Tag Archives: asteroids

Huge planet to zip the earth on Christmas day

NASA is keeping an eye on the giant planet that zipped past Earth on Christmas Day. 501647 (2014 SD224), Space Rock U.S. The space agency’s “Close Approach” is on the list and could be 689 feet wide. It’s as long as two football fields. It is predicted to come within …

Read More »

Gift of Japanese spacecraft: charcoal-like asteroid chips

TOKYO (AP) – It looks like small pieces of charcoal, but clay samples collected from a planet on Earth by a Japanese spacecraft and returned to Earth were hardly disappointing. The specimens described on Thursday by Japanese space officials are as large as 1 centimeter (0.4 inches) and are hard …

Read More »

A small meteor planet could alter our understanding of asteroids

Scientists have released an analysis of meteorite fragments collected after a collision with Earth near an asteroid in 2008. They show that the parent asteroid was giant, and the results suggest that special, water-holding type asteroids may be larger and may have different mineral compositions than previously thought. The study …

Read More »