Asteroid news, features and articles

An asteroid that fell to Earth and exploded above Canada in 2022 was only around 20 inches wide — the smallest space rock ever properly measured, researchers say.

Scientists have found microorganisms crawling over a sample retrieved from the 200 million-mile-distant asteroid Ryugu. But they almost certainly came from Earth.

A new study reveals that the asteroid 2024 PT5, which has been orbiting Earth for 2 months, may have a "lunar origin." However, it is about to break free from our planet, making it tricky to tell for sure.

A small asteroid burned up in Earth's atmosphere off the coast of California just hours after being discovered and before impact monitoring systems had registered its trajectory.

When the 'God of chaos' asteroid Apophis makes an ultraclose flyby of Earth in 2029, our planet's gravity may trigger tremors and landslides that totally change the asteroid's surface.

Four "potentially hazardous" space rocks, which are between 100 and 580 feet across, will all make their closest approaches to Earth within less than 12 hours of one another on Thursday (Oct. 24). Two of them were only discovered earlier this month.

Material harvested from asteroids could be used to sustain astronauts during long-duration space missions.

The Taurid Meteoroid Stream, which is possibly responsible for the famous Tunguska and Chelyabinsk impacts, probably doesn't hide a civilization-killing asteroid.

On Sunday, Sept. 29, Earth captured a new "minimoon" called 2024 PT5. The bus-size asteroid is expected to orbit our planet for 57 days, but is too small to be visible to amateur skywatchers.

A powerful burst of X-rays from a nuclear explosion could be used to stop Armageddon just in the nick of time, a new experiment suggests.