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Long period comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) will approach Venus to within 0.029 au on 2021 December 18 and may subsequently graze the planet with its dust trail less than two days later. We observed C/2021 A1 with the Lowell Discovery Telescope…

In addition to collisions and gravitational forces, it is now becoming widely acknowledged that photon recoil forces and torques from the asymmetric reflection and thermal re-radiation of sunlight are primary mechanisms that govern the…

When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…

The problem of the formation of the Moon is still not explained satisfactorily. While it is a generally accepted scenario that the last giant impact on Earth between some 50 to 100 million years after the starting of the formation of the…

This paper presents an analysis of optimal impact strategies to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids. To compute the increase in the minimum orbit intersection distance of the asteroid due to an impact with a spacecraft, simple…

Most meteorites are fragments from recent collisions experienced in the asteroid belt. In such a hyper-velocity collision, the smaller collision partner is destroyed, whereas a crater on the asteroid is formed or it is entirely disrupted,…

All airless bodies are subject to the space environment, and spectral differences between asteroids and meteorites suggest many asteroids become weathered on very short (<1My) timescales. The spectra of some asteroids, particularly Q-types,…

The impact flux over the last 3 Ga in the inner Solar System is commonly assumed to be constant through time. However, asteroid break-up events in the main belt may have been responsible for cratering spikes over the last ~2 Ga on the…

Near-Earth asteroid 2012 DA14 made its closest approach on February 15, 2013, when it passed at a distance of 27,700 km from the Earth's surface. It was the first time an asteroid of moderate size was predicted to approach that close to the…

We report spectropolarimetric and broadband polarimetric observations of the near-Earth asteroid 2025 FA22 during its close approach of 18 September 2025 (about two Moon distances). With a diameter estimated between 130 and 290 m, 2025 FA22…

In Epoch 2 of the 2024 PDC25 Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario, an asteroid is confirmed to be on a collision course with the Earth, and its size and surface composition have been well characterized via a flyby mission. A kinetic…

We aim at providing a preliminary approach on the dynamics of a spacecraft in orbit about the asteroid (99942) Apophis during its Earth close approach. The physical properties from the polyhedral shape of the target are derived assigning…

The detection of GW170817, the first neutron star-neutron star merger observed by Advanced LIGO and Virgo, and its following analyses represent the first contributions of gravitational wave (GW) data to understanding dense matter.…

This paper is devoted to the dynamics of asteroid (196256) 2003 EH1 that belongs to the Amor group. It is known that the asteroid 2003 EH1 is associated with one of the main annual meteor showers the Quadrantids. In this work we analyze the…

Outer main belt asteroid (223) Rosa is a possible flyby target of opportunity for ESA's (European Space Agency) JUpiter ICy moons Explorer (JUICE) mission when passing the asteroid belt on the way to Jupiter. The very low albedo and the…

The Solar Probe Plus (SPP) mission will explore the Sun's corona and innermost solar wind starting in 2018. The spacecraft will also come close to a number of Mercury-crossing asteroids with perihelia less than 0.3 AU. At small heliocentric…

Previous work has demonstrated orbital stability for 100 Myr of initially near-circular and coplanar small bodies in a region termed the 'Earth-Mars belt' from 1.08 au $< a <$ 1.28 au. Via numerical integration of 3000 particles, we studied…

We present results from a search for additional transiting planets in 24 systems already known to contain a transiting planet. We model the transits due to the known planet in each system and subtract these models from lightcurves obtained…

On 2013 February 15 a small asteroid rammed against the atmosphere above the region of Chelyabinsk in Russia, producing the most powerful superbolide since the Tunguska event in 1908. Lacking proper astrometric observations, the pre-impact…

We introduce a new, powerful method to constrain properties of neutron stars (NSs). We show that the total mass of GW170817 provides a reliable constraint on the stellar radius if the merger did not result in a prompt collapse as suggested…