International Asteroid Day is nigh. Held every June 30, the occasion marks what is thought to be the biggest asteroid impact ...

On 13 April 2029, the asteroid 99942 Apophis will pass safely at a distance of about 32,000 kilometers above Earth's surface, within the geostationary orbit, posing no threat to the planet. This ...

The likelihood of an impact isn’t low. A 2025 analysis led by the planetary scientist Carrie Nugent estimates asteroids 460 ...

To truly understand what an asteroid is made of, we need to send a probe to it. Remote sensing from ground-based telescopes, or even orbiting observatories, can only do so much. A new white paper ...

Binary asteroid systems are widespread throughout our inner solar system. For decades, the standard paradigm held that many of them form when a rapidly spinning primary asteroid casts off material, ...

SwRI Institute Scientist Dr. Simone Marchi created this artistic rendering of early Earth, which shows a surface pummeled by large impacts, creating hydrothermal conditions that could support the ...

Astronomers don’t treat every “close approach” headline the same way the public does. On June 9, two near-Earth objects, 2026 LD and 2026 KM3, are being tracked as they pass Earth at distances ...