In 2015, NASA’s New Horizons spacecraft looked back toward the sun and captured this near-sunset view of the rugged, icy mountains and flat ice plains extending to Pluto’s horizon.
NASA/JHUAPL/SwRI
Many people are still upset that Pluto was demoted from being a planet. But definitions of various celestial objects are fairly fluid. So whether it is an asteroid or moon or planet is up for debate.
Trilobites evolved following the massive collision.
Birger Schmidtz
A 100-metre-wide asteroid passed just 70,000km from Earth on Thursday, and we had little warning it was about to happen. What threat is posed by asteroids and how do we find them?
Every day about 50 tons of rocks from space fall on Earth. An examination of these meteorites has inspired a new theory about how exactly these rocks formed.
A collection of raw Libyan desert glass.
Linnas/Shutterstock
The origin of Libyan desert glass found scattered in an Egyptian desert has puzzled scientists for years. But a new look at the glass structure reveals its meteoric formation.
Asteroids known as ‘S-type’ contain a lot more water than we thought.
Oliver Denker/Shuttestock
The source of water on Earth, the Moon and planets in our solar system is hotly debated. Some in the planetary science community argued that it came from asteroids and comets. Now they have proof.
We’re finding more near-Earth objects all the time, and the challenge is to identify those that could potentially hit us. So how come we missed one that caused a huge blast in December?
An artist’s impression of an asteroid about to hit Earth: it’s what happens next that could have helped wipe out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
Shutterstock/Mopic
Jonti Horner, University of Southern Queensland and Tanya Hill, Museums Victoria Research Institute
Moonlight will spoil some of the big meteor showers this year, but still plenty of others to see. So here’s your guide on when and where to look to catch nature’s fireworks.
Osiris-REx will spend the next year looking for a good place to land on asteroid Bennu before it collects grains and brings them home.
An ice-sheet in Greenland’s Inglefield Land is hiding the Hiawatha crater.
Natural History Museum of Denmark, Cryospheric Sciences Lab, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD, USA
Meteorite impacts have fundamentally shaped the history of our planet.
A telescope pointed at the skies above Senegal to capture the stellar occultation.
François Colas, Observatoire de Paris, Insititut de Mécanique Celeste et de Calcul des Ephémérides
Space mining has the potential to provide a greater supply of resources either for being exploited locally for construction or being sent back to earth.
Fragments of the asteroid 2018 LA scattered over a wide area in Botswana’s Central Kalahari Game Reserve.
Alexander Proyer
Alexander Proyer, Botswana International University of Science and Technology and Fulvio Franchi, Botswana International University of Science and Technology
Each meteorite is a piece of the puzzle to understanding our solar system.