Latest Spaceguard Stories

A bright ball of light traveling east to west was seen over the skies of central/northern California Sunday morning, April 22. The former space rock-turned-flaming-meteor entered Earth's atmosphere around 8 a.m. PDT. Reports of the fireball have come in from as far north as Sacramento, Calif. and as far east as North Las Vegas, Nev. Bill Cooke of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., estimates the object was about the size of a...

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 --...

Scientists at NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., have determined that a small object that safely passed Earth on May 21 is more than likely an upper-stage of a rocket that carried a spacecraft on an interplanetary trajectory."The orbit of this object is very similar to that of the Earth, and one would not expect an object to remain in this type of orbit for very long," said Paul Chodas, a scientist at NASA's Near-Earth...

Near-Earth asteroid 2005 YU55 was "imaged" by the Arecibo Radar Telescope in Puerto Rico on April 19. Data collected during Arecibo's observation of 2005 YU55 allowed the Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory to refine the space rock's orbit, allowing scientists to rule out any possibility of an Earth impact for the next 100 years.The space rock was about 2.3 million kilometers (1.5 million miles) from Earth at the time this image of the radar echo was...

Scientists using a NASA funded telescope have detected water-ice and carbon-based organic compounds on the surface of an asteroid. The cold hard facts of the discovery of the frosty mixture on one of the asteroid belt's largest occupants, suggests that some asteroids, along with their celestial brethren, comets, were the water carriers for a primordial Earth. The research is published in the April 28 issue of the journal Nature."For a long time the thinking was that you couldn't find a...

A newly discovered asteroid, 2010 GA6, will safely fly by Earth this Thursday at 4:06 p.m. Pacific (23:06 U.T.C.). At time of closest approach 2010 GA6 will be about 359,000 kilometers (223,000 miles) away from Earth - about 9/10ths the distance from to the moon. The asteroid, approximately 22 meters (71 feet) wide, was discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey, Tucson, Az."Fly bys of near-Earth objects within the moon's orbit occur every few weeks," said Don Yeomans of NASA's...

Just before dawn on Oct. 7, 2008, an SUV-sized asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere and exploded harmlessly over the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan. Scientists expected the asteroid, called 2008 TC3, had blown to dust in the resulting high-altitude fireball.What happened next excited the scientific community.Peter Jenniskens, a meteor astronomer with the SETI Institute in Mountain View, Calif., who works at NASA's Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif., joined Muawia Shaddad of the...

A small asteroid will fly past Earth early tomorrow morning (Wed., March 18). The asteroid, 2009 FH, is about 50 feet (15 meters) wide. Its closest approach to Earth will occur at 5:17 a.m. PDT (8:17 a.m. EDT, 12:17 UTC) at an altitude of about 49,000 miles (79,000 kilometers)."This asteroid flyby will be a good viewing opportunity for both professional and amateur astronomers," said Don Yeomans of the Near-Earth Object Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif. "The...

The University of Arizona's Catalina Sky Survey has been awarded a $3.16 million NASA grant to continue its search for near-Earth objects, or NEOs, through 2012.Under the direction of Stephen M. Larson of the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, the survey, known as CSS, has discovered about 70 percent of all NEOs found in past three years. CSS tallied 565 NEO discoveries in 2008, which broke its record-setting number of 460 NEO discoveries in 2007.Thanks to an additional $250,000 NASA grant,...

Scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.,  have obtained the first images of asteroid 2007 TU24 using high-resolution radar data. The data indicate the asteroid is somewhat asymmetrical in shape, with a diameter roughly 250 meters (800 feet) in size. Asteroid 2007 TU24 will pass within 1.4 lunar distances, or 538,000 kilometers (334,000 miles), of Earth on Jan. 29 at 12:33 a.m. Pacific time (3:33 a.m. Eastern time). "With these first radar observations...