Triton orbits Neptune, the eighth planet from the Sun, some 2.7 billion miles from Earth — at the cold outer fringe of our Solar System’s major planet zone. Surface temperatures hover near absolute zero; so low that common compounds… Read more
Scientists have discovered nearly all “extinction-scale” Near-Earth Objects, or NEOs (asteroids larger than 1 kilometer in diameter) and determined they pose no risk of impact in the near future. But there are still thousands of smaller NEOs that pose a potential danger.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) coordinates the detection… Read more
Nov. 14, 2018
In November 2017, a team of scientists pointed NASA’s Spitzer Space Telescope toward a comet-like object known as ’Oumuamua—the first interstellar body ever found in our solar system—but the object proved too faint for the infrared telescope to detect.
Though initially disappointing, this non-detection of ’Oumuamua eventually provided new information about the cosmic interloper, according to a new… Read more
What happens when a meteoroid the size of a house comes too close for comfort? When a 17-meter rock hurled through Earth’s atmosphere in 2013 and exploded mid-air above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, it unleashed a shock wave equivalent to 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb, shattering windows… Read more