Asteroid 2005 YU55 Passes the Earth   NASA - November 9, 2011

Asteroid 2005 YU55 passed by the Earth yesterday, posing no danger. The space rock, estimated to be about 400 meters across, coasted by just inside the orbit of Earth's Moon. Although the passing of smaller rocks near the Earth is not very unusual -- in fact small rocks from space strike Earth daily -- a rock this large hasn't passed this close since 1976. Were YU55 to have struck land, it might have caused a magnitude seven earthquake and left a city-sized crater. A perhaps larger danger would have occurred were YU55 to have struck the ocean and raised a large tsunami. The above radar image was taken two days ago by the Deep Space Network radio telescope in Goldstone, California, USA. YU55 was discovered only in 2005, indicating that other potentially hazardous asteroids might lurk in our Solar System currently undetected. Objects like YU55 are hard to detect because they are so faint and move so fast. However, humanity's ability to scan the sky to detect, catalog, and analyze such objects has increased notably in recent years.

New horseshoe orbit Earth-companion asteroid discovered   PhysOrg - April 6, 2011

Apostolos Christou and David Asher from the Armagh Observatory in Northern Ireland announced the discovery of an asteroid near Earth called Asteroid 2010 SO16 and their findings were published on arXiv.org. While finding near-Earth asteroids is not unusual, there is something quite rare about this particular asteroid in that it orbits the sun in what is referred to as a horseshoe orbit.

First Asteroid Dust Brought to Earth Holds Clues to Planet Birth   National Geographic - November 24, 2010

Flecks of dust recently brought back to Earth by a Japanese probe are already helping astronomers create a more accurate picture of a near-Earth asteroid. The find could eventually lead to new understanding of the history of our solar system. Last week scientists confirmed that the recovery chamber aboard the Hayabusa spacecraft contained about 1,500 particles from the surface of the asteroid Itokawa.

25,000 new asteroids found by NASA's sky mapping   PhysOrg - July 16, 2010

Worried about Earth-threatening asteroids? One of NASA's newest space telescopes has spotted 25,000 never-before-seen asteroids in just six months.

  "New World" Asteroid Photographed Up Close   National Geographic - July 13, 2010

Scientists have detected water-ice on the surface of an asteroid   BBC - April 29, 2010

A frosty space rock with organic materials may offer new proof that asteroids delivered water and the origins of life to Earth.

P/2010 A2: Unusual Asteroid Tail Implies Powerful Collision   NASA - February 3, 2010

Suspected Asteroid Collision Leaves Odd X-Pattern of Trailing Debris   Physorg- February 2, 2010
NASA's Hubble Space Telescope has imaged a mysterious X-shaped debris pattern and trailing streamers of dust that suggest a head-on collision between two asteroids. Astronomers have long thought that the asteroid belt is being ground down through collisions, but such a smashup has never before been seen.

Asteroid explosion was a whopper for Earth   MSNBC - October 29, 2009
A space rock explosion earlier this month over an island region of Indonesia is now being viewed as perhaps the biggest object to tangle with the Earth in more than a decade.

Meteorite hunters 'strike gold' in Nubian Desert Sudan   New Scientist - March 26, 2009

Meteorites in Africa Traced to Asteroid "Parent"   National Geographic - March 25, 2009 Almahata Sitta 15 NASA - March 28, 2009
... the first material recovered from a known asteroid.

  Tunguska-sized space rock buzzes Earth   New Scientist - March 2, 2009
Surprise Asteroid Buzzed Earth   National Geographic - March 2, 2009

Record spin for newfound asteroid BBC - May 30, 2008

Sumerian Cuneiform Clay tablet translated - holds clue to asteroid impacts PhysOrg - March 31, 2008

A cuneiform clay tablet that has puzzled scholars for over 150 years has been translated for the first time. The tablet is now known to be a contemporary Sumerian observation of an asteroid impact at Kšfels, Austria and is published in a new book, 'A Sumerian Observation of the Kofels' Impact Event.'

The giant landslide centered at Kšfels in Austria is 500m thick and five kilometres in diameter and has long been a mystery since geologists first looked at it in the 19th century. The conclusion drawn by research in the middle 20th century was that it must be due to a very large meteor impact because of the evidence of crushing pressures and explosions. But this view lost favou=r as a much better understanding of impact sites developed in the late 20th century. In the case of Kšfels there is no crater, so to modern eyes it does not look as an impact site should look. However, the evidence that puzzled the earlier researchers remains unexplained by the view that it is just another landslide.

This new research by Alan Bond, Managing Director of Reaction Engines Ltd and Mark Hempsell, Senior Lecturer in Astronautics at Bristol University, brings the impact theory back into play. It centres on another 19th century mystery, a Cuneiform tablet in the British Museum collection No K8538 (known as "the Planisphere").

It was found by Henry Layard in the remains of the library in the Royal Place at Nineveh, and was made by an Assyrian scribe around 700 BC. It is an astronomical work as it has drawings of constellations on it and the text has known constellation names. It has attracted a lot of attention but in over a hundred years nobody has come up with a convincing explanation as to what it is.

With modern computer programs that can simulate trajectories and reconstruct the night sky thousands of years ago the researchers have established what the Planisphere tablet refers to. It is a copy of the night notebook of a Sumerian astronomer as he records the events in the sky before dawn on the 29 June 3123 BC (Julian calendar). Half the tablet records planet positions and cloud cover, the same as any other night, but the other half of the tablet records an object large enough for its shape to be noted even though it is still in space. The astronomers made an accurate note of its trajectory relative to the stars, which to an error better than one degree is consistent with an impact at Kofels.

The observation suggests the asteroid is over a kilometre in diameter and the original orbit about the Sun was an Aten type, a class of asteroid that orbit close to the earth, that is resonant with the Earth's orbit. This trajectory explains why there is no crater at Kofels. The in coming angle was very low (six degrees) and means the asteroid clipped a mountain called Gamskogel above the town of Langenfeld, 11 kilometres from Kofels, and this caused the asteroid to explode before it reached its final impact point. As it travelled down the valley it became a fireball, around five kilometres in diameter (the size of the landslide). When it hit Kšfels it created enormous pressures that pulverized the rock and caused the landslide but because it was no longer a solid object it did not create a classic impact crater.

Mark Hempsell, discussing the Kšfels event, said: "Another conclusion can be made from the trajectory. The back plume from the explosion (the mushroom cloud) would be bent over the Mediterranean Sea re-entering the atmosphere over the Levant, Sinai, and Northern Egypt. "The ground heating though very short would be enough to ignite any flammable material - including human hair and clothes. It is probable more people died under the plume than in the Alps due to the impact blast."

Asteroids Spin Faster Due to Solar Power, Studies Show   National Geographic - March 7, 2007

Sunlight can speed up or slow down the spin of small asteroids, according to a trio of related papers appearing this week. The discovery offers the first direct evidence of a predicted asteroid behavior.

Corkscrew Asteroid   NASA - June 9, 2006

News flash: Earth has a "second moon." Asteroid 2003 YN107 is looping around our planet once a year. Measuring only 20 meters across, the asteroid is too small to see with the unaided eye but it is there. This news, believe it or not, is seven years old.

Asteroid Probe Offers New Views of Near-Earth Object   National Geographic - June 2, 2006

The Itokawa asteroid is made up of loosely packed bits of sand and boulders
25143 Itokawa Wikipedia

Relic of ancient asteroid found   BBC - May 10, 2006

A large fragment of an asteroid that punched 160km-wide (100 miles) hole in the Earth's surface has been found.

Asteroid Belt Discovered Around Our Sun's "Twin"   National Geographic - April 21, 2005
NASA's orbiting Spitzer Space Telescope has found evidence of a massive asteroid belt around a "twin" of our own sun. Kim Weaver, a Spitzer Space Telescope scientist, said the finding marks "the first time that scientists have found evidence for a massive asteroid belt around a mature, sunlike star." "This region around the star is the sort of place where rocky planets [like Earth] may form," Weaver said yesterday at a press conference from NASA headquarters in Washington, D.C. The star, dubbed HD69830, is some 41 light-years away - which, in space terms, is practically our own backyard. Part of the constellation Puppis, the star is a tad too faint to see with the unaided eye. The discovery may help reveal how other Earth-like planets could be formed and whether our own solar system is common or unique in space.

Space rock caused 'great dying' BBC - November 21, 2003
Scientists have found new evidence that the greatest extinction in the Earth's history was triggered by an asteroid. About 250 million years ago, something unknown wiped out most of the life on the planet. It was far more devastating than the impact that ended the rule of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Hermes: Asteroid found after 66 years lost in space   BBC - October 17, 2003

Astronomers have seen a large asteroid that they first found 66 years ago and then lost in the depths of space. It is called Hermes and it entered the record books by making a close approach to the Earth, just beyond the Moon.

Voyage to the asteroid belt   BBC - April 10, 2003

British scientists are planning to send a swarm of miniature spacecraft beyond Mars to study the origin of asteroids that might pose a threat to the Earth.

Earth's little brother found   BBC - October 21, 2002

Astronomers have discovered the first object ever that is in a companion orbit to the Earth. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is only about 100 metres wide and never comes closer than 5.8 million kilometres (3.6 million miles) to our planet. But it shares the Earth's orbit around the Sun, at first on one side of the Earth and then escaping to travel along our planet's path around the Sun until it encounters the Earth from the other side. Then it goes back again.

Space rock's close approach   BBC - June 20, 2002

Astronomers have revealed that on 14 June, an asteroid the size of a football pitch made one of the closest ever recorded approaches to the Earth. It is only the sixth time an asteroid has been seen to penetrate the Moon's orbit, and this is by far the biggest rock to do so. What has worried some astronomers, though, is that the space object was only detected on 17 June, several days after its flyby. It was found by astronomers working on the Lincoln Laboratory Near Earth Asteroid Research (Linear) search programme in New Mexico.

Asteroid's mystery 'blue ponds'   BBC - September 26, 2001

Eros: The bluish soils are a mystery. "Asteroids are more subtle than we imagined," says Dr Erik Asphaug, of the University of California, US, commenting on the data sent back by the Near-Shoemaker spacecraft as it touched down on asteroid Eros last February. The survey and landing carried out by the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous (Near)-Shoemaker probe revealed Eros to be a tiny irregularly shaped world strewn with boulders, pitted with rocks, and, surprisingly, strange "mobile" soils. Eros is over four billion years old, a leftover from the formation of the planets, and has never been part of a much larger body. It bears the scars of numerous impacts but its composition has remained relatively unaltered. In low regions, scientists have observed "ponds" of bluish dust. It is speculated that they may have been lifted from beneath the surface by electrostatic forces, and flow like liquid into depressions.

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