Asteroid Redirect Mission

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has grabbed headlines lately, after NASA briefly gave it had the highest ever chance of an impact for an asteroid of hazardous size. Thankfully, new observations have dropped that probability to almost zero – for Earth, anyway.

ESA's Hera spacecraft designed to assess NASA's experiment to deflect an asteroid has launched from Cape Canaveral Space Force Station, Florida. At 14:52 GMT, the robotic probe lifted off atop a Falcon 9 rocket to begin its three-year mission.

Asteroids can devastate the planet in an instant – just ask the dinosaurs. Scientists at Sandia National Laboratories have now demonstrated a proof of concept method to deflect a potential Earthbound asteroid using a blast of X-rays.

China is looking to get into the planetary defense business. A new paper by the China National Space Administration (CNSA) confirms that in 2030, the country plans to conduct a test mission to deflect a small asteroid from its current course.

In 2029, a large asteroid will whizz past Earth so close it’ll be visible to the naked eye. But could collisions with other asteroids bounce it off-course into us? To find out, astronomers have now crunched the paths of 1.3 million known asteroids.

When NASA's DART deep space probe smashed into the asteroid Dimorphos, it didn't leave a crater. Instead, there was a splash, where the asteroid was distorted like a jelly as its entire structure shifted.

In September, NASA deliberately crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to test a potential planetary defense technique. To mark the publication of four scientific papers, NASA has released a video of the impact captured by the Hubble Space Telescope.

Radio waves from Alaska have been transmitted to an asteroid passing just two lunar distances away from the Earth. The information gathered could arm scientists with information that may be critical in defending the planet from a collision some day.

The collision between NASA’s DART spacecraft and the asteroid Dimorphos was always going to be a spectacle. By analyzing data from telescopes and tiny satellites nearby, scientists are now piecing together some fascinating details around the event.

Last month, NASA purposely crashed a spacecraft into an asteroid in an attempt to knock it off course, and the results are now in, with scientists confirming the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid was shortened by 32 minutes.

Dozens of Earth-based telescopes were trained on the Dimorphos asteroid as it was struck by NASA’s DART spacecraft yesterday, but scientists also had some eyes in the sky – a CubeSat satellite deployed specifically to photograph the event.

An audacious planetary defense mission reached a historic crescendo today, with a NASA probe spectacularly crashing into the asteroid Dimorphos in an important rehearsal for how we might deflect hazardous asteroids in the future.