Category Archives: Asteroids & Comets

Asteroids & Comets, Events

Videos: Asteroid Day reports

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Today is Asteroid Day (see earlier posting). Here are some items about asteroids and how to prevent any sizable ones from smacking into Earth:

** Live webcast:

** Planetary Society:

** NASA

Activism, Asteroids & Comets, Events

Videos: Asteroid Day – June 30, 2017

Friday June 30th is Asteroid Day.

Asteroid Day is a global awareness campaign where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities, and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Asteroid Day is held each year on the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia.

Event activities include a Asteroid Day Live – 24 hour global broadcast

Asteroid Day LIVE will be the first-ever 24-hour live broadcast about space, and specifically asteroids, airing on June 30, 2017 made possible by support from OHB, SES, BCE and the Luxembourg Government. Asteroid Day LIVE includes six hours from Luxembourg in addition to live programming from ESA, JAXA and NASA. The six-hour broadcast from Luxembourg plus hours of other international programming is creating a global conversation about some of the most important asteroid missions and new discoveries, with scientists and experts around the world.

Here is a set of videos about the annual event:

The Planetary Society has also released a new set of short videos about asteroids:

Checkout the full-length feature film 51 Degrees North, which inspired Asteroid Day:

Damon Miller is a filmmaker grappling with the pressures of an impoverished profession and a dissolving relationship. One routine assignment will change his life as he is involved in the disturbing research into Near-Earth Objects.

Activism, Asteroids & Comets, Events

Asteroid Day – 24-hour global broadcast on asteroid impact hazard – June 30th

Asteroid Day To Produce First Ever 24-Hour Global Broadcast
About Asteroid Impact Hazard
ESA, JAXA and NASA join Prof. Brian Cox, astronauts, esteemed scientists
and technologists on June 30, to create a global conversation about asteroids.

LUXEMBOURG, SILICON VALLEY — On June 30, asteroids will make history as the focus of a conversation shared around the world on the first ever global 24-hour broadcast about space and the role of asteroids in our solar system.

Asteroid Day LIVE, produced by Asteroid Day and sponsored by OHB, BCE and the Government of Luxembourg, will be distributed around the world via a dedicated SES satellite network. The 24-hours of programming will be hosted by Professor Brian Cox, prominent British physicist, author and BBC commentator, who will be joined in studio and around the world by famed astronauts, and expert scientists, technologists and researchers in planetary science.

“I am very pleased to be hosting Asteroid Day LIVE this June 30,” stated Prof. Cox. “This is a first-of-its-kind broadcast, celebrating and showcasing new discoveries in science that can help us understand our place in the solar system and nature – and in particular, the behaviour of asteroids. I’m very enthusiastic about it because asteroids provide a great opportunity for our civilisation, but also can pose great threats; we ignore them at our peril.”

Asteroid Day was sanctioned by the United Nations in 2016, as a “global day of education to raise awareness about asteroids.” This year, Asteroid Day includes the support and participation of the European, Japanese and American space agencies, as well as numerous business and media partners, including Discovery Channel, which is producing their own special on asteroids to be released June 30.  These two special broadcasts complement more than 700 events occurring in 190 countries on and around June 30.

“For the first time in history, assets of our new space economy are enabling us to have a global conversation about space, and in particular, asteroids, via a global space network spanning all time zones,” explained Asteroid Day Co-founder Danica Remy. “This is truly exciting, as citizens around the world will be able to hear from Asteroid experts on the broadcast, while participating in local events and sharing their views on various social media platforms.”

Asteroid Day LIVE will be the first ever 24-hour live broadcast from the new Broadcasting Center Europe (BCE) studio at RTL City, Luxembourg. The program will air on various local channels subscribing to the SES satellite network, and via the Asteroid Day website. View our full schedule here and this article for instructions to watch the broadcast.

“At SES, we value technology as a tool to improve and save lives,” stated Ruy Pinto, SES Deputy CTO. “We are proud to be sponsoring this global awareness campaign to learn about asteroids, the impact hazards they may pose, the resources they may one day yield and what we can do to ensure we have the best technology available to protect our planet.”

Guests for Asteroid Day LIVE (partial listing)

View the full Line-up of the Luxembourg program, here.

NASA and the University of Arizona’s programs

Everything you always wanted to know about near-Earth objects and planetary defense but were afraid to ask. At NASA, every day is Asteroid Day, with NASA-funded projects accounting for more than 90 percent of worldwide efforts in asteroid detection and  mitigation. This live one-hour special will explain how NASA finds, tracks and characterizes near-Earth asteroids and how the agency is planning for planetary defense.

The University of Arizona’s Lunar and Planetary Laboratory stands at the forefront of asteroid science.  Besides leading NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Asteroid Sample Return Mission, UA/LPL also manages the world’s most active program to identify and track Near-Earth Objects (NEOs).  Join us for a presentation by UA/LPL’s pioneers on the asteroid frontier.

In addition to the 24-hour live Asteroid Day LIVE broadcast, Discovery Channel has produced a special about asteroids and Asteroid Day, which will air on June 30.

“We are proud to be the principal media partner of Asteroid Day for the third year in a row, and excited to help raise awareness and spread the word among our fans through our Discovery networks around the world. As part of this partnership and to contribute to the cause, Discovery has produced a special documentary called “How to Survive an Asteroid Impact” and a 3 minute Virtual Reality video that recreates the impact of the asteroid that crashed in Tunguska in 1908. In June, Discovery Science will support Asteroid Day, with special asteroid themed programming giving viewers an insight on the risks behind asteroids, how scientists are trying to protect our planet from them and what viewers should do if one was just about to impact their city.”

[ Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of the Economy, Étienne Schneider stated,]

“We are very pleased to host the Asteroid Day event in Luxembourg, enhancing the excitement that our SpaceResources.lu initiative is generating across the world,” …“The partnership with the Asteroid Day activities is offering the Grand Duchy an additional opportunity to set its course in the space sector where the country is becoming increasingly important.”

About Asteroid Day: Asteroid Day was co-founded in 2014, by Dr. Brian May, astrophysicist and lead guitarist for the rock band Queen; Danica Remy, B612 Chief Operations Officer; Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart; and German filmmaker Grig Richters. Asteroid Day is held on 30 June each year to mark Earth’s largest asteroid impact in recorded history, the Siberia Tunguska event, which devastated over 2,000 km2 of forest, an area the size of any major metropolitan city today. In 2016, Asteroid Day was declared by the United Nations to be a global day of education to raise awareness about asteroids. Founding partners include: The Association of Space Explorers, B612 and Discovery Channel and global sponsors include OHB, SES, BCE and the Luxembourg Government.

OHB SE is the prime sponsor of Asteroid Day LIVE: “Asteroids are celestial objects which fascinate everyone from young people to experienced researchers,” commented Marco Fuchs, Owner and CEO of OHB. “Protecting Earth from a significant asteroid impact through dedicated satellites, along with the future commercial  exploitation of asteroids via mining, constitute global endeavors for upcoming generations. OHB takes pride in preparing for these opportunities with our own technical developments and investments.”

SOCIAL MEDIA: Join us in the Asteroid Day conversation:

TWITTER: @asteroidday #AsteroidDay, #AsteroidDayLive;
FACEBOOK: www.facebook.com/AsteroidDay #AsteroidDay, #AsteroidDayLive
YOUTUBE: www.youtube.com/user/asteroidday

Asteroids & Comets

Video: NASA radar images Asteroid 2014 JO25 before it passes near earth

NASA has released images and a short video clip of radar observations made this week of Asteroid 2014 JO25, which will make a flyby of earth today:

NASA Radar Spots Relatively Large Asteroid Prior to Flyby

Radar images of asteroid 2014 JO25 were obtained in the early morning hours on Tuesday, with NASA’s 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. The images reveal a peanut-shaped asteroid that rotates about once every five hours. The images have resolutions as fine as 25 feet (7.5 meters) per pixel.

This composite of 30 images of asteroid 2014 JO25 was generated with radar data collected using NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar in California’s Mojave Desert. Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech/GSSR

Asteroid 2014 JO25 was discovered in May 2014 by astronomers at the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona — a project of NASA’s Near-Earth Objects Observations Program in collaboration with the University of Arizona. The asteroid will fly safely past Earth on Wednesday at a distance of about 1.1 million miles (1.8 million kilometers), or about 4.6 times the distance from Earth to the moon. The encounter is the closest the object will have come to Earth in 400 years and will be its closest approach for at least the next 500 years.

“The asteroid has a contact binary structure – two lobes connected by a neck-like region,” said Shantanu Naidu, a scientist from NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, who led the Goldstone observations. “The images show flat facets, concavities and angular topography.”

The largest of the asteroid’s two lobes is estimated to be 2,000 feet (620 meters) across. Radar observations of the asteroid also have been conducted at the National Science Foundation’s Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. Additional radar observations are being conducted at both Goldstone and Arecibo on April 19 20, and 21, and could provide images with even higher resolution.

Radar has been used to observe hundreds of asteroids. When these small, natural remnants of the formation of the solar system pass relatively close to Earth, deep space radar is a powerful technique for studying their sizes, shapes, rotation, surface features, and roughness, and for more precise determination of their orbital path.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California, manages and operates NASA’s Deep Space Network, including the Goldstone Solar System Radar, and hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA’s Near-Earth Object Observations Program within the agency’s Science Mission Directorate.

More information about asteroids and near-Earth objects can be found at:

For more information about NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, visit:  http://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense

For asteroid and comet news and updates, follow AsteroidWatch on Twitter: http://twitter.com/AsteroidWatch

Asteroids & Comets, Space Science

Dawn identifies the age of the bright spot on Ceres

Data from the Dawn probe orbiting the dwarf planet Ceres in the asteroid belt has led to the age of the unusual bright white feature on the surface:

Dawn Identifies Age of Ceres’ Brightest Area 

The bright spots in the center of Occator Crater on Ceres are shown in enhanced color in this view from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft. Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech/UCLA/MPS/DLR/IDA/PSI/LPI › Full image and caption

The bright central area of Ceres’ Occator Crater, known as Cerealia Facula, is approximately 30 million years younger than the crater in which it lies, according to a new study in the Astronomical Journal. Scientists used data from NASA’s Dawn spacecraft to analyze Occator’s central dome in detail, concluding that this intriguing bright feature on the dwarf planet is only about 4 million years old — quite recent in terms of geological history.

Researchers led by Andreas Nathues at the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research (MPS) in Gottingen, Germany, analyzed data from two instruments on board NASA’s Dawn spacecraft: the framing camera, and the visible and infrared mapping spectrometer.

The new study supports earlier interpretations from the Dawn team that this reflective material — comprising the brightest area on all of Ceres — is made of carbonate salts, although it did not confirm a particular type of carbonate previously identified. The secondary, smaller bright areas of Occator, called Vinalia Faculae, are comprised of a mixture of carbonates and dark material, the study authors wrote.

New evidence also suggests that Occator’s bright dome likely rose in a process that took place over a long period of time, rather than forming in a single event. They believe the initial trigger was the impact that dug out the crater itself, causing briny liquid to rise closer to the surface. Water and dissolved gases, such as carbon dioxide and methane, came up and created a vent system. These rising gases also could have forced carbonate-rich materials to ascend toward the surface. During this period, the bright material would have erupted through fractures, eventually forming the dome that we see today.

See also the report: Cryovolcanism on Dwarf Planet Ceres | Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research

The spacecraft is currently on its way to a high-altitude orbit of 12,400 miles (20,000 kilometers), and to a different orbital plane. In late spring, Dawn will view Ceres in “opposition,” with the sun directly behind the spacecraft. By measuring details of the brightness of the salt deposits in this new geometry, scientists may gain even more insights into these captivating bright areas.

The Dawn mission is managed by JPL for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate in Washington. Dawn is a project of the directorate’s Discovery Program, managed by NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama. UCLA is responsible for overall Dawn mission science. Orbital ATK Inc., in Dulles, Virginia, designed and built the spacecraft. The German Aerospace Center, Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research, Italian Space Agency and Italian National Astrophysical Institute are international partners on the mission team. For a complete list of mission participants, visit: http://dawn.jpl.nasa.gov/mission

More information about Dawn is available at the following sites: