Astronomers don’t treat every “close approach” headline the same way the public does. On June 9, two near-Earth objects, 2026 LD and 2026 KM3, are being tracked as they pass Earth at distances ...

Binary asteroid systems are widespread throughout our inner solar system. For decades, the standard paradigm held that many of them form when a rapidly spinning primary asteroid casts off material, ...

To truly understand what an asteroid is made of, we need to send a probe to it. Remote sensing from ground-based telescopes, or even orbiting observatories, can only do so much. A new white paper ...

Asteroids, comets and Kuiper belt are bodies smaller than planets that orbit the sun. Asteroids are composed of metals and rock, whereas comets also contain ice and dust. The Kuiper belt is a ...

On 13 April 2029, the asteroid 99942 Apophis will pass safely at a distance of about 32,000 kilometers above Earth's surface, within the geostationary orbit, posing no threat to the planet. This ...

The Earth formed over 4.6 billion years ago out of a mixture of dust and gas around the young sun. It grew larger thanks to countless collisions between dust particles, asteroids, and other growing ...