Most of Earth’s surface has been plotted, mapped and measured. And along the way, scientists have turned up a plethora of craters big and small. But there was always one major crater missingMost of Earth’s surface has been plotted, mapped and measured. And along the way, scientists have turned up a plethora of craters big and small. But there was always one major crater missing.

A scientific paper led by two researchers at Harvard University made a splash this week by claiming that a cigar-shaped rock zooming through our solar system may have been sent by aliens. The researchers noted in a pre-print of the article that it was an "exotic scenario," but that "Oumuamua may be a fully operational probe sent intentionally to Earth vicinity by an alien civilization."

A mysterious cigar-shaped object spotted tumbling through our solar system last year may have been an alien spacecraft sent to investigate Earth, astronomers from Harvard University have suggested. The object, nicknamed 'Oumuamua, meaning "a messenger that reaches out from the distant past" in Hawaiian, was first discovered in October 2017 by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii.

On October 19th, 2017, the Panoramic Survey Telescope and Rapid Response System-1 (Pan-STARRS-1) in Hawaii announced the first-ever detection of an interstellar asteroid, named 1I/2017 U1 (aka, "Oumuamua). In the months that followed, multiple follow-up observations were conducted that allowed astronomers to get a better idea of its size and shape, while also revealing that it had the characteristics of both a comet and an asteroid.

The discovery of a rare mineral (reidite) at the Woodleigh meteorite impact structure in Western Australia was published this week by Curtin University honours student Morgan Cox and colleagues. Reidite – and other minerals – are sometimes formed when meteorites crash into Earth. This takes a particular set of circumstances. Only six prior discoveries of reidite had ever been reported.

Two years after launching from Florida, a NASA spacecraft is closing in on an ancient asteroid, Bennu, for a sample of space dust that could reveal clues to the start of life in the solar system. The spacecraft, OSIRIS-REx, has even snapped its first, blurry pic of the cosmic body, which is about the size of a small mountain, about 500 yards (meters) in diameter.

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency says the Minerva-II1 explorers will explore the flying space rock by hopping around it, taking advantage of its low gravity.

NASA spacecraft finds that Ceres is full of water. By Alexandra Witze.

It's official - NASA's Asteroid Redirect mission has entered its closing down phase, which means we can't expect to see a giant boulder orbiting our Moon any time soon. Bummer. Asteroid Redirect was started in 2015 with the goal to create the first-ever mission combining robot and human efforts. The plan was to send a robotic crew to a near-Earth asteroid, grab a huge rock from it, and redirect it in a stable orbit around the Moon.

Asteroid 2017 001 made a close pass by Earth, but wasn't detected until three days later.

Asteroid Florence will fly by Earth on 1 September at a safe distance of seven million km or "18 Earth-Moon" distances. Florence is about 4.4km wide and is known to be one of the largest near-Earth asteroids according to Nasa. Near-Earth objects are heavenly bodies that enter the Earth's neighbourhood influenced by the gravity of nearby planets.

Tremendous amounts of soot, lofted into the air from global wildfires following a massive asteroid strike 66 million years ago, would have plunged Earth into darkness for nearly two years, new research finds.

An asteroid named Florence that will safely sweep past Earth on Sept. 1 is the largest object to give our planet a close shave since NASA began tracking these types of near-Earth asteroids, an agency official said. The space rock measures 2.7 miles (4.4 kilometers) across. It will pass by Earth at a safe distance of 4.4 million miles (7 million kilometers), or nearly 18 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Humans have witnessed many cataclysmic volcanic eruptions, from the one that destroyed Pompeii in 79 A.D. to the extraordinary Krakatoa eruption of 1883. But around the world right now there are about 20 so-called “supervolcanoes” that could outdo them all. One of these monster volcanoes lurks beneath Yellowstone National Park. The Yellowstone Caldera is an enormous craterlike depression measuring 30 miles by 45 miles and filled with molten material (magma). If it were to blast its innards out in a super-eruption, it’s no exaggeration to say that the human race could be imperiled.

Astronomers around the world will turn their eyes to the sky Thursday as a roughly 20-metre-wide asteroid will fly well within the moon's orbit, about 50,000 kilometres above Earth. While this asteroid currently poses no threat to Earth, scientists are hoping to gather information to refine its orbit. With government agencies, they are also preparing for a day when a similarly sized asteroid could enter Earth's atmosphere.

An asteroid the size of a house will zoom past the Earth on Thursday at a distance of some 26,000 miles, NASA said. That's actually fairly close, when you consider that the moon is about 239,000 miles away. “It's damn close," Rolf Densing, head of the European Space Operations Centre in Darmstadt, Germany, told The Telegraph. "The farthest satellites are 22,000 miles out, so this is indeed a close miss," he said.

The asteroid that came “damn close” to slamming into the Earth this week could cause utter devastation several decades down the road, and scientists can’t rule out an eventual collision...

A few weeks ago, we reported on a small object visiting from beyond our solar system. Now astronomers have scrutinized data from this object, which has been given the name `Oumuamua, and which must have traveled through space for millions of years before its chance encounter with our star system. The conclusion is that it’s a dark, reddish, highly-elongated rocky or high-metal-content object. And, indeed, it is the first known asteroid from interstellar space. These new results were published today (November 20, 2017) in the peer-reviewed journal Nature.

There is one year to go until asteroid 2015 TB145 approaches Earth once again, just as it did in 2015 around the night of Halloween, an occasion which astronomers did not pass up to study its characteristics. This dark object measures between 625 and 700 metres, its rotation period is around three hours and, in certain lighting conditions, it resembles a human skull.

Imagine a piece of rock the size of the Burj Khalifa skyscraper speeding through space 15 times faster the world’s fastest manned aircraft. Now imagine that piece of rock buzzing toward Earth on it…

Why pick just one flavor of apocalypse? By Rachel Becker.

Asteroid mining is about more than just heading up into space and bringing back a rock full of platinum—you actually need to land something on just the right asteroid. Falcon Heavy, the world’s most powerful rocket launched by Elon Musk-led SpaceX two weeks ago, may have changed the game, says one astronomer.

Forget cryptocurrency — the next big “gold rush” isn’t even on Earth. Physicist Michio Kaku, writing in his new book “The Future of Humanity” (Doubleday), believes a bonanza is coming from mining asteroids, which he calls “flying gold mine[s] in outer space.”

Sending a spacecraft to the far reaches of our solar system to mine asteroids might seem like an improbable ambition best left to science fiction. But it’s inching closer to reality. By Susanne Barton, Hannah Recht.

The asteroid Bennu, a boulder the size of a village, is circling the sun at 63,000 mph, now a comfortable 54 million miles from Earth. But on Sept. 21, 2135, there is a 1 in 2,700 chance that it will hit us. What would we do? Government scientists now have an official plan, just in case: They’ve designed a spacecraft to hit any large oncoming asteroids with a nuclear explosion.

Space rocks like 2004 EW95 are common between Mars and Jupiter. The discovery of the object near Neptune may provide insights into how the planets formed.

An asteroid in Jupiter's orbit may have come from outside our Solar System, according to a new study. Unlike 'Oumuamua, the interstellar object which briefly visited the Solar System earlier this year, 2015 BZ509 (affectionately known as BZ) seems to have been here for 4.5 billion years. This makes it the first known interstellar asteroid to have taken up residence orbiting the Sun. It is not yet known where the object came from.

An asteroid that cohabits an orbit with Jupiter came from outside the solar system.

Most of the inner main asteroid belt may come from five big objects that broke up in the solar system's early history.

An asteroid that made a close approach to Earth last month is actually two objects orbiting each other, reveal new observations by three of the world’s largest radio telescopes. The new observations obtained between June 21 and 26 indicate that the two objects, each about 900 metres in size, revolve around each other once every 20 to 24 hours, NASA said in a statement on Thursday.