Latest Potentially Hazardous Object Stories
April Flowers for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online A critical design test for an infrared sensor that could improve NASA's future ability to detect and track asteroids and comets has been passed. The Near Earth Object Camera's (NEOCam) performance in an environment that mimicked the temperatures and pressures of deep space were assessed by the test. NEOCam will be the key instrument for a proposed new asteroid-hunting space-based telescope for which design and capability details have...
[Watch Video: Surface Features of Asteroid Toutatis Revealed By Radar] Lawrence LeBlond for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online An asteroid by the name of 4179 Toutatis passed close enough to Earth last week that China’s Chang’e-2 probe was able to fly by the object, named for the Celtic deity Teutates by Christian Pollas in 1989, and snap some photos. The asteroid reportedly passed within 2 miles of the probe before swinging back out in Jupiter’s neighborhood. China’s...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online Potentially Hazardous Asteroid, 4179 Toutatis, will be making a close approach of Earth this week, just in time to give "world ending" theorists something to talk about. The asteroid has an estimated diameter of over 3 miles, which is about half the size of the asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs. Some believe that the Mayan calendar predicts the world will be ending this year on December 21 due to an asteroid striking...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com - Your Universe Online The European Space Agency (ESA) reports that it has rediscovered an asteroid that was once lost through the agency's space hazards program. Potentially Hazardous Asteroid 2008SE85 was first discovered back in September 2008 by the Catalina Sky Survey, and was observed by a few observatories the following month. However, no one since then has observed the object, and predictions for its current position had become so inaccurate that...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com – Your Universe Online In relative terms, the Earth is about to escape another asteroid impact on Thursday by the hair on its chin. Although it's not like the 14-story sized asteroid is going to be nearing so close to Earth that you will be getting a prime view of in it your backyard, it will be about 7.5 times the Moon's distance from our planet. The asteroid, which is between 625 and 1,400 feet across, is close enough to Earth to be classified a...
WASHINGTON, June 15, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Researchers anticipate that asteroid 2011 AG5, discovered in January 2011, will fly safely past and not impact Earth in 2040. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Current findings and analysis data were reported at a May 29 workshop at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., attended by scientists and engineers from around the world. Discussions focused on observations of potentially...
Lee Rannals for redOrbit.com A huge asteroid the size of a city block will be skimming by Earth on Thursday night at 8:00 eastern time. The giant space rock is about 1,650-feet wide and is big enough to qualify as a potentially hazardous asteroid. However, experts stress there is no chance of a collision, and it will be passing Earth at a safe 3 million miles away. Astronomers in Australia discovered the asteroid 2012 LZ1 on Sunday night, and found that the object is going to offer...
NASA has just received observations from its WISE (or Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer) mission, giving them the best assessment thus far of how many PHAs (potentially hazardous asteroids) are floating around in our solar system. Now, the team at NASA can count these PHAs, discover their origins and predict what kind of harm they may pose to Earth. According to a report from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, these PHAs are a subset of a larger group of near-Earth asteroids...
WASHINGTON, May 16, 2012 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- Observations from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to the best assessment yet of our solar system's population of potentially hazardous asteroids. The results reveal new information about their total numbers, origins and the possible dangers they may pose. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Potentially hazardous asteroids, or PHAs, are a subset of the larger group of near-Earth...
WASHINGTON, Sept. 29, 2011 /PRNewswire-USNewswire/ -- New observations by NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, show there are significantly fewer near-Earth asteroids in the mid-size range than previously thought. The findings also indicate NASA has found more than 90 percent of the largest near-Earth asteroids, meeting a goal agreed to with Congress in 1998. (Logo: http://photos.prnewswire.com/prnh/20081007/38461LOGO) Astronomers now estimate there are roughly 19,500 --...
