Comets/Asteroids

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona/Lockheed Martin A NASA spacecraft that will return a sample of a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu to Earth in 2023 made the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting…

OSIRIS-REx images Bennu to understand formation, compositionCredit: NASA/GSFC/University of Arizona SAN ANTONIO -- March 19, 2019 -- A Southwest Research Institute-led team has discovered that the surface geology on asteroid Bennu is older…

OSIRIS-REx spectral data consistent with meteorites found on EarthCredit: Courtesy of NASA/GSFC/University of Arizona SAN ANTONIO -- March 19, 2019 -- A Southwest Research Institute-led team discovered evidence of abundant…

Hayabusa2 helps researchers understand ingredients for life in early solar systemCredit: © 2019 Seiji Sugita et al., Science The first data received from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft in orbit of asteroid Ryugu helps space scientists…

Research led by the University of Colorado Boulder is revealing the Alice in Wonderland-like physics that govern gravity near the surface of the asteroid Bennu. The new findings are part of a suite of papers published today by the team…

Geologic and paleontological evidence unearthed in southern Chile supports the theory that a major cosmic impact event occurred approximately 12,800 years ago When UC Santa Barbara geology professor emeritus James Kennett and colleagues…

Credit: Army Research Laboratory Public Affairs ABERDEEN PROVING GROUND, Md. (March 13, 2019) -- NASA officials say that some rare and distinct meteorites found on Earth were actually blasted off Mars by a large impact event. One such rock…

Credit: NASA/Goddard/University of Arizona WASHINGTON -- In late 2018, the Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft arrived at Bennu, the asteroid it will be studying…

Credit: NASA's Scientific Visualization Studio/Tom Bridgman Just as dust gathers in corners and along bookshelves in our homes, dust piles up in space too. But when the dust settles in the solar system, it's often in rings. Several dust…

Moon's dayside water molecules migrate over the course of a dayCredit: PSI/Amanda Hendrix SAN ANTONIO -- March 8, 2019 -- Using the Southwest Research Institute-led Lyman Alpha Mapping Project (LAMP) aboard NASA's Lunar…