Were you following this:
Asteroid Makes the Closest Earth Flyby a Space Rock Has Ever Survived - Scientific American
A newly discovered car-sized asteroid just made the closest-known flyby to Earth without hitting our planet.
On Sunday (Aug. 16), the asteroid, initially labeled ZTF0DxQ and now formally known to astronomers as 2020 QG , swooped by Earth at a mere 1,830 miles (2,950 kilometers) away. That gives 2020 QG the title of closest asteroid flyby ever recorded that didn’t end with the space rock’s demise.
Amateur astronomer discovered the large asteroid that passed by Earth this week | Space
An amateur astronomer from Brazil discovered the large, "potentially hazardous" asteroid that safely passed by Earth this week on Thursday (Sept. 10).
The asteroid , called 2020 QU6, measures roughly 3,280 feet (1,000 meters) wide, or large enough to cause a global catastrophe if it were to hit Earth. However, it posed no risk to our planet as it travelled past the planet at a distance of more than 20 million miles (40 million kilometers), which is more than 100 times the distance between Earth and the moon, according to a statement from the Planetary Society.
Why Birds Survived, and Dinosaurs Went Extinct, After an Asteroid Hit Earth | Science |
Birds are the only dinosaurs left. That might seem strange. A pigeon or a penguin doesn’t look much like a Tyrannosaurus . But the connection is still there, all the way down to the bone. About 150 million years ago, in the Jurassic, the first birds evolved from small, feathery, raptor-like dinosaurs, becoming another branch on the dinosaur family tree.
With hindsight, birds can be categorized as avian dinosaurs and all the other sorts—from Stegosaurus to Brontosaurus —are non-avian dinosaurs. The entire reason paleontologists make that split is because of a catastrophe that struck 66 million years ago. An asteroid more than 6 miles across struck what’s now the Yucatan Peninsula, triggering the fifth mass extinction in the world’s history.
In case you are keeping track:
OHB to build ESA's Hera asteroid mission - SpaceNews
WASHINGTON — The European Space Agency on Sept. 15 finalized a contract worth 129.4 million euros ($153.3 million) with German satellite manufacturer OHB to build its Hera asteroid spacecraft with a pan-European consortium.
OHB will lead a team of companies from 17 ESA member states to complete Hera ahead of an October 2024 launch. Hera is scheduled to reach a binary asteroid pair called Didymos and Dimorphos in late 2026 for a minimum-six-month study of the asteroid system.
Japan's Hayabusa2 aims to probe asteroid "1998KY26" in 2031
Bloomberg - Are you a robot?
Where no spacecraft has gone before: A close encounter with binary asteroids
It will be a moment for twos: In 2022, the Janus team will launch two identical spacecraft that will travel millions of miles to individually fly close to two pair of binary asteroids. Their observations could open up a new window into how these diverse bodies evolve and even burst apart over time, said Daniel Scheeres, the principle investigator for Janus.
"Binary asteroids are one class of objects for which we don't have high-resolution scientific data," said Scheeres, distinguished professor in the Ann and H.J. Smead Department of Aerospace Engineering Sciences at CU Boulder. "Everything we have on them is based on ground observations, which don't give you as much detail as being up close."
Happening on Twitter
This asteroid is ejecting particles into space. A spacecraft may tell us why. https://t.co/5HSCgu1aQl https://t.co/eRU4FkcOti CNN Mon Sep 14 03:31:03 +0000 2020
Our @OSIRISREx spacecraft is orbiting asteroid Bennu, where it's set to capture a sample on Oct. 20. The mission ha… https://t.co/l3slPmSWxU NASA Wed Sep 09 17:05:27 +0000 2020
This week... 🌖 #Artemis partnerships to return lunar dust, and fly science & @NASA_Technology to the Moon 🌎 Our… https://t.co/zm2lsRrsW1 NASA Sat Sep 12 00:50:55 +0000 2020
Orbiting Bennu for nearly two years, @NASA's @OSIRISREx mission has made a surprising discovery about the distant a… https://t.co/OQPLV12ZfD NASA_Marshall (from Huntsville, Alabama USA) Thu Sep 10 16:11:02 +0000 2020
No comments:
Post a Comment