Last month, experts from NASA and other space agencies around the world faced a troubling hypothetical scenario: A mysterious asteroid had just been discovered 35 million miles away, and it was heading for Earth. The space rock was expected to hit in six months.

Space agencies participated in a weeklong NASA exercise in which they tried — and failed — to stop a fictitious asteroid from hitting Europe.

A small asteroid barreled through the sky and burned up over the Kalahari Desert of Botswana in the summer of 2018 and now, scientists suspect that the space rock originated from Vesta, the second largest asteroid in the solar system.

Earlier this year, NASA announced that a massive asteroid is set to have a close encounter with Earth, passing within two million kilometers (in space terms, that’s closer than it sounds, earning it the title of Potentially Hazardous Asteroid). Moving at just under 77,000 miles per hour, and estimated to measure around a kilometre in diameter, Asteroid 2001 FO32 will be the largest and fastest of its kind to pass so close to our planet this year.

Mark your calendars, guys, because 2021's largest known asteroid will be passing Earth on 21 March and it's said to be 'potentially hazardous'. The space rock - which is known as 2001 FO32 - is one of numerous near-Earth objects (NEOs) that orbit the sun, just as our planet does.

The Japanese space agency (JAXA) says it has begun opening the capsule returned to Earth by its historic Hayabusa2 mission – and has confirmed asteroid samples are inside. Today, Monday, December 14, the capsule was opened for the first time since it touched down in the Australian outback on December 6 following its journey through space.

What happened to all the lithium? The question has stumped astronomers for decades. While cosmologists have successfully predicted the abundance of the other light elements from the Big Bang, lithium has always come up short. Now, a team of astronomers may have found the reason: lithium-rich asteroids are smashing into white dwarves.

The Hayabusa2 mission cements Japan’s role in exploring the solar system, but finding its asteroid cargo presents one last challenge.

The flash was approximately 10 times brighter than a full moon

A Japanese spacecraft is nearing Earth after a yearlong journey home from a distant asteroid with soil samples and data that could provide clues to the origins of the solar system, a space agency official said Friday. The Hayabusa2 spacecraft left the asteroid Ryugu, about 300 million kilometers (180 million miles) from Earth, a year ago and is expected to reach Earth and drop a capsule containing the precious samples in southern Australia on Dec. 6.

Forget water on the moon, NASA has now struck gold. NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope has discovered a rare, heavy and immensely valuable asteroid called “16 Psyche” in the Solar System’s main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

A Nasa spacecraft that picked up pieces of an asteroid is leaking them into asteroid on its way home, the space agency has said. The probe picked up such as substantial sample that a rock is wedged against the container door, which means they are falling out back into space.

A NASA spacecraft touched down on the rugged surface of the Bennu asteroid on Tuesday, grabbing a sample of rocks dating back to the birth of the solar system to bring home.

If you’ve seen the movie The Martian, you no doubt remember the rescue scene, in which (spoiler alert!) Matt Damon launches himself off Mars in a stripped-down rocket in hopes of his carefully-calculated trajectory taking him just close enough to his former crew for them to pluck him from the void of outer space and bring him safely home to Earth. There’s a multitude of complex physics involved, and who knows how true-to-science the details of the movie are...

The rock known as (52768) 1998 OR2 was first spotted in 1998 and will pass by the planet on Wednesday

The interstellar object (alternatively a comet or an asteroid) that killed the dinosaurs when it slammed into Earth didn't work alone. Researchers have shown previously that its after-effects, such as tidal waves and earthquakes, played an important role in the mass extinctions of three-fourths of plant and animal life. Now, new research suggests that one of the most important factors was the soot-rich smoke from fires sparked by the collision.

Astronomers think they’ve found an entire population of asteroids originating from outside our solar system, according to a new paper. The objects at the center of this investigation aren’t new discoveries. Called the Centaurs, they’re mysterious asteroids that orbit in the neighborhood of Jupiter and beyond. These objects take highly inclined orbits relative to the plane of the rest of the planets, and in at least one case, orbit the “wrong” way relative to the rest of the solar system’s objects.

Three Leiden astronomers have shown that some asteroids that are considered harmless for now, can collide with Earth in the future. They did their research with the help of an artificial neural network. The results have been accepted for publication in the journal Astronomy & Astrophysics.

Apotentially hazardous asteroid that’s big enough to trigger a nuclear winter and mass extinction events on Earth following a collision will intersect the planet’s path this weekend. According to the data collected by NASA, the approaching asteroid is larger than the tallest man-made structure in the world.

NASA warned that a massive potentially hazardous asteroid bigger than the Empire State Building is currently headed for Earth. If this space rock hits the planet, the blast would be powerful enough to wipe out an entire major city.