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Tag: Asteroids

  • Astronomers Discover Unusual Asteroid Spinning Faster Than Anything Its Size

    Researchers have identified 19 super- and ultra-fast-rotating asteroids, including one that is the fastest-spinning asteroid of its kind.

    Researchers found the astronomical ballerinas using data from the world’s largest digital camera, located at the NSF–DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory in Chile, during the observatory’s early commissioning phase. Their exciting results, described in a study published yesterday in The Astrophysical Journal Letters, are just a taste of the insights scientists expect Rubin to shed on the workings of the universe once it begins its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST).

    “As this study demonstrates, even in early commissioning, Rubin is successfully allowing us to study a population of relatively small, very-rapidly-rotating main-belt asteroids that hadn’t been reachable before,” lead author Sarah Greenstreet, also lead of Rubin Observatory’s Solar System Science Collaboration’s Near-Earth Objects and Interstellar Objects working group, said in a NOIRLab statement.

    Fastest-spinning known asteroid of its kind

    The rotational speed of an asteroid as it orbits the Sun can provide insight into its ancient formation, as well as its inner composition and lifelong development. For example, a fast spinner may be the result of an impact with a fellow asteroid, indicating its potential state as a fragment.

    The paper highlights 76 asteroids, including 16 super-fast rotators (with rotation periods between around 13 minutes and 2.2 hours) and three ultra-fast rotators (with rotation periods of less than five minutes). These 19 asteroids are all longer than an American football field (around 90 meters). A champion among them, 2025 MN45, is the fastest-spinning known asteroid of objects larger than 0.3 miles (500 meters); 2025 MN45 has a diameter of 0.4 miles (710 meters) and rotates once every 1.88 minutes. It’s also one of five asteroids found by the team that are some of the fastest-spinning known asteroids under 0.6 miles (1 kilometer).

    “Clearly, this asteroid must be made of material that has very high strength in order to keep it in one piece as it spins so rapidly,” Greenstreet said. “We calculate that it would need a cohesive strength similar to that of solid rock. This is somewhat surprising since most asteroids are believed to be what we call ‘rubble pile’ asteroids, which means they are made of many, many small pieces of rock and debris that coalesced under gravity during Solar System formation or subsequent collisions.” The densities of these rubble piles determine how fast they can rotate without fragmenting.

    Legacy Survey of Space and Time

    The majority of fast-rotating asteroids identified by researchers are near-Earth objects (NEOs), meaning they orbit the Sun not far outside of Earth’s path. The orbit of main-belt asteroids (MBAs) takes them between Jupiter and Mars, and we know of fewer of these mostly due to the fact that they’re farther from us, making them more challenging to spot. Most of the recently discovered fast rotators are in the main asteroid belt or slightly farther out, emphasizing how far out researchers are able to identify these exceptionally fast twirlers thanks to the Rubin Observatory’s abilities.

    Rubin’s Legacy Survey of Space and Time, slated to begin this year, should reveal more fast rotators and supply data regarding their compositions, strengths, and collisional histories. It will scan the Southern Hemisphere night sky for a decade to produce a magnificent time-lapse of the universe. The team’s research represents the first published peer-reviewed scientific paper to use information from the LSST Camera, the biggest camera ever built.

    “We have known for years that Rubin would act as a discovery machine for the Universe, and we are already seeing the unique power of combining the LSST Camera with Rubin’s incredible speed. Together, Rubin can take an image every 40 seconds,” said Aaron Roodman, Deputy Head of LSST. “The ability to find thousands of new asteroids in such a short period of time, and learn so much about them, is a window into what will be uncovered during the 10-year survey.”

    Margherita Bassi

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  • FYI: These Are the Asteroids You Should Mine

    A new generation of rockets aims to unlock new business models in space, including the science fiction dream of extracting resources from asteroids.

    Researchers are taking a closer look at asteroids to figure out which of these objects makes sense as a target for future mining missions. A team from Spain’s Institute of Space Sciences spent over a decade analyzing samples from carbon-rich asteroids, the most common type of space rocks found in the solar system, to understand what might be out there.

    The research, published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, singles out one type of asteroid that would make a prime target.

    “It sounds like science fiction, but it also seemed like science fiction when the first sample return missions were being planned thirty years ago,” Pau Grèbol Tomás, a graduate student at the Institute of Space Science, and co-author of the paper, said in a statement.

    Off to the space mines

    Asteroid mining remains uncharted territory. NASA’s asteroid sample return mission, OSIRIS-REx, has proven that we can extract material from a space rock and bring it back to Earth. Doing so at a large scale, however, would require advanced propulsion systems, in-orbit refining, large-scale reentry technologies, much of which has not yet been demonstrated.

    Several space startups have got their eyes on the prize, and are working to develop these systems that would make asteroid mining a reality. California-startup AstroForge launched its first mission in April 2023 to demonstrate its ability to refine asteroid material in orbit. Unfortunately, the company lost contact with its spacecraft.

    But efforts like these will only persist if there is reason to believe mining these asteroids will be a lucrative proposition.

    Prospects for prospectors

    “Most asteroids have relatively small abundances of precious elements, and therefore the objective of our study has been to understand to what extent their extraction would be viable,” Tomás said.

    The researchers characterized 28 meteorite samples and carried out a detailed chemical analysis using mass spectrometry. In doing so, they determined the chemical make-up of six of the most common types of carbonaceous chondrites—meteorites rich in carbon, water, and organic compounds.

    “The scientific interest in each of these meteorites is that they sample small, undifferentiated asteroids, and provide valuable information on the chemical composition and evolutionary history of the bodies from which they originate,” Josep M. Trigo-Rodríguez, astrophysicist at the Institute of Space Sciences, and lead author of the study, said in a statement.

    Based on their analysis, the team found that a type of asteroid rich in the minerals olivine and spinel could serve as an ideal target for future mining missions, because those minerals are associated with the presence of iron, nickel, gold, platinum, and so-called rare earth elements.

    Passant Rabie

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  • Astronomers Just Found a Sneaky Asteroid Near the Sun—and It Highlights a Dangerous Blind Spot

    Millions of asteroids are currently zipping through our solar system. These rocky remnants of the early solar system receive extra attention when their itinerary brings them too close to Earth—which, fortunately, astronomers can usually track in advance. But what happens if they can’t?

    This could easily be the case for so-called “twilight” asteroids, whose position behind the glare of the Sun makes it tricky for astronomers to detect and track. If that wasn’t unsettling enough, the latest twilight asteroid—2025 SC79—is also the second-fastest asteroid ever identified, with an orbit of just 128 days around the Sun, according to a Carnegie Science release.

    Hiding in plain sight?

    Scott Sheppard, an astronomer with Carnegie Science, first observed 2025 SC79 with the Blanco 4-meter Telescope’s Dark Energy Camera in September. Follow-up observations by the Gemini and Magellan telescopes confirmed the sighting of the asteroid.

    2025 SC79 is estimated to measure around 2,300 feet (700 meters) in diameter—almost twice the height of the Empire State Building. The asteroid’s size, as well as its fast orbit around the Sun, qualifies it as a “planet killer” asteroid, which Sheppard had been searching for.

    A blind threat

    “The most dangerous asteroids are the most difficult to detect,” Sheppard said in the release. Most asteroids enter telescopes’ detection range in the dark of night, he explained. Asteroids lurking near the Sun, on the other hand, are only visible at twilight.

    This poses unique challenges for astronomers like Sheppard, who are on the lookout for potential threats. Given the importance of preemptive research for asteroid flybys, twilight asteroids could “pose serious impact hazards” if they approach Earth, Sheppard warned.

    To be fair, there isn’t much we can do about the natural positioning of extraterrestrial objects. Still, Sheppard hopes that further screening of this twilight asteroid may uncover useful information about its composition and whether it could hold any clues for spotting similar objects in the future.

    “Many of the Solar System’s asteroids inhabit one of two belts of space rocks, but perturbations can send objects careening into closer orbits where they can be more challenging to spot,” Sheppard said. “Understanding how they arrived at these locations can help us protect our planet and also help us learn more about Solar System history.”

    Gayoung Lee

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  • Scientists spot skyscraper-sized asteroid racing through solar system

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    Astronomers have reportedly discovered a skyscraper-sized asteroid moving through our solar system at a near record-breaking pace.

    The asteroid, named 2025 SC79, circles the sun once every 128 days, making it the second-fastest known asteroid orbiting in the solar system.

    It was first observed by Carnegie Science astronomer Scott S. Sheppard Sept. 27, according to a statement from Carnegie Science.

    UFO MANIA GRIPS SMALL TOWN AFTER MYSTERIOUS GLOWING OBJECT SIGHTING GOES VIRAL

    A skyscraper-size asteroid, named 2025 SC79, was discovered in September, hidden in the sun’s glare. (Carnegie Science)

    The asteroid is the second known object with an orbit inside Venus, the statement said. It crosses Mercury’s orbit during its 128-day trip around the sun.

    “Many of the solar system’s asteroids inhabit one of two belts of space rocks, but perturbations can send objects careening into closer orbits where they can be more challenging to spot,” Sheppard said. “Understanding how they arrived at these locations can help us protect our planet and also help us learn more about solar system history.”

    The celestial body is now traveling behind the sun and will be invisible to telescopes for several months.

    HARVARD PHYSICIST SAYS MYSTERIOUS INTERSTELLAR OBJECT COULD BE NUCLEAR-POWERED SPACESHIP

    Sheppard’s search for so-called “twilight” asteroids helps identify objects that could pose a risk of crashing into Earth, the statement said.

    The work, which is partially funded by NASA, uses the Dark Energy Camera on the National Science Foundation’s Blanco 4-meter telescope to look for “planet killer” asteroids in the glare of the sun that could pose a danger to Earth.

    The NSF’s Gemini telescope and Carnegie Science’s Magellan telescopes were used to confirm the sighting of 2025 SC79, Carnegie Science said. 

    The fastest known asteroid was also discovered by Sheppard, who studies solar system objects including moons, dwarf planets and asteroids. and his colleagues in 2021.

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    That one takes 133 days to orbit the sun.

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  • Astronomers Have Discovered Earth’s Latest Quasi-Lunar Moon

    The Earth has just added its seventh confirmed quasi-lunar moon. It is 2025 PN7, a small Apollo-type asteroid detected in August solely by its brightness, thanks to the Hawaiian Pan-STARRS 1 telescope.

    After analyzing its trajectory, scientists concluded that the object maintains a 1:1 resonance with the Earth. In other words, it orbits the sun at the same time as our planet. From a distant perspective, this synchronicity makes it look as if the Earth is accompanied by a tiny asteroid—as if it had an additional moon.

    Unlike the moon, quasi-lunar moons are not gravitationally bound to the Earth. They are ephemeral companions, in cosmological terms, following their own path around the sun. Only at certain times do they come close enough to appear bound. In the case of 2025 PN7, its minimum distance is 299,000 kilometers, while at its farthest point it can reach 17 million km. For comparison, the moon remains at an average distance of 384,000 km from Earth.

    According to the article published in Research Notes of the AAS, the asteroid has been in a quasi-satellite phase since 1965, and is expected to remain so for 128 years. Some researchers estimate that 2025 PN7 will finally move away in 2083.

    Why Does the Earth Have Quasi-Lunar Moons?

    So far, seven bodies have been confirmed that appear to accompany the planet in its orbit. Astronomers believe that more may be discovered in the future. Earth is a natural reservoir of quasi-lunars because the Earth’s orbit is similar to that of certain nearby objects that inhabit the so-called Arjuna group of asteroids, a population that has only recently begun to be studied in greater detail.

    The Arjuna group does not form a ring like the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but comprises a legion of near-Earth rocks that orbit the sun on a similar path as our planet. Occasionally, some of these asteroids coincide with our trajectory and, depending on their orbital dynamics, are classified as quasi-lunar or mini moons.

    The quasilunar moon 2025 PN7 sits in the Arjuna asteroid group not far from Earth.Illustration: WIRED

    Jorge Garay

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  • Hayabusa2’s 2031 Landing Plan Faces an Unexpected Asteroid Nightmare

    On December 6, 2020, the Hayabusa2 spacecraft dropped off pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu in the Australian outback, becoming the world’s second asteroid sample return mission, after the first Hayabusa mission returned dusty samples from asteroid Itokawa in 2010. But Hayabusa2 still has more to offer.

    That same spacecraft is currently on its way to another distant space rock, aiming to snag more samples to help scientists compile the solar system’s origin story. Recent observations of the asteroid, however, reveal that Hayabusa2 might not be able to touch down on its new target.

    Asteroid 1998 KY26 is a small, lumpy near-Earth object thought to contain about a million gallons of water. It rotates so quickly that a day on the rock ends almost as soon as it begins, according to NASA. Hayabusa2 is set to rendezvous with the asteroid in 2031 as part of its extended mission to collect more dust and rock straight from the source.

    Now, using multiple observatories around the world, astronomers gathered more data on Hayabusa2’s new target and found that it is nearly three times smaller and spinning much faster than originally thought, according to a new paper published in Nature Communications.

    Not clear for landing

    The researchers behind the new paper combined the recent observations with previous radar data, revealing that the asteroid is a mere 36 feet (11 meters) wide, as opposed to 98 feet (30 meters). What’s more, the asteroid is spinning about twice as fast as earlier data suggested.

    “We found that the reality of the object is completely different from what it was previously described as,” Toni Santana-Ros, a researcher from the University of Alicante, Spain, and lead author of the new paper, said in a statement. “One day on this asteroid lasts only five minutes!”

    Hayabusa2’s first target measured at nearly 3,000 feet (900 meters) wide. The spacecraft landed on asteroid Ryugu on February 22, 2019, for the first time, then returned for a second touchdown in July 2019 to collect subsurface samples from a crater it had created with its first landing. Shortly before dropping off its samples on Earth, Japan’s space agency (JAXA) announced an extension to Hayabusa2’s mission and a lucky second target.

    A bigger challenge awaits

    Unlike its first target, however, Hayabusa2’s second landing will prove far more challenging due to the asteroid’s small size and fast rotation. The team behind the new study used the European Southern Observatory’s Very Large Telescope and other instruments to observe 1998 KY26 in preparation for the mission’s upcoming encounter.

    “The amazing story here is that we found that the size of the asteroid is comparable to the size of the spacecraft that is going to visit it! And we were able to characterize such a small object using our telescopes, which means that we can do it for other objects in the future,” Santana-Ros said. “Our methods could have an impact on the plans for future near-Earth asteroid exploration or even asteroid mining.”

    This has the makings of a very interesting rendezvous! Now we just have to wait—impatiently—for 2031 to arrive.

    Passant Rabie

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  • Evidence of Ancient Asteroid Impact and Tsunami Found in North Carolina

    Around 35 million years ago, a small asteroid traveling at 40,000 miles per hour (64,373 kilometers per hour) struck Earth, crashing into the Atlantic Ocean near the modern-day town of Cape Charles, Virginia. The approximately 3-mile-wide (5-kilometer) object created a large impact crater that’s buried half a mile beneath Chesapeake Bay. Hundreds of miles south of the crater, scientists have found new evidence of the asteroid impact and the tsunami that followed the shattering event.

    Hidden beneath the waters of the Chesapeake, the impact crater in Virginia is among the largest and most preserved craters found on Earth. The Chesapeake Bay crater was first discovered in 1990, and scientists are still trying to piece together the trail of destruction left by the asteroid. A team of geologists investigating fossils in Moore County, North Carolina, uncovered layers of rock they determined were forged by the asteroid impact and the tsunami that followed.

    In a recently published study in Southeastern Geology, scientists document the far-reaching impact of the asteroid collision, detailing the discovery of a site found approximately 240 miles (386 km) away from the Virginia crater in the Sandhills of North Carolina.

    Rocky beds

    The team of geologists behind the new study found four distinct beds of rock within a one-yard-thick layer formation at the site in Moore County. The first bed of rock is around 17 inches thick (43 centimeters) and contains sandy clay rich in carbon glass and rock fragments. The researchers also measured 14 to 18 parts per billion of iridium, a rare chemical element that’s often found in meteorites that land on Earth.

    The second bed of rock, measuring at only about 3 inches thick (9 centimeters), contained silt and loosely bound masses of quartz and carbon, as well as 2 to 6 parts per billion of iridium. Bed number 3 is a mix of soil and seafloor fragments and measures at around 2 inches thick (6 centimeters), while the fourth bed of rock is around 6 inches (15 centimeters) of coarse sand that may have been deposited by a tsunami.

    The geological makeup of the different rock beds made no sense when examined on its own, but the researchers behind the study traced it to the ancient asteroid that struck Virginia millions of years ago.

    Tsunami warning

    Around 35 million years ago, when the asteroid struck Earth, the impact created a hypersonic shock wave that destroyed plants and animals for hundreds of miles in each direction and rained huge amounts of molten debris in the area that stretches from Massachusetts to Barbados.

    When it was first discovered, scientists speculated that the impact that hit the Atlantic Ocean also likely caused a massive, far-reaching tsunami, but they had not found actual remains of it. The new study suggests that the strange rock formation in North Carolina traces all the way back to that fateful day when the asteroid struck Earth millions of years ago.

    The first rock bed records the initial impact, rich with ejecta and carbon-rich debris that had settled into the channel within the first minutes. Rock bed number two is an accumulation of the finer particles that were ejected as the plume thinned, while the third rock bed is a record of the inland surge of seawater and sediment. Finally, the fourth rock bed is when water refilled the channel with clean sand and gravel.

    The new finding adds further clarity to the Chesapeake Bay impact and how far-reaching it really was. As we’re learning, this lone asteroid, through this single cataclysmic encounter, reshaped an entire region so many million years ago.

    Passant Rabie

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  • Trippy Image From Deep Space Shows Earth and Moon From 180 Million Miles Away

    The Psyche spacecraft is on a six-year journey to reach a metal-rich asteroid by the same name. Well into its voyage, the probe looked back at its home planet and captured a rare view of Earth, accompanied by its Moon, as a mere speck engulfed by the dark void of space.

    NASA’s Psyche mission launched on October 13, 2023, and is assigned to explore a distant target in the main asteroid belt that’s believed to be the exposed core of a protoplanet. Before it reaches its destination, the imaging team behind the mission is testing the spacecraft’s ability to capture objects that shine by light reflected from the Sun. The target objects of these tests are awfully familiar—our very own planet and moon—but they were taken from a rather unfamiliar perspective.

    In July, scientists on the imaging team snapped multiple, long-exposure photos of Earth and the Moon. The pair is seen amidst a dark background littered with several stars in the constellation Aries. Earth appears as a bright dot, with the Moon sitting right above it. The image was taken from about 180 million miles (290 kilometers) away and offers a rare look at our planet as seen from deep space.

    The photo brings the famous Pale Blue Dot to mind, an image of Earth captured by the Voyager 1 spacecraft in 1990. That image was taken from a distance of 3.7 billion miles (6 billion kilometers), with Earth appearing as a mere speck amid the cosmic backdrop.

    Although it wasn’t captured from the same distance, Psyche’s recent image is a similar reminder of Earth’s place and size in the solar system. The spacecraft is equipped with a pair of cameras, designed to collect pictures in wavelengths of light that are both visible and invisible to the human eye, to help determine the composition of the metal-rich asteroid.

    Psyche needs to travel a total of around 2.2 billion miles to reach the main asteroid belt and enter asteroid Psyche’s orbit in late July 2029. The 173-mile-wide (280-kilometer) asteroid orbits the Sun in the outer part of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Scientists believe the space rock might be an exposed core of a planetesimal, or an early planetary building block, which was stripped of its outer layer during the early formation of the solar system.

    Passant Rabie

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  • A spacecraft is on its way to a harmless asteroid slammed by NASA in a previous save-the-Earth test

    A spacecraft is on its way to a harmless asteroid slammed by NASA in a previous save-the-Earth test

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A spacecraft blasted off Monday to investigate the scene of a cosmic crash.

    The European Space Agency’s Hera spacecraft rocketed away on a two-year journey to the small, harmless asteroid rammed by NASA two years ago in a dress rehearsal for the day a killer space rock threatens Earth. Launched by SpaceX from Cape Canaveral, it’s the second part of a planetary defense test that could one day help save the planet.

    The 2022 crash by NASA’s Dart spacecraft shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around its bigger companion, demonstrating that if a dangerous rock was headed our way, there’s a chance it could be knocked off course with enough advance notice.

    Scientists are eager to examine the impact’s aftermath up close to know exactly how effective Dart was and what changes might be needed to safeguard Earth in the future.

    “The more detail we can glean the better as it may be important for planning a future deflection mission should one be needed,” University of Maryland astronomer Derek Richardson said before launch.

    Researchers want to know whether Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — left a crater or perhaps reshaped the 500-foot (150-meter) asteroid more dramatically. It looked something like a flying saucer before Dart’s blow and may now resemble a kidney bean, said Richardson, who took part in the Dart mission and is helping with Hera.

    Dart’s wallop sent rubble and even boulders flying off Dimorphos, providing an extra kick to the impact’s momentum. The debris trail extended thousands of miles (more than 10,000 kilometers) into space for months.

    Some boulders and other debris could still be hanging around the asteroid, posing a potential threat to Hera, said flight director Ignacio Tanco.

    “We don’t really know very well the environment in which we are going to operate,” said Tanco. “But that’s the whole point of the mission is to go there and find out.”

    European officials describe the $400 million (363 million euro) mission as a “crash scene investigation.”

    Hera “is going back to the crime site and getting all the scientific and technical information,” said project manager Ian Carnelli.

    Carrying a dozen science instruments, the small car-sized Hera will need to swing past Mars in 2025 for a gravity boost, before arriving at Dimorphos by the end of 2026. It’s a moonlet of Didymos, Greek for twin, a fast-spinning asteroid that’s five times bigger. At that time, the asteroids will be 120 million miles (195 million kilometers) from Earth.

    Controlled by a flight team in Darmstadt, Germany, Hera will attempt to go into orbit around the rocky pair, with the flyby distances gradually dropping from 18 miles (30 kilometers) all the way down to a half-mile (1 kilometer). The spacecraft will survey the moonlet for at least six months to ascertain its mass, shape and composition, as well as its orbit around Didymos.

    Before the impact, Dimorphos circled its larger companion from three-quarters of a mile (1,189 meters) out. Scientists believe the orbit is now tighter and oval-shaped, and that the moonlet may even be tumbling.

    Two shoebox-sized Cubesats will pop off Hera for even closer drone-like inspections, with one of them using radar to peer beneath the moonlet’s boulder-strewn surface. Scientists suspect Dimorphos was formed from material shed from Didymos. The radar observations should help confirm whether Didymos is indeed the little moon’s parent.

    The Cubesats will attempt to land on the moonlet once their survey is complete. If the moonlet is tumbling, that will complicate the endeavor. Hera may also end its mission with a precarious touchdown, but on the larger Didymos.

    Neither asteroid poses any threat to Earth — before or after Dart showed up. That’s why NASA picked the pair for humanity’s first asteroid-deflecting demo.

    Leftovers from the solar system’s formation 4.6 billion years ago, asteroids primarily orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in what’s known as the main asteroid belt, where millions of them reside. They become near-Earth objects when they’re knocked out of the belt and into our neck of the woods.

    NASA’s near-Earth object count currently tops 36,000, almost all asteroids but also some comets. More than 2,400 of them are considered potentially hazardous to Earth.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Small, harmless asteroid burns up in Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines

    Small, harmless asteroid burns up in Earth’s atmosphere over the Philippines

    NEW YORK — A small asteroid discovered on Wednesday harmlessly burned up in Earth’s atmosphere the same day, NASA said.

    The asteroid — about 3 feet (1 meter) across — was spotted by astronomers in Arizona and broke apart over the coast of the Philippines hours after the discovery.

    This space rock, dubbed 2024 RW1, is only the ninth to have been spotted before its impact. Asteroids around this size hurtle toward Earth about every two weeks without posing any danger.

    The asteroid was discovered through the Catalina Sky Survey, which is run by the University of Arizona and funded by NASA.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Has a Bizarre Origin Story

    Asteroid That Killed the Dinosaurs Has a Bizarre Origin Story

    Around 66 million years ago, a rock over 6 miles wide collided with Earth, triggering the mass extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs and leaving a giant impact crater off the coast of Mexico, which to this day contains clues to the cataclysmic event. However, little has been known about where the space rock came from and what it was made of.

    To learn more about the Chicxulub impactor, a group of researchers analyzed samples from the crater and compared them with samples from other impact craters that formed between 36 million and 470 million years ago. They found traces of a rare element called ruthenium, which matched the composition of carbon-based asteroids in the asteroid belt that sits between Mars and Jupiter. However, the new study, published in Science, suggests the dino-killing rock may have originated much farther away, in the outer regions of the solar system. Around 4.5 billion years ago, Jupiter’s extreme movements nudged it into the main asteroid belt, and it eventually met its fate on Earth.

    “This was a cosmic coincidence 66 million years ago,” Mario Fischer-Gödde, a scientist at the Institute of Geology and Mineralogy at the University of Cologne in Germany, and lead author of the study, told Gizmodo. “We don’t know exactly what triggered it, but it is very likely that it came from the asteroid belt.”

    The study suggests that the asteroid may have formed farther out in the solar system and migrated toward the inner solar system due to a disturbance of the orbits of the outer planets. Before settling into its position as the fifth planet from the Sun, Jupiter moved around quite a bit, traveling toward the center of the solar system, then back out again, and at some point coming as close as Mars. Jupiter may have stopped migrating toward the Sun because of Saturn’s gravitational field. But by then, the gas giant’s movement had influenced the solar system in a big way, causing some far-out asteroids to travel toward the inner planets.

    Although it was known that the Chicxulub impactor came from our solar system, its exact origin has been debated. Fischer-Gödde believed that ruthenium could help scientists find out, and he developed a new technique that breaks down the chemical bonds of rock samples to find the rare element.

    Ruthenium is one of the rarest metals on Earth, originally formed within ancient stars before making its way into the building blocks of planetary objects across the universe. The element was buried deep within Earth, way before the dinosaur-killing impact. Finding ruthenium in the Chicxulub crater samples eliminates other meteorite types and supports the hypothesis that the Chicxulub asteroid came from the outer reaches of the solar system.

    Inner solar system asteroids contain less ruthenium isotopes. That’s probably because, when the planets were still forming, the inner solar system likely had higher temperatures. As a result, inner solar system asteroids are made of metal and silicates and contain less water, said Fischer-Gödde. The outer solar system asteroids, on the other hand, contain more volatile elements like carbon, hydrogen, and nitrogen.

    The researchers behind the new study say these huge asteroid impacts are less likely today, under the current, more stable conditions of the solar system. “So the good news is, there are not many bodies straying around wildly in our solar system,” Fischer-Gödde said. “Everything is in a stable configuration; there would have to be some kind of disturbance, like a collision, to produce an Earth-crossing asteroid.”

    For his next investigation, Fischer-Gödde wants to analyze samples from the Moon to identify the culprits behind the craters that litter the lunar surface. “The Moon’s crust provides a record of impacting bodies that were hitting both the Moon and Earth,” he said. “So, if we want to know about the type of asteroid material that impacted the Earth very early on in its history, like 4 billion years ago, we have to go to the Moon.”

    More: Dust Doomed the Dinos, Scientists Say

    Passant Rabie

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  • Skyscraper-size asteroid will buzz Earth on Friday, safely passing within 1.7 million miles

    Skyscraper-size asteroid will buzz Earth on Friday, safely passing within 1.7 million miles


    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — An asteroid as big as a skyscraper will pass within 1.7 million miles of Earth on Friday.

    Don’t worry: There’s no chance of it hitting us since it will pass seven times the distance from Earth to the moon.

    NASA’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies estimates the space rock is between 690 feet and 1,575 feet (210 meters and 480 meters) across. That means the asteroid could be similar in size to New York City’s Empire State Building or Chicago’s Willis Tower.

    Discovered in 2008, the asteroid is designated as 2008 OS7. It won’t be back our way again until 2032, but it will be a much more distant encounter, staying 45 million miles (72 million kilometers) away.

    The harmless flyby is one of several encounters this week. Three much smaller asteroids also will harmlessly buzz Earth on Friday, no more than tens of yards (meters) across, with another two on Saturday. On Sunday, an asteroid roughly half the size of 2008 0S7 will swing by, staying 4.5 million miles (7.3 million kilometers) away.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.



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  • NASA spacecraft discovers tiny moon around asteroid during close flyby

    NASA spacecraft discovers tiny moon around asteroid during close flyby

    The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists _ a mini moon

    ByMARCIA DUNN AP aerospace writer

    November 3, 2023, 11:09 AM

    This photo provided by NASA shows a photo taken by the Lucy spacecraft during Wednesday, Nov. 1, 2023 flyby of asteroid Dinkinesh, 300 million miles from Earth. It turns out Dinkinesh, which is only a half-mile across, has a dinky sidekick … just one-tenth of a mile across. This little companion was a surprise to everyone. (NASA via AP)

    The Associated Press

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — The little asteroid visited by NASA’s Lucy spacecraft this week had a big surprise for scientists.

    It turns out that the asteroid Dinkinesh has a dinky sidekick — a mini moon.

    The discovery was made during Wednesday’s flyby of Dinkinesh, 300 million miles (480 million kilometers) away in the main asteroid belt beyond Mars. The spacecraft snapped a picture of the pair when it was about 270 miles out (435 kilometers).

    In data and images beamed back to Earth, the spacecraft confirmed that Dinkinesh is barely a half-mile (790 meters) across. Its closely circling moon is a mere one-tenth-of-a-mile (220 meters) in size.

    NASA sent Lucy past Dinkinesh as a rehearsal for the bigger, more mysterious asteroids out near Jupiter. Launched in 2021, the spacecraft will reach the first of these so-called Trojan asteroids in 2027 and explore them for at least six years. The original target list of seven asteroids now stands at 11.

    Dinkinesh means “you are marvelous” in the Amharic language of Ethiopia. It’s also the Amharic name for Lucy, the 3.2 million-year-old remains of a human ancestor found in Ethiopia in the 1970s, for which the spacecraft is named.

    “Dinkinesh really did live up to its name; this is marvelous,” Southwest Research Institute’s Hal Levison, the lead scientist, said in a statement.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA spacecraft launched to mysterious and rare metal asteroid

    NASA spacecraft launched to mysterious and rare metal asteroid

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — NASA’s Psyche spacecraft rocketed away Friday on a six-year journey to a rare metal-covered asteroid.

    Most asteroids tend to be rocky or icy, and this is the first exploration of a metal world. Scientists believe it may be the battered remains of an early planet’s core, and could shed light on the inaccessible centers of Earth and other rocky planets.

    SpaceX launched the spacecraft into an overcast midmorning sky from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center. Named for the asteroid it’s chasing, Psyche should reach the huge, potato-shaped object in 2029.

    “It’s so thrilling,” said Laurie Leshin, director of NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Added Arizona State University’s Jim Bell, part of the Psyche team: “What a great ride so far.”

    An hour later, the spacecraft separated successfully from the rocket’s upper stage and floated away, drawing applause from ground controllers.

    After decades of visiting faraway worlds of rock, ice and gas, NASA is psyched to pursue one coated in metal. Of the nine or so metal-rich asteroids discovered so far, Psyche is the biggest, orbiting the sun in the outer portion of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter alongside millions of other space rocks. It was discovered in 1852 and named after Greek mythology’s captivating goddess of the soul.

    “It’s long been humans’ dream to go to the metal core of our Earth. I mean, ask Jules Verne,” lead scientist Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University said ahead of the launch.

    “The pressure is too high. The temperature is too high. The technology is impossible,” she said. “But there’s one way in our solar system that we can look at a metal core and that is by going to this asteroid.”

    Astronomers know from radar and other observations that the asteroid is big — about 144 miles (232 kilometers) across at its widest and 173 miles (280 kilometers) long. They believe it’s brimming with iron, nickel and other metals, and quite possibly silicates, with a dull, predominantly gray surface likely covered with fine metal grains from cosmic impacts.

    Otherwise, it’s a speck of light in the night sky, full of mystery until the spacecraft reaches it after traveling more than 2 billion miles (3.6 billion kilometers).

    Scientists envision spiky metal craters, huge metal cliffs and metal-encrusted eroded lava flows greenish-yellow from sulfur — “almost certain to be completely wrong,” according to Elkins-Tanton. It’s also possible that trace amounts of gold, silver, platinum or iridium — iron-loving elements — could be dissolved in the asteroid’s iron and nickel, she said.

    “There’s a very good chance that it’s going to be outside of our imaginings, and that is my fondest hope,” she said.

    Believed to be a planetary building block from the solar system’s formation 4.5 billion years ago, the asteroid can help answer such fundamental questions as how did life arise on Earth and what makes our planet habitable, according to Elkins-Tanton.

    On Earth, the planet’s iron core is responsible for the magnetic field that shields our atmosphere and enables life.

    Led by Arizona State University on NASA’s behalf, the $1.2 billion mission will use a roundabout route to get to the asteroid. The van-size spacecraft with solar panels big enough to fill a tennis court will swoop past Mars for a gravity boost in 2026. Three years later, it will reach the asteroid and attempt to go into orbit around it, circling as high as 440 miles (700 kilometers) and as close as 47 miles (75 kilometers) until at least 2031.

    The spacecraft relies on solar electric propulsion, using xenon gas-fed thrusters and their gentle blue-glowing pulses. An experimental communication system is also along for the ride, using lasers instead of radio waves in an attempt to expand the flow of data from deep space to Earth. NASA expects the test to yield more than 10 times the amount of data, enough to transmit videos from the moon or Mars one day.

    The spacecraft should have soared a year ago, but was held up by delays in flight software testing attributed to poor management and other issues. The revised schedule added extra travel time. So instead of arriving at the asteroid in 2026 as originally planned, the spacecraft won’t get there until 2029.

    That’s the same year that another NASA spacecraft — the one that just returned asteroid samples to the Utah desert — will arrive at a different space rock as it buzzes Earth.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA sends spacecraft on a six-year journey to explore a rare asteroid made of metal

    NASA sends spacecraft on a six-year journey to explore a rare asteroid made of metal

    NASA sends spacecraft on a six-year journey to explore a rare asteroid made of metal

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  • NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

    NASA’s first asteroid samples land on Earth after release from spacecraft

    NASA’s first asteroid samples fetched from deep space parachuted into the Utah desert Sunday to cap a seven-year journey.

    In a flyby of Earth, the Osiris-Rex spacecraft released the sample capsule from 63,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) out. The small capsule landed four hours later on a remote expanse of military land, as the mothership set off after another asteroid.

    “We have touchdown!” Mission Recovery Operations announced, immediately repeating the news since the landing occurred three minutes early. Officials later said the orange striped parachute opened four times higher than anticipated — around 20,000 feet (6,100 meters) — correctly basing it on the deceleration rate.

    Forty minutes later, the recovery team confirmed the capsule was intact and had not been breached.

    “It’s like ‘Wow!’” said NASA astronaut Sunita Williams, who was in Utah training for her own space capsule mission. “This is just amazing. It can go from the movies, but this is reality.”

    Scientists estimate the capsule holds at least a cup of rubble from the carbon-rich asteroid known as Bennu, but won’t know for sure until the container is opened. Some spilled and floated away when the spacecraft scooped up too much and rocks jammed the container’s lid during collection three years ago.

    Japan, the only other country to bring back asteroid samples, gathered about a teaspoon in a pair of asteroid missions.

    The pebbles and dust delivered Sunday represent the biggest haul from beyond the moon. Preserved building blocks from the dawn of our solar system 4.5 billion years ago, the samples will help scientists better understand how Earth and life formed.

    Osiris-Rex, the mothership, rocketed away on the $1 billion mission in 2016. It reached Bennu two years later and, using a long stick vacuum, grabbed rubble from the small roundish space rock in 2020. By the time it returned, the spacecraft had logged 4 billion miles (6.2 billion kilometers).

    Flight controllers for spacecraft builder Lockheed Martin stood and applauded at touchdown from their base in Colorado, ecstatic to have the precious samples on Earth. NASA camera views showed the charred capsule upside down on the sand with its parachute disconnected and strewn nearby, as the recovery team moved in.

    NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said the samples will provide “an extraordinary glimpse into the beginnings of our solar system.”

    With these samples, “we are edging closer to understanding its early chemical composition, the formation of water, and the molecules life is based on,” astronomer Daniel Brown of Nottingham Trent University in England said.

    One Osiris-Rex team member was stuck in England, rehearsing for a concert tour. “My heart’s there with you as this precious sample is recovered,” Queen’s lead guitarist Brian May, who’s also an astrophysicist, said in a prerecorded message. “Happy Sample Return Day.”

    NASA’s recovery effort in Utah included helicopters as well as a temporary clean room set up at the Defense Department’s Utah Test and Training Range. The samples will be flown Monday morning to a new lab at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston. The building already houses the hundreds of pounds (kilograms) of moon rocks gathered by the Apollo astronauts more than a half-century ago.

    The mission’s lead scientist, Dante Lauretta of the University of Arizona, will accompany the samples to Texas. The opening of the container in Houston in the next day or two will be “the real moment of truth,” given the uncertainty over the amount inside, he said ahead of the landing.

    Engineers estimate the canister holds 250 grams (8.82 ounces) of material from Bennu, plus or minus 100 grams (plus or minus 3.53 ounces). Even at the low end, it will easily surpass the minimum requirement of the mission, Lauretta said.

    It will take a few weeks to get a precise measurement, said NASA’s lead curator Nicole Lunning.

    NASA plans a public show-and-tell in October.

    Currently orbiting the sun 50 million miles (81 million kilometers) from Earth, Bennu is about one-third of a mile (one-half of a kilometer) across, roughly the size of the Empire State Building but shaped like a spinning top. It’s believed to be the broken fragment of a much larger asteroid.

    During a two-year survey, Osiris-Rex found Bennu to be a chunky rubble pile full of boulders and craters. The surface was so loose that the spacecraft’s vacuum arm sank a foot or two (0.5 meters) into the asteroid, sucking up more material than anticipated and jamming the lid.

    These close-up observations may come in handy late in the next century. Bennu is expected to come dangerously close to Earth in 2182 — possibly close enough to hit. The data gleaned by Osiris-Rex will help with any asteroid-deflection effort, according to Lauretta.

    Osiris-Rex is already chasing after the asteroid Apophis, and will reach it in 2029.

    This was NASA’s third sample return from a deep-space robotic mission. The Genesis spacecraft dropped off bits of solar wind in 2004, but the samples were compromised when the parachute failed and the capsule slammed into the ground. The Stardust spacecraft successfully delivered comet dust in 2006.

    NASA’s plans to return samples from Mars are on hold after an independent review board criticized the cost and complexity. The Martian rover Perseverance has spent the past two years collecting core samples for eventual transport to Earth.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Science and Educational Media Group. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • UAE announces groundbreaking mission to asteroid belt, seeking clues to life’s origins

    UAE announces groundbreaking mission to asteroid belt, seeking clues to life’s origins

    DUBAI, United Arab Emirates — The United Arab Emirates unveiled plans Monday to send a spaceship to explore the solar system’s main asteroid belt, the latest space project by the oil-rich nation after it launched the successful Hope spacecraft to Mars in 2020.

    Dubbed the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt, the project aims to develop a spacecraft in the coming years and then launch it in 2028 to study various asteroids.

    “This mission is a follow up and a follow on the Mars mission, where it was the first mission to Mars from the region,” said Mohsen Al Awadhi, program director of the Emirates Mission to the Asteroid Belt. “We’re creating the same thing with this mission. That is, the first mission ever to explore these seven asteroids in specific and the first of its kind when it’s looked at from the grand tour aspect.”

    The UAE became the first Arab country and the second country ever to successfully enter Mars’ orbit on its first try when its Hope probe reached the red planet in February 2021. The craft’s goals include providing the first complete picture of the Martian atmosphere and its layers and helping answer key questions about the planet’s climate and composition.

    If successful, the newly announced spacecraft will soar at speeds reaching 33,000 kilometers (20,500 miles) per hour on a seven-year journey to explore six asteroids. It will culminate in the deployment of a landing craft onto a seventh, rare “red” asteroid that scientists say may hold insight into the building blocks of life on Earth.

    Organic compounds like water are crucial constituents of life and have been found on some asteroids, potentially delivered through collisions with other organic-rich bodies or via the creation of complex organic molecules in space. Investigating the origins of these compounds, along with the possible presence of water on red asteroids, could shed light on the origin of Earth’s water, thereby offering valuable insights into the genesis of life on our planet.

    The endeavor is a significant milestone for the burgeoning UAE Space Agency, established in 2014, as it follows up on its success in sending the Amal, or “Hope,” probe to Mars. The new journey would span a distance over ten times greater than the Mars mission.

    The explorer is named MBR after Dubai’s ruler Sheikh Mohammed bin Rashid Al Maktoum, who also serves as the vice president and prime minister of the hereditarily ruled UAE. It will first make its way toward Venus, where the planet’s gravitational pull will slingshot it back past the Earth and then Mars.

    The craft will eventually reach the asteroid belt, flying as close as 150 kilometers (93 miles) to the celestial boulders and covering a total distance of 5 billion kilometers (around 3 billion miles).

    In October 2034, the craft is expected to make its final thrust to the seventh and last asteroid, named Justitia, before deploying a lander over a year later. Justitia, believed to be one of only two known red asteroids, is thought to potentially have a surface laden with organic substances.

    “It’s one of the two reddest objects in the asteroid belt, and scientists don’t really understand why it’s so red,” said Hoor AlMaazmi, a space science researcher at the UAE space agency. “There are theories about it being originally from the Kuiper Belt and where there’s much more red objects there. So that’s one thing that we can study because it has the potential for it to be water rich as well.”

    The MBR Explorer will deploy a landing craft to study the surface of Justitia that will be fully developed by private UAE start-up companies. It may lay the groundwork for possible future resource extraction from asteroids to eventually support extended human missions in space — and maybe even the UAE’s ambitious goal of building a colony on Mars by 2117.

    “We have identified different key areas that we want startups in the private sector to be part of, and we will engage with them through that,” said Al Awadhi. “We understand that the knowledge we have in the UAE is you know still being built. We will provide these startups with the knowledge they need.”

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  • Smashing success: NASA asteroid strike results in big nudge

    Smashing success: NASA asteroid strike results in big nudge

    CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla. — A spacecraft that plowed into a small, harmless asteroid millions of miles away succeeded in shifting its orbit, NASA said Tuesday in announcing the results of its save-the-world test.

    The space agency attempted the test two weeks ago to see if in the future a killer rock could be nudged out of Earth’s way.

    “This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us,” NASA Administrator Bill Nelson said during a briefing at NASA headquarters in Washington.

    The Dart spacecraft carved a crater into the asteroid Dimorphos on Sept. 26, hurling debris out into space and creating a cometlike trail of dust and rubble stretching several thousand miles (kilometers). It took days of telescope observations from Chile and South Africa to determine how much the impact altered the path of the 525-foot (160-meter) asteroid around its companion, a much bigger space rock.

    Before the impact, the moonlet took 11 hours and 55 minutes to circle its parent asteroid. Scientists had hoped to shave off 10 minutes but Nelson said the impact shortened the asteroid’s orbit by about 32 minutes.

    The amount of debris apparently played a role in the outcome, scientists said. The impact may also have left Dimorphos wobbling a bit, said NASA program scientist Tom Statler. That may affect the orbit, but it will never go back to its original orbit, he noted.

    Neither asteroid posed a threat to Earth — and still don’t as they continue their journey around the sun. That’s why scientists picked the pair for the world’s first attempt to alter the position of a celestial body.

    Planetary defense experts prefer nudging a threatening asteroid or comet out of the way, given enough lead time, rather than blowing it up and creating multiple pieces that could rain down on Earth.

    “This is spectacular that we’ve taken this first step … but we really need to also have that warning time for a technique like this to be effective,” said mission leader Nancy Chabot of Johns Hopkins University’s Applied Physics Laboratory, which built the spacecraft and managed the $325 million mission.

    “You’ve got to know they’re coming,” said NASA’s Lori Glaze.

    Launched last year, the vending machine-size Dart — short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test — was destroyed when it slammed into the asteroid 7 million miles (11 million kilometers) away at 14,000 mph (22,500 kph).

    ”We’ve been imagining this for years and to have it finally be real is really quite a thrill,” said Statler.

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    The Associated Press Health and Science Department receives support from the Howard Hughes Medical Institute’s Department of Science Education. The AP is solely responsible for all content.

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  • NASA says spacecraft crash changed an asteroid’s orbit in test to protect Earth from future threats

    NASA says spacecraft crash changed an asteroid’s orbit in test to protect Earth from future threats

    NASA says spacecraft crash changed an asteroid’s orbit in test to protect Earth from future threats

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  • The first crop of space mining companies didn’t work out, but a new generation is trying again

    The first crop of space mining companies didn’t work out, but a new generation is trying again

    Just a couple of years ago, it seemed that space mining was inevitable. Analysts, tech visionaries and even renowned astrophysicist Neil deGrasse Tyson predicted that space mining was going to be big business.

    Space mining companies like Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries, backed by the likes of Google‘s Larry Page and Eric Schmidt, cropped up to take advantage of the predicted payoff.

    Fast forward to 2022, and both Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries have been acquired by companies that have nothing to do with space mining. Humanity has yet to commercially mine even a single asteroid. So what’s taking so long?

    Space mining is a long-term undertaking and one that investors do not necessarily have the patience to support. 

    “If we had to develop a full-scale asteroid mining vehicle today, we would need a few hundred million dollars to do that using commercial processes. It would be difficult to convince the investment community that that’s the right thing to do,” says Joel Sercel, president and CEO of TransAstra Corporation.

    “In today’s economics and in the economics of the near future, the next few years, it makes no sense to go after precious metals in asteroids. And the reason is the cost of getting to and from the asteroids is so high that it vastly outstrips the value of anything that you’d harness from the asteroids,” Sercel says.

    This has not dissuaded Sercel from trying to mine the cosmos. TransAstra will initially focus on mining asteroids for water to make rocket propellant, but would like to eventually mine “everything on the periodic table.” But Sercel says such a mission is still a ways off.

    “In terms of the timeline for mining asteroids, for us, the biggest issue is funding. So it depends on how fast we can scale the business into these other ventures and then get practical engineering experience operating systems that have all the components of an asteroid mining system. But we could be launching an asteroid mission in the 5 to 7-year time frame.”

    Sercel hopes these other ventures keep it afloat until it develops its asteroid mining business. The idea is to use the tech that will eventually be incorporated into TransAstra’s astroid mining missions to satisfy already existing market needs, such as using space tugs to deliver satellites to their exact orbits and using satellites to aid in traffic management as space gets increasingly more crowded.

    AstroForge is another company that believes space mining will become a reality. Founded in 2022 by a former SpaceX engineer and a former Virgin Galactic engineer, AstroForge still believes there is money to be made in mining asteroids for precious metals.

    “On Earth we have a limited amount of rare earth elements, specifically the platinum group metals. These are industrial metals that are used in everyday things your cell phone, cancer, drugs, catalytic converters, and we’re running out of them. And the only way to access more of these is to go off world,” says AstroForge Co-Founder and CEO Matt Gialich.

    AstroForge plans to mine and refine these metals in space and then bring them back to earth to sell. To keep costs down, AstroForge will attach its refining payload to off-the shelf satellites and launch those satellites on SpaceX rockets.

    “There’s quite a few companies that make what is referred to as a satellite bus. This is what you would typically think of as a satellite, the kind of box with solar panels on it, a propulsion system being connected to it. So for us, we didn’t want to reinvent the wheel there,” Gialich says. “The previous people before us, Planetary Resources and DSI [Deep Space Industries], they had to buy entire vehicles. They had to build much, much larger and much more expensive satellites, which required a huge injection of capital. And I think that was the ultimate downfall of both of those companies.”

    The biggest challenge, AstroForge says, is deciding which asteroids to target for mining. Prior to conducting their own missions, all early-stage mining companies have to go on is existing observation data from researchers and a hope that the asteroids they have selected contain the minerals they seek. 

    “The technology piece you can control, the operations pieces you can control, but you can’t control what the asteroid is until you get there,” says Jose Acain, AstroForge Co-Founder and CTO.

    To find out more about the challenges facing space mining companies and their plans to make space mining a real business watch the video.

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