NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the world’s first full-scale mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards, launched Wednesday at 1:21 a.m. EST on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Space Launch Complex 4 East at Vandenberg Space Force Base in California. Just one part of NASA’s larger planetary defense strategy,…
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Asteroid 2001 FO32 is the biggest known asteroid to sweep past Earth in 2021. It was discovered on March 23, 2001, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research project, near Socorro, New Mexico. Asteroid 2001 FO32 is estimated to be about .6 miles in diameter. Although there’s no risk of impact, the space rock is of interest also because it’s…
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A large asteroid will pass Earth at more than 11 times the moon’s distance on November 29, 2020 and will approach our planet more closely in later flybys. 2000 WO107 is an asteroid, classified as near-Earth object and potentially hazardous asteroid of the Aten group. It was discovered on 29 November 2000, by astronomers of the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research at the Lincoln Laboratory’s Experimental Test Site near…
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2020 SO is a tiny near-Earth asteroid or artificial object discovered by the Pan-STARRS1 survey at the Haleakala Observatory on September 17, 2020. It is currently approaching Earth and its nominal trajectory indicates that it will be temporarily captured by Earth by October 15, 2020. It will enter via the outer Lagrange point L2 and exit via Lagrange point L1. During its geocentric orbit around Earth, 2020 SO will make a close approach to Earth around…
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house-sized asteroid was discovered by astronomers at the Mount Lemmon Observatory outside of Tucson, Arizona on March 9, 2019
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On July 23, 2017, astronomers detected a small asteroid now designated Asteroid 2017 001, three days after it passed by at 1/3 the moon’s distance from the Earth
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