Asteroids, Comets and Meteors News

November 24, 2024

Top Headlines

Ancient Hot Water on Mars Points to Habitable Past

Nov. 22, 2024 — New research has uncovered what may be the oldest direct evidence of ancient hot water activity on Mars, revealing the planet may have been habitable at some point in its ...

New Research Explores Volcanic Caves, Advancing the Search for Life on Mars

Nov. 18, 2024 — Through the intricate study of lava tubes -- caves formed following volcanic eruptions when lava cools down -- an international team of researchers has uncovered clues about Earth's ancient environments that could be significant in the search for ...

Meteorite Contains Evidence of Liquid Water on Mars 742 Million Years Ago

Nov. 13, 2024 — An asteroid struck Mars 11 million years ago and sent pieces of the red planet hurtling through space. One of these chunks of Mars eventually crashed into the Earth and is one of the few meteorites that can be traced directly to Mars. This meteorite ...

New Solar Composition Ratios That Could Reconcile Longstanding Questions

Nov. 12, 2024 — A team combined compositional data of primitive bodies like Kuiper Belt objects, asteroids and comets with new solar data sets to develop a revised solar composition that potentially reconciles spectroscopy and helioseismology measurements for the ...

Latest Headlines

updated 3:05pm EST

Asteroid Grains Shed Light on the Outer Solar System's Origins

Nov. 6, 2024 — Tiny grains from asteroid Ryugu are revealing clues to the magnetic forces that shaped the far reaches of the solar system over 4.6 billion years ago. The findings suggest the distal solar system ...

Space: A New Frontier for Exploring Stem Cell Therapy

Nov. 4, 2024 — Stem cells grown in microgravity aboard the International Space Station (ISS) have unique qualities that could one day help accelerate new biotherapies and heal complex disease, researchers say. The ...

Laser Measurements to Track Space Debris and Observe Water Masses

Oct. 30, 2024 — More accurate orbit predictions for satellites and space debris as well as a better understanding of the water masses present on Earth: Researchers at achieved both using satellite laser ...

NASA's Hubble, Webb Probe Surprisingly Smooth Disk Around Vega

Nov. 1, 2024 — Teams of astronomers used the combined power of NASA's Hubble and James Webb space telescopes to revisit the legendary Vega ...

Faster Space Communication With Record-Sensitive Receiver

Oct. 30, 2024 — In space exploration, long-distance optical links can now be used to transmit images, films and data from space probes to Earth using light. But in order for the signals to reach all the way and not ...

One of the Fastest-Spinning Stars in the Universe

Oct. 30, 2024 — New research in our Milky Way has revealed a neutron star that rotates around its axis at an extremely high speed. It spins 716 times per second, making it one of the fastest-spinning objects ever ...

Saturn's Moon Titan Has Insulating Methane-Rich Crust Up to Six Miles Thick

Oct. 25, 2024 — A new study has revealed that methane gas may be trapped within the icy surface of Saturn's moon Titan, forming a distinct crust up to six miles thick, which warms the underlying ice shell and may ...

Scientists Discover Molecules That Store Much of the Carbon in Space

Oct. 24, 2024 — A distant interstellar cloud was found to contain an abundance of pyrene, a type of large carbon-containing molecules known as polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs). This suggest pyrene may have ...

NRL Coronagraph Captures Unique Images of a Dusty Comet

Oct. 23, 2024 — U.S. Naval Research Laboratory (NRL) imaging instruments on three sun-orbiting observatories have captured sequences of comet C/2023 A3, known as Tsuchinshan-ATLAS, as it passed between the Earth and ...

Physicists Discover First 'Black Hole Triple'

Oct. 23, 2024 — A surprising discovery about the black hole V404 Cygnus is expanding our understanding of black holes, the objects they can host, and the way they ...

Are Nearby Planets Sending Radio Signals to Each Other?

Oct. 16, 2024 — Researchers have developed a new method using the Allen Telescope Array to search for interplanetary radio communication in the TRAPPIST-1 star ...

It's Twins! Mystery of Famed Brown Dwarf Solved

Oct. 16, 2024 — An international team of astronomers has figured out that a famous brown dwarf is actually a pair of tight-knit brown dwarfs, weighing about 38 and 34 times the mass of Jupiter, that whip around each ...

The Origin of Most Meteorites Finally Revealed

Oct. 16, 2024 — An international team has successfully demonstrated that 70% of all known meteorite falls originate from just three young asteroid families. These families were produced by three recent collisions ...

NASA, NOAA: Sun Reaches Maximum Phase in 11-Year Solar Cycle

Oct. 15, 2024 — Experts have announced that the Sun has reached its solar maximum period, which could continue for the next year. Scientists will not be able to determine the exact peak of this solar maximum period ...

How Did the Building Blocks of Life Arrive on Earth?

Oct. 11, 2024 — Researchers have used the chemical fingerprints of zinc contained in meteorites to determine the origin of volatile elements on Earth. The results suggest that without 'unmelted' asteroids, ...

'Islands' of Regularity Discovered in the Famously Chaotic Three-Body Problem

Oct. 10, 2024 — When three massive objects meet in space, they influence each other through gravity in ways that evolve unpredictably. In a word: Chaos. That is the conventional understanding. Now, a researcher has ...

Lightning Strikes Kick Off a Game of Electron Pinball in Space

Oct. 10, 2024 — When lightning cracks on Earth, especially high-energy electrons may fall out of Earth's inner radiation belt, according to a new study -- an electron 'rain' that could threaten ...

NASA's Hubble, New Horizons Team Up for a Simultaneous Look at Uranus

Oct. 11, 2024 — NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and New Horizons spacecraft simultaneously set their sights on Uranus recently, allowing scientists to make a direct comparison of the planet from two very ...

New Insights Into How Mars Became Uninhabitable

Oct. 7, 2024 — NASA's Curiosity rover, currently exploring Gale crater on Mars, is providing new details about how the ancient Martian climate went from potentially suitable for life -- with evidence for ...

Widespread Ice Deposits on the Moon

Oct. 3, 2024 — Deposits of ice in lunar dust and rock (regolith) are more extensive than previously thought, according to a new analysis of data from NASA's LRO (Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter) mission. Ice ...

Carbon Dioxide and Hydrogen Peroxide on Pluto's Moon Charon

Oct. 1, 2024 — Astronomers have detected carbon dioxide and hydrogen peroxide on the frozen surface of Pluto's largest moon, Charon, using observations from the James Webb Space Telescope. These discoveries ...

A New Birthplace for Asteroid Ryugu

Sep. 27, 2024 — Asteroid Ryugu possibly did not travel as far from its place of origin to its current near-Earth orbit as previously assumed. New research suggests that Ryugu was formed near Jupiter. Earlier studies ...

Asteroid Ceres Is a Former Ocean World That Slowly Formed Into a Giant, Murky Icy Orb

Sep. 27, 2024 — A crater-rich dwarf planet named Ceres located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter was long thought to be composed of a materials mixture not dominated by water ice. ...

Low Gravity in Space Travel Found to Weaken and Disrupt Normal Rhythm in Heart Muscle Cells

Sep. 23, 2024 — Scientists who arranged for 48 human bioengineered heart tissue samples to spend 30 days at the International Space Station report evidence that the low gravity conditions in space weakened the ...

A Wobble from Mars Could Be Sign of Dark Matter

Sep. 17, 2024 — Watching for changes in Mars' orbit over time could be new way to detect passing dark matter, according to ...

Simple Shift Could Make Low Earth Orbit Satellites High Capacity

Sep. 13, 2024 — Researchers have invented a technique that enables low Earth orbit satellite antennas to manage signals for multiple users at once, slashing costs and simplifying designs for communication ...

Magnetic Field Maps of the Sun's Corona

Sep. 11, 2024 — Astronomers have achieved a major breakthrough in solar physics by successfully producing detailed maps of the Sun's coronal magnetic fields. This milestone promises to enhance our understanding ...

Keeping Mold out of Future Space Stations

Sep. 11, 2024 — Mold can survive the harshest of environments, so to stop harmful spores from growing on future space stations, a study suggests a way to prevent its ...

Astrophysics: AI Shines a New Light on Exoplanets

Sep. 6, 2024 — A team models the atmospheres of distant planets using neural ...

Gigantic Asteroid Impact Shifted the Axis of Solar System's Biggest Moon

Sep. 3, 2024 — Around 4 billion years ago, an asteroid hit the Jupiter moon Ganymede. Now, a researcher realized that the Solar System's biggest moon's axis has shifted as a result of the impact, which ...