Asteroid

New Curtin University research has confirmed the frequency of asteroid collisions that formed impact craters on Mars has been consistent over the past 600 million years.

Launching with the Artemis I uncrewed test flight, NASA's shoebox-size Near-Earth Asteroid Scout will chase down what will become the smallest asteroid ever to be visited by a spacecraft. It will get there by unfurling a solar sail to harness solar radiation for propulsion, making this the agency's first deep space mission of its kind.

Asteroids fly through our solar system all the time, but it's rare for us to take notice of them. But that's changed this week, as an asteroid passes within 1,231,184 miles of Earth on January 18. The asteroid, dubbed 7482 (1994 PC1), was first seen in 1994 and is about two-thirds of a mile wide.

The SETI Institute teamed up with Louisiana State University (LSU) and Mississippi State University (MSU) to help students design the science program for AstronetX PBC's first lunar-based camera (L-CAM 1). The scientific program planning is funded by a Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation grant to AstronetX. Additional funding for student participation is provided by the National Science Foundation (NSF) Research Experiences for Undergrads (REU) program at LSU.

In a slow moving universe, asteroids give us a rare chance to see things moving in real time. We have such a chance coming right up on the evening of Tuesday, January 18, when 1.1-kilometer asteroid (7482) 1994 PC1 passes 1.23 million miles (1.98 million kilometers) from the Earth. This is about five times the distance from the Earth to the moon, and just a shade over the distance to the anti-sunward Earth-sun Lagrange 2 point, soon to be the home of the James Webb Space Telescope.

Since 2019, SpaceX has been launching an increasing number of internet satellites into orbit around Earth. The satellite constellation, called Starlink, now includes nearly 1,800 members orbiting at altitudes of about 550 kilometers. Astronomers have expressed concerns that that these objects, which can appear as streaks in telescope images, could hamper their scientific observations.

Twenty years from now we might get a call from aliens. In 2017, a powerful radio transmission was aimed at exoplanet GJ 273b, thought to be able to support life. Its message, sent by the alien-hunting group Messaging Extraterrestrial Intelligence International, contained instructions on how to understand Earthling math, music and time. If it lands on intelligent alien ears once it arrives in about a decade, E.T. now has our number.

In the new Netflix movie "Don't Look Up," two actors playing fictional Michigan State University astronomers discover a comet on a collision course with Earth and struggle to convince people to take them seriously. The film is a satire about society's inability to cope with climate change.

Don't look now—but we are currently experiencing a rash of stories about a forthcoming global catastrophe. But in a change from reports of pandemics and climate change, this global catastrophe is produced by the impact of a giant asteroid. Or comet. Or both. This may feel extra ominous given the events in the recent Netflix film "Don't Look Up", in which the Earth is threatened by a "planet killer" asteroid.

Astronomers ended 2021 on a high with the launch on December 25 of the James Webb Space Telescope, a joint mission between the European Space Agency, Nasa and the Canadian Space Agency. It was a relief to hear that the precision drives that opened up the complex sunshield, which is about the size of a tennis court, worked perfectly.