The famous UK landmark is 443 feet high, and the space rock is larger than the London Eye by as much as 50 per cent.
A huge asteroid believed to be more than one and half times the size of the London Eye is approaching Earth, space agency NASA has warned.
The space agency said: "Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid's potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
Publisher: WION
Twitter: @WIOnews
And here's another article: Asteroid strike, not volcanism, may have wiped out dinosaur habitats | Science News 
For decades, scientists have gone back and forth about whether massive volcanic eruptions or an asteroid impact — or maybe both — caused a mass extinction that saw the demise of all nonbird dinosaurs about 66 million years ago.
Now, geologic evidence and data on dinosaur habitats, combined with climate and ecological simulations, suggest it wasn't the volcanism. Instead, a decades-long cold winter triggered by the giant impact wiped out dinosaur habitats and made it impossible for the creatures to survive , researchers report June 29 in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences .
Publisher: Science News
Date: July 17 2020
Twitter: @sciencenews
Asteroid news: NASA reveals 'hazardous' asteroid bigger than London Eye on close
One AU (149,598,000 km) is the distance between the Earth and the Sun, so come Saturday, the asteroid will be 5,086,327 kilometres from our planet - a hair's width in astronomical terms.
The space rock is also travelling at a staggering 13.5 kilometres per second - or 48,000 kilometres per hour.
* * *
The space agency said: “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
Publisher: Express.co.uk
Date: 2020-07-17T06:17:00 01:00
Author: Sean Martin
Asteroid samples aboard Japanese probe on track for return to Earth in December – A capsule carrying extraterrestrial specimens collected by Japan’s Hayabusa 2 spacecraft is scheduled for landing in South Australia on Dec. 6 to wrap up a six-year round-trip mission to an asteroid, officials announced this week.
Officials from the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, or JAXA, and the Australian Space Agency said Tuesday they are preparing for the return of Hayabusa 2 in December.
The Hayabusa 2 spacecraft will release a sample return canister as it approaches Earth, then divert itself away from the planet and continue into space. Protected by a heat shield, the nearly 16-inch-diameter (40-centimeter) return capsule will plunge into the atmosphere at more than 26,000 mph (43,000 kilometers per hour) and deploy a parachute for a soft landing in Australia.
Even in the extremely minute chance it would hit Earth, at 49 metres it would not pose a significant threat, causing a similar explosion to the Chelyabinsk incident.
In 2013, a 20-metre meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, smashing windows and caused injuries to more than 1,000 people.
But despite its small size, NASA has described the coming space rock as a "potentially hazardous asteroid".
The space agency said: “Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs) are currently defined based on parameters that measure the asteroid’s potential to make threatening close approaches to the Earth.
Publisher: Express.co.uk
Date: 2020-07-17T06:16:00 01:00
Author: Sean Martin
Comet Neowise Is Visible Worldwide In July : NPR 
Comet Neowise passes St. Mary's Lighthouse in Whitley Bay, U.K., in the early hours of Tuesday morning. Owen Humphreys /PA Images via Getty Images hide caption
The first thing to know about a new comet that has appeared in the evening sky is that it's one big ice ball: about 5 kilometers (3.1 miles) across.
"Just to put it into context, about 65 million years ago there was an asteroid or a comet that was thought to have caused the extinction of the dinosaurs," says astronomer Amy Mainzer. "That object is thought to have been about 5 to 10 kilometers across."
Publisher: NPR.org
Date: 2020-07-15
Twitter: @NPR
Japanese capsule carrying pieces of asteroid Ryugu will land on Earth Dec. 6 | Space 
The pristine asteroid material collected by a Japanese spacecraft last year will come down to Earth less than five months from now, if all goes according to plan.
Samples of the 3,000-foot-wide (900 meters) near-Earth asteroid Ryugu snagged by Japan's Hayabusa2 probe are scheduled to land in the South Australian Outback on Dec. 6 local time, officials of both nations' space agencies announced yesterday (July 14).
The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) "has applied for the Authorization of Return of Overseas Launched Space Object (AROLSO), and both agencies are currently in the process of confirming this. The application will be approved under the Australian Space Activities Act, which came into force in 1998," JAXA and Australian Space Agency officials said in a joint statement yesterday.
Publisher: Space.com
Date: 2020-07-15T20:13:17 00:00
Author: https www facebook com spacecom
Twitter: @SPACEdotcom
Asteroid Deflection Planetary Defense Mission Target: "Dimorphos" 
Asteroid 65803 Didymos is a binary near-Earth asteroid; the primary body has a diameter of around 780 m and a rotation period of 2.26 hours, whereas the Didymoon secondary body has a diameter of around 160 m and rotates around the primary at a distance of around 1.2 km from the primary surface in around 12 hours. Credit: ESA
The destination of ESA’s Hera mission for planetary defense – a tiny asteroid moonlet – has finally received its official name. After years of informal nicknames and temporary designations, the smaller of the Didymos asteroid pair has been formally christened ‘Dimorphos’ by the International Astronomical Union.
Publisher: SciTechDaily
Date: 2020-07-11T22:13:04-07:00
Author: Mike O
Happening on Twitter
