Related papers: Don't Forget To Look Up
The reason for the horizontal turn of the Tunguska-1908 bolide trajectory remains difficult to understand. It finds explanation, however, in the New Explosive Cosmogony of minor bodies as having been caused by an explosion of a part (M up…
It is customarily assumed that Earth-striking meteoroids are completely random, and that all the impacts must be interpreted as uncorrelated events distributed according to Poisson statistics. If this is correct, their impact dates must be…
Near Earth Objects (NEOs) are a transient population of small bodies with orbits near or in the terrestrial planet region. They represent a mid-stage in the dynamical cycle of asteroids and comets, which starts with their removal from the…
Comets are considered a potential source of inner solar system volatiles, but the timing of this delivery relative to that of Earth's accretion is still poorly understood. Measurements of xenon isotopes in comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko…
In 1883, on the 12th and 13th of August, Mexican astronomer Jose A. y Bonilla observed several objects passing in front of the solar disk. In 1886 in the L'Astronomie magazine, he reported his observations without providing a hypothesis…
International and U.S. strategies and protocols have identified the need to develop rapid-response spacecraft reconnaissance capabilities as a priority to advance planetary defense readiness. A space-based reconnaissance response is…
Asteroid Impacts pose a major threat to all life on the Earth. Deflecting the asteroid from the impact trajectory is an important way to mitigate the threat. A kinetic impactor remains to be the most feasible method to deflect the asteroid.…
The potentially hazardous asteroid (101955) 1999 RQ36 has the possibility of collision with the Earth in the latter half of the 22nd century, well beyond the traditional 100-year time horizon for routine impact monitoring. The probabilities…
Here we show an example of a young asteroid cluster located in a dynamically stable region, which was produced by partial disruption of a primitive body about 30 km in size. We estimate its age to be only 1.9 +/- 0.3 Myr, thus its…
Material arriving at our solar system from the Galaxy may be detected at Earth in the form of meteors ablating in our atmosphere. Here we report on a search for interstellar meteors within the highest-quality events in the Global Meteor…
Comet 3I/ATLAS, also known as C/2025 N1, was discovered on 2025 July 1 UT by NASA Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), with a v$_{\infty}$ $\sim$ 58 kms$^{-1}$. This is the fastest among the three interstellar objects…
We have used Minor Planet Center data and tools to explore the discovery circumstances and properties of the currently known population of over 10,000 NEAs, and to quantify the challenges for follow-up from ground-based telescopes. The…
On the 19th June 2020 at 20:05:07 UTC, a fireball lasting 5.5 s was observed above Western Australia by three Desert Fireball Network observatories. The meteoroid entered the atmosphere with a speed of $14.00 \pm 0.17$ km s$^{-1}$ and…
We have calculated the coherence and detectable lifetimes of synthetic near-Earth object (NEO) families created by catastrophic disruption of a progenitor as it suffers a very close Earth approach. The closest or slowest approaches yield…
Comet 9P/Tempel 1 was the target of a multi-wavelength worldwide investigation in 2005. The NASA Deep Impact mission reached the comet on 4.24 July 2005, delivering a 370 kg impactor which hit the comet at 10.3 km/s. Following this impact,…
Near-Earth asteroid 2014 AA entered the Earth's atmosphere on 2014 January 2, only 21 hours after being discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey. In this paper we compute the trajectory of 2014 AA by combining the available optical astrometry,…
The dynamically new comet, C/2013 A1 (Siding Spring), is to make a close approach to Mars on 2014 October 19 at 18:30 UT at a distance of 40+/-1 Martian radius. Such extremely rare event offers a precious opportunity for the spacecrafts on…
Asteroids that could collide with the Earth are listed on the publicly available Near-Earth object (NEO) hazard web sites maintained by the US and European space agencies (NASA and ESA). The impact probability distribution of 69 potentially…
On 2018 June 2, meteoroid 2018 LA became the third natural body ever to be observed before entering our atmosphere ---small asteroids 2014 AA and 2008 TC3 had stricken the Earth on 2014 January 2 and 2008 October 7, respectively. Here, we…
A large disruption in the main asteroid belt can cause a large flux, an "asteroid shower", on the terrestrial planets. We quantitatively examine the hypothesis that such an event was the cause of the lunar late heavy bombardment (LHB). We…