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spacecraft

SPACE: NASA Just Snagged a Bit of Asteroid Rock to Bring Home (Hopefully)

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OSIRIS-REx at Bennu - NASA

For the first time ever, a NASA probe has performed a sample-snagging operation on an asteroid in deep space. The agency’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft spiraled down to the surface of the near-Earth asteroid Bennu Tuesday afternoon (Oct. 20) to grab material that mission team members hope harbors clues about the solar system’s early days and the rise of life on Earth. “We did it!” OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta, of the University of Arizona, said during a webcast that provided updates about the maneuver. “We tagged the surface of the asteroid, and it’s up to Bennu now to see how the … Read more

SPACE: Spacecraft Could Nuke Dangerous Asteroid to Defend Earth

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Asteroid - pixabay

The next time a hazardous asteroid lines Earth up in its crosshairs, we may be ready for the threat. Scientists and engineers with the U.S. government have drawn up plans for a spacecraft that could knock big, incoming space rocks off course via blunt-force impact or blow them to bits with a nuclear warhead, BuzzFeed News reported. The researchers announced the concept vehicle, known as the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response (HAMMER), in a study in the February issue of the journal Acta Astronautica. And the team will discuss HAMMER at an asteroid-research conference in May, according to … Read more