Latest Meteoroids Stories
The Perseid meteor shower is peaking around August 12 through the 13th, but this year it will have to pierce through the sky against a full Moon.The Perseid meteor shower has been observed for about 2000 years and is associated with the comet Switf-Tuttle.The shower is visible from mid-July each year, with the peak in activity being between August 9 and 14, depending on the particular location of the stream. The rate of meteors reaches 60 or more per hour during the peak hours, and they can...
By Dauna Coulter, Science @ NASAEvery day about 100 tons of meteoroids -- fragments of dust and gravel and sometimes even big rocks "“ enter the Earth's atmosphere. Stand out under the stars for more than a half an hour on a clear night and you'll likely see a few of the meteors produced by the onslaught. But where does all this stuff come from? Surprisingly, the answer is not well known.Now NASA is deploying a network of smart cameras across the United States to answer the question, What's...
Scientists from all over the world are taking a second, more expansive, look at the car-sized asteroid that exploded over Sudan's Nubian Desert in 2008. Initial research was focused on classifying the meteorite fragments that were collected two to five months after they were strewn across the desert and tracked by NASA's Near Earth Object astronomical network. Now in a series of 20 papers for a special double issue of the journal Meteoritics and Planetary Science, published on December 15,...
WASHINGTON, Dec. 15, 2010 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- An international team of scientists studying remnants of an asteroid that crashed into the Nubian Desert in October 2008 discovered it contained at least 10 different types of meteorites. Some of them contained chemicals that form the building blocks of life on Earth, and those chemicals were spread through all parts of the asteroid by collisions. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Chemists at Stanford...
Monday evening and Tuesday morning will provide the peak time to enjoy the 2010 Geminid meteor shower. Astronomy aficionados in most parts of the world will be able to see what the AFP news agency dubs "the best meteor shower of the year" through December 16.To celebrate the celestial event, NASA conducted a special "Up All Night" online event, and will continue to show live audio and video of the Geminids from the Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama...
By Louis Bergeron, Stanford UniversityStanford researchers have completed the first successful tests in zero gravity of a canopy for CubeSats "“ the tiny satellites that hitch rides on rockets sending larger satellites into orbit. The goal is to gather data on what happens when micrometeoroids slam into a satellite. Such impacts often knock out electronic equipment on satellites. The encounters are poorly understood, but the canopies could be a first step in eventually building "black...
This month, Comet Hartley 2 has put on a good show for backyard astronomers. The comet's vivid green atmosphere and auburn tail of dust look great through small telescopes, and NASA's Deep Impact/EPOXI probe is about to return even more dramatic pictures when it flies past the comet's nucleus on Nov. 4th. Another kind of show might be in the offing as well. Could this comet produce a meteor shower?"Probably not," says Bill Cooke of NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office, "but the...
A small asteroid will fly past Earth early Tuesday within the Earth-moon system. The asteroid, 2010 TD54, will have its closest approach to Earth's surface at an altitude of about 45,000 kilometers (27,960 miles) at 6:50 EDT a.m. (3:50 a.m. PDT). At that time, the asteroid will be over southeastern Asia in the vicinity of Singapore. During its flyby, Asteroid 2010 TD54 has zero probability of impacting Earth. A telescope of the NASA-sponsored Catalina Sky Survey north of Tucson, Arizona...
Summer means fireworks, and here's how to see some of Nature's best displays. Start with a few comets streaking around the solar system, leaving behind dusty trails of gas, ice, rocks and dust. Then find a comfortable nighttime seat on planet Earth as it passes through these dusty comet trails. Finally, sit back and enjoy the show as bits of leftover comet burn up in our atmosphere, creating the celestial displays that we call meteor showers.On Thursday, July 22, astronomer Bill Cooke from...
NASA is evaluating the potential risks to spacecraft posed by the upcoming Draconid meteor shower in 2011, a seven-hour storm of tiny space rocks that could possibly damage major Earth-orbiting spacecraft like the International Space Station. Meteor shower risk assessment is more art than science, and some variations have been predicted for the 2011 Draconids by meteor forecasters. Because of this, spacecraft operators are being notified to weigh out defensive steps. Current forecast models...
Latest Meteoroids Reference Libraries
Perseids Meteor Shower -- Like most meteor showers, the Perseids are caused by comet debris. As comets enter the inner solar system, they are warmed by the sun and peppered by the solar wind, which produces the familar tails that stretch across the night sky when a bright comet is close to Earth. Comet tails are made of tiny pieces of ice, dust, and rock which are spewed into interplanetary space as they bubble off the comet's nucleus. When Earth encounters these particles on its...
Near-Earth Object -- Near-Earth Objects (NEO) are asteroids, comets and large meteoroids whose orbit intersects Earth's orbit and which may therefore pose a collision danger. Due to their size and proximity, NEO's are also more easily accessible for spacecraft from Earth and are important for future scientific investigation and commercial development. In fact, some near-Earth asteroids can be reached with much less ΔV (change in velocity) than the Moon. In the United States, NASA...
