2014 NASA Budget Starts Ambitious Asteroid Mission

President Obama seeks steady NASA budgets of $17.7 billion through 2018 in the funding request he presented to Congress on Wednesday, enough to start the space agency on an ambitious mission to identify and maneuver an asteroid into lunar orbit, where U. S. astronauts...

All Aboard! Send Your Name, Message to an Asteroid

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) is preparing for launch its Hayabusa2 spacecraft – set to depart in 2014 then land on an asteroid in 2018. Then the mission will return samples of the space rock back to Earth in 2020. JAXA has opened up a Haybusa2 name...

Telltale Clues: Solar System Impact Bombardment

Howardites and eucrites are meteorite classifications, both of which are providing surprising clues to solar system-wide impact bombardment billions of years ago. New research unveils an unexpected link between asteroid Vesta and the Moon, providing new means for...

Congress Ponders Space Leadership Provision

    Congress is considering some substantial changes in the way NASA is led, managed from the outside and funded, as policy makers attempt to give the nation’s civil space program a sharper focus as well as the stability to ensure the sustained...

Asteroid Drama Prompts Disaster Concerns

The skies have spoken, and their message was one of concern. Early Friday, while people around the world watched and waited for an asteroid half the size of a football field, 2012 DA14, to skim by the Earth between the orbits of communications and navigational...

Asteroid Flyby of Earth: Experts Comment on Space Rock Close-call

The up-coming close flyby of asteroid DA14 is stirring up considerable attention. On Friday, Feb. 15, the 50-meter-wide asteroid DA14 will pass within 17,000 miles of Earth, closer than a typical communications satellite. This space rock, if it were to impact our...