Asteroids

Asteroids
Lucy
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft took this image of the main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson during its flyby on April 20, 2025, showing the elongated contact binary (an object formed when two smaller bodies collide). This was Lucy’s second flyby in the spacecraft’s 12-year mission.  Launched on Oct. 16, 2021, Lucy is the first space mission sent to […]
Posted April 23, 2025
Asteroids
Goddard Space Flight Center
Jupiter
Lucy
Planetary Science Division
Science Mission Directorate
The Solar System
Trojan Asteroids
Uncategorized
NASA has selected eight participating scientists to join its Lucy mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids.
Posted February 27, 2025
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer)
Asteroids
Bennu
Goddard Space Flight Center
Johnson Space Center
Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA)
Planetary Science Division
Science Mission Directorate
NASA will brief media at 11 a.m. EST Wednesday, Jan. 29, to provide an update on science results from NASA’s OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer) mission, which delivered a sample of asteroid Bennu to Earth in September 2023.
Posted January 24, 2025
Asteroids
Earth's Moon
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Planetary Defense
Planetary Defense Coordination Office
Planetary Science
Lee esta historia en español aquí. The near-Earth object was likely ejected into space after an impact thousands of years ago. Now it could contribute new insights to asteroid and lunar science.
Posted January 22, 2025
NASA+
Asteroids
Planetary Defense
Planetary Defense Coordination Office
Planetary Science
Planetary Science Division
Science Mission Directorate
Social Media
NASA is bringing the high-stakes world of planetary defense to the Sundance Film Festival, highlighting its upcoming documentary, “Planetary Defenders,” during a panel ahead of its spring 2025 premiere on the agency’s streaming service.
Posted January 17, 2025
Asteroids
Ames Research Center
Ames Research Center's Science Directorate
General
James Webb Space Telescope (JWST)
Missions
NASA Centers & Facilities
The Solar System
NASA’s powerful James Webb Space Telescope includes asteroids on its list of objects studied and secrets revealed.  A team led by researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in Cambridge repurposed Webb’s observations of a distant star to reveal a population of small asteroids — smaller than astronomers had ever detected orbiting
Posted December 20, 2024
Dawn
Asteroids
Ceres
Jet Propulsion Laboratory
Vesta
Known as flow formations, these channels could be etched on bodies that would seem inhospitable to liquid because they are exposed to the extreme vacuum conditions of space. Pocked with craters, the surfaces of many celestial bodies in our solar system provide clear evidence of a 4.6-billion-year battering by meteoroids and other space debris.
Posted December 20, 2024
Comets
Asteroids
The Solar System
These celestial objects look like asteroids but act like comets now come in two flavors. The first dark comet — a celestial object that looks like an asteroid but moves through space like a comet — was reported less than two years ago. Soon after, another six were found. In a new paper, researchers announce […]
Posted December 9, 2024
Johnson Space Center
Asteroids
Astromaterials
Bennu
General
Missions
NASA Centers & Facilities
NASA Directorates
OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer)
Planetary Science
Planetary Science Division
Science & Research
Science Mission Directorate
Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Inst.
The Solar System
As part of an asteroid sample exchange, NASA has transferred to JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency) a portion of the asteroid Bennu sample collected by the agency’s OSIRIS-REx mission. The sample was officially handed over by NASA officials during a ceremony on Aug. 22 at JAXA’s Sagamihara, Japan, campus.
Posted August 23, 2024
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