Neptune is famously a vivid blue, but the asteroids orbiting near it are decidedly not. An international team of astronomers recently took a peek at Neptune’s Trojan asteroids and found that they all seem to be some shade of red — far redder than most asteroids in the solar system. They published their results Feb. … Read more
The asteroid Ryugu, which orbits the sun between Earth and Mars, contains many of the building blocks for life, a new analysis finds. The study, published Feb. 23 in the journal Science, is one of the first peeks at the samples from Ryugu brought back by Japan’s Hayabusa2 spacecraft in 2020. The mission is only … Read more
Dust collected from the surface of an ancient, peanut-shaped and “potentially-hazardous” asteroid has revealed that some space rocks are much bouncier and harder to destroy than first thought — posing concerns about Earth’s long-term safety. The analysis of three tiny dust particles — gathered from the surface of the 1640-foot-long (500 meters) rubble pile asteroid … Read more
A potentially hazardous near-Earth asteroid is spinning faster and faster every year, and researchers aren’t sure why. The space rock, known as 3200 Phaethon, is around 3.4 miles (5.4 kilometers) wide, and its orbit through the solar system takes it closer to the sun than any other named asteroid, reaching a minimum distance of around … Read more
