In a NASA simulation of a fictional scenario, New York City was hit with an asteroid packing 1,000 times the destruction of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima. The exercise, which was part of the "National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan" published by the White House, played out at the the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland, last week. It was a worst-case scenario showing what would happen if a giant space rock crashed into Earth in 2027.

By watching asteroids pass in front of two stars, researchers have measured the stars' sizes, paving the way for more direct observations of distant suns.

Japan's Hayabusa2 space probe has successfully created a man-made crater on an asteroid that altered the body's terrain in a historical first, the country's space agency said Thursday.

NASA's administrator warned that the threat of a meteor crashing into Earth is bigger than we might think. Jim Bridenstine told the International Academy of Astronautics' Planetary Defense Conference on Monday that "the reason it's important for NASA to take this seriously is something you call the 'giggle factor,'" or scientific theories that seem too ridiculous to be likely.

Scientists have made the first measurements of water in samples collected from the surface of an asteroid, according to a new study. The Japanese space probe Hayabusa completed a sample return mission from the asteroid Itokawa, retrieving 1,500 particles. Another mission, Hayabusa2, is conducting a sample return mission on the asteroid Ryugu.

Nasa is already preparing for the arrival of a huge asteroid named the “God of Chaos” that will skirt past Earth in 10 years. On 13 April, 2029, people looking towards the sky will see a speck of light streaking across it, which will quickly get brighter and faster. It will be travelling so fast that it will cross the width of the Moon in a minute and be as bright as stars in the sky.

A popular theme in the movies is that of an incoming asteroid that could extinguish life on the planet, and our heroes are launched into space to blow it up. But incoming asteroids may be harder to break than scientists previously thought, finds a Johns Hopkins study that used a new understanding of rock fracture and a new computer modeling method to simulate asteroid collisions.

The December 18 fireball created the biggest airburst since the Chelyabinsk meteor of 2013. By Becky Ferreira.

A NASA spacecraft that will return a sample of a near-Earth asteroid named Bennu to Earth in 2023 made the first-ever close-up observations of particle plumes erupting from an asteroid’s surface. Bennu also revealed itself to be more rugged than expected, challenging the mission team to alter its flight and sample collection plans, due to the rough terrain.

Scientists in the US say they have discovered the fossilized remains of a mass of creatures that died minutes after a huge asteroid slammed into the Earth 66 million years ago, sealing the fate of the dinosaurs. In a paper to be published Monday, a team of paleontologists headquartered at the University of Kansas say they found a "mother lode of exquisitely preserved animal and fish fossils" in what is now North Dakota.

In the early morning of April 5th, Japan's spacecraft "Hayabusa2" detonated plastic explosives that were carefully placed on the surface of an asteroid. The goal was not to annihilate the asteroid but rather to help the scientists to collect new data to further the study. The researchers watched it happen from the mission control center located in Sagamihara, Japan. As the Hayabusa2 carefully carried out the project they called the Small Carry-on Impactor, the researchers were quietly observing from the station, looking very happy about how it was slowly unfolding.

Metallic asteroids are thought to have started out as blobs of molten iron floating in space. As if that's not strange enough, scientists now think that as the metal cooled and solidified, volcanoes spewing liquid iron could have erupted through a solid iron crust onto the surface of the asteroid. This scenario emerged from an analysis by planetary scientists at UC Santa Cruz whose investigation was prompted in part by NASA's plans to launch a probe to...

The raw materials from a comet have been found sealed inside a pristine, primitive meteorite. The meteorite was found in the LaPaz icefield of Antarctica and has weathered very little since the time it crashed to Earth. According to a new study published today (April 15) in the journal Nature Astronomy, researchers found that this sample of space rock contains something strange: bits of the building blocks of a comet that became trapped in the meteorite's parent asteroid just 3 million years after the solar system formed.

When meteorites slam into the moon, they undoubtedly kick up a little dust. Now, a new study suggests they also shake loose quite a bit of water—something on the order of 200 tons each year. Planetary scientists were tipped to the leaching after reviewing sensor data from a moon-orbiting probe. Between November 2013 and April 2014, the Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer recorded occasional spikes in the numbers of particles, including water molecules, that were lofted off the moon.

An asteroid the size of a house gave Earth a close shave today (April 18), passing nearer to our planet than any other space rock will for the rest of this year — that is, as far as we know. Named 2019 GC6, the asteroid was discovered by NASA's Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, just last Tuesday (April 9), nine days before it flew by Earth. The giant rock made its closest approach this morning at 2:41 a.m. EDT (0641 GMT), when it whizzed by our plant at a safe distance of about 136,000 miles (219,000 kilometers), or slightly more than half the average distance between Earth and the moon.

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.