An enormous asteroid four times the size of the Empire State Building will make a close approach to Earth on May 27, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS). Fear not: the asteroid, named 7335 (1989 JA), will soundly miss our planet by about 2.5 million miles (4 million kilometers) — or nearly 10 times the average distance between Earth and the moon.

Ricochet from a meteorite impact on Earth created a huge 'field' of craters that so far, we have only seen examples of on other planets. The unique site in southeast Wyoming has more than 30 craters that were formed about 280 million years ago, researchers said in a new study. The craters were created after a meteorite impact hundreds of miles (or kilometers) away blew boulders of bedrock into the air.

Research has shown that the Earth trails an asteroid barely a kilometre across in its orbit about the Sun – only the second such body to have ever been spotted. It goes round the Sun on average two months ahead of the Earth, dancing around in front like an excited herald of our coming.

An International team of astronomers led by researcher Toni Santana-Ros from the University of Alicante and the Institute of Cosmos Sciences of the University of Barcelona (ICCUB) has confirmed the existence of the second Earth Trojan asteroid known to date, the 2020 XL5, after a decade of search. The results of the study have been published in the journal Nature Communications.

An early morning liftoff kicks off DART, NASA’s first mission to test a spacecraft that could one day save Earth from a deadly space rock.

A spacecraft designed to crash into an asteroid 11 million miles from Earth has sent back its first photo from outer space. The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is currently hurtling through space on an Armageddon-style mission. Its aim is to trial tech that could defend Earth from potentially devastating asteroids in the future.

Last month, NASA sent the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) into space whose goal is to send a spacecraft traveling at a speed of 15,000 miles per hour (24,000 kph) into an asteroid, called Dimorphos, next year sometime between September 26 and October 1.

It’s not a question of if but when: Eventually, astronomers will discover a celestial object on an Earth-bound trajectory. It might be an asteroid–a big chunk of rock, orbiting the sun in the inner part of the solar system–or it might be a comet, containing ice as well as rock, and typically moving in a slower, more oval-shaped orbit. To be very clear, no asteroids or comets are currently known to present any danger. Nonetheless, it pays to be prepared, given the devastation that such an impact would bring.

NASA is about to launch an unprecedented mission to knock an asteroid slightly off-course. In the first real-world test of a technique that could someday be used to protect Earth from a threatening space rock, a spacecraft is scheduled to blast off from Vandenberg Space Force Base in California on Tuesday, November 23 at 10:20 pm PST.

NASA is preparing to slam a spacecraft into an asteroid at 16,000 miles per hour, in a pioneering attempt to nudge it off course. But the yearlong mission scheduled to begin on Nov. 24 is raising an existential question for scientists and security experts: whose job is it to defend the planet against a possibly life-ending space rock if one was headed our way?

An asteroid about the size of a refrigerator shot past Earth last week, and astronomers didn't know the object existed until hours after it was gone. It was a close call (from a cosmic perspective); the space rock's trajectory on Oct. 24 carried it over Antarctica within 1,800 miles (3,000 kilometers) of Earth — closer than some satellites — making it the third-closest asteroid to approach the planet without actually hitting it, CNET reported.

Asteroids embody the story of our solar system's beginning. Jupiter's Trojan asteroids, which orbit the Sun on the same path as the gas giant, are no exception. The Trojans are thought to be left over from the objects that eventually formed our planets, and studying them might offer clues about how the solar system came to be.

NASA's newest asteroid probe, named Lucy, blasted off from Kennedy Space Center here in Florida to embark on a 12-year mission to study two different clusters of asteroids around Jupiter known as Trojans. These swarms represent the final unexplored regions of asteroids in the solar system. Lucy, acting as a robotic archaeologist, will help to answer questions about how the giant planets formed.

The Moon is very big, and any small object hitting it would have very little effect on its motion around the Earth, because the Moon’s own momentum would overwhelm that of the impact. Most asteroid collisions would result in large craters and little else; even the largest asteroid known, Ceres, wouldn’t budge the Moon.

Attention asteroid aficionados: NASA is set to launch a series of spacecraft to visit and even bash some of the solar system's most enticing space rocks. The robotic trailblazer named Lucy is up first, blasting off this weekend on a 12-year cruise to swarms of asteroids out near Jupiter—unexplored time capsules from the dawn of the solar system. And yes, there will be diamonds in the sky with Lucy, on one of its science instruments, as well as lyrics from other Beatles' songs.

There's gold in them thar asteroids! Literally — asteroids have more than enough gold, plus other metals, to provide a few lifetimes' worth of fortunes. But there are plenty of other reasons asteroids are valuable. So how do we get these metals from these faraway asteroids? Perhaps the best way is to bring the space rocks to Earth.

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.