizona , when within the space of only 35 minutes, he discovered two small space rocks well before they made very close approaches to Earth. 79 hours after Carson discovered the first, 2018 CB, this approximately 70 foot diameter space rock passed about 1/5 of the Moon's distance from us. Turns out that the second of Carson's duo, an approximately 50 foot diameter space rock got near us first, when 62 hours after Carson discovered 2018 CC, it came to less than 1/2 of the Moon's distance from the surface of planet Earth. Since we didn't have a large enough, properly equipped telescope to measure the pattern of colors each of Carson's discoveries reflects from the Sun we can only estimate their physical sizes and guess at their densities and chemical compositions. In any event, if either of these space rocks were to strike the Earth they would likely explode at an altitude about 100,000 feet above the Earth's surface, releasing the energy of tens of thousands of pounds of TNT, producing a spectacular light show. Both of Carson's discoveries could be similar to the space rock which exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia breaking windows, injuring nearly 1,500 people, and producing numerous fragments which made it to the ground. If either of Carson's discoveries had been on an impact trajectory with Earth, asteroid hunters would have had time to warn people in the effected area to stay away from doors and windows.