After debris breaks off DART target asteroid, NASA tracks another asteroid heading for Earth

Asteroids are rocky, airless remnants left over from the early formation of our solar system around 4.6 billion years ago, according to NASA. While most of them are located in the main asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, the orbits of these space rocks sometimes bring them close to Earth. Thus, it is imperative that these asteroids are observed and tracked for potentially hazardous situations. NASA has various ground and space-based telescopes to study them.

Nearly three years into this current console generation, the transition to improved fidelity and performance targets in games hasn’t been as widespread and concrete as many had hoped. Thankfully, one of the benefits of developing a game that’s far from technically demanding – especially on current-gen hardware – is being able to push those numbers to their limit, and it seems that’s what Tessera Studios’ and Outright Games’ upcoming Transformers: Earthspark – Expedition will be doing.

Every year on June 30, we celebrate World Asteroid Day. This day commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska event, which is the largest asteroid strike in recorded history. On June 30, 1908, a carbonaceous asteroid crashed in Yeniseysk Governorate, Russia, and it decimated nearly 2150 square kilometers of forest area and scored the ground. This resulting explosion was recorded at almost 12 megatons. David Morrison, a planetary science researcher at the NASA Ames Research Center termed it as the “largest cosmic event ever witnessed by humans”.

Asteroids fly by Earth at close distances at regular intervals, but not all of them impact the surface. However, there is no guarantee that none of them ever will. In 2013, an asteroid, the size of a house, exploded over the city of Chelyabinsk in Russia and damaged over 8000 buildings, leaving nearly 1000 people injured. More recently, another small space rock landed on a woman's roof in France and hit her in the chest! These close calls with asteroids highlight the importance of observing and tracking them for any potential close approaches to the planet.

Is the asteroid threat a mere figment of our imagination? Is the fear driven mostly by Hollywood movies like the Bruce Willis, Ben Affleck starrer Armageddon or the more recent Leonardo DiCaprio and Jennifer Lawrence-starrer Don't Look Up? Well, you should know that these asteroids can actually be a huge hazard for Earth. The chances of an asteroid crashing on Earth are slim, but it has happened before on a regular basis causing the extinction of many species, most famously, that of dinosaurs. Yes, we have all heard about the ending of the era of dinosaurs due to a massive asteroid that hit the Earth's surface. It happened 65 million years ago and even as recently as 2013, an asteroid exploded over a Russian city causing injury to nearly 1000 people.

NASA's InSight Mars lander revealed some shocking data about the Red Planet's rotation speed and the findings suggest that its days are getting shorter. The lander reached Mars in 2018 to study the 4.5 billion year old planet, however, the mission was concluded due to the lander running out of energy. However, with the help of data gathered by the Mars lander, researchers have achieved the most accurate measurements of Mars' rotation to date.

The curious journey of Ironmace's medieval extraction sim Dark And Darker continues with the launch of an early access build. You won't find it in one of the usual places, however. As Kaan reported in April, Dark And Darker was pulled from Steam following accusations of copyright theft from publisher Nexon (Ironmace's founder Terence Park and a developer Ju-Hyun Choi are Nexon alumni who worked on a similar fantasy game, codenamed P3, in 2020-2021). With legal proceedings on-going, Ironmace have released this tense first-person dungeon crawler via their own Blacksmith launcher and third-party store Chaf Games. It's a bit more ceremonial than letting people torrent the test builds, at least.

Asteroids have been known to make frequent close approaches to Earth at regular intervals. That is why space agencies such as NASA and ESA observe, track and even name them. But how does this process take place? According to ESA, the process of assigning a provisional designation to an asteroid begins when a single observer detects it on two consecutive nights and then sends their findings to the Minor Planet Centre of the International Astronomical Union (IAU).

The X1.6-class solar flare that released two powerful coronal mass ejections (CME) on August 5, has just become even more terrifying. According to a new NOAA (National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration) model, the two CME clouds have merged, with the second, faster one, overtaking and cannibalizing the first. The result is that the merged entity has become even more powerful. Even a glancing blow from such a cloud can spark a vicious solar storm. The latest forecast says the storm will hit the Earth later today, August 8, and can produce G3-class storms.

Asteroids follow orbits that occasionally bring them near Earth, and their potential threat to our planet is a concern acknowledged by the US space agency NASA. Throughout time, various asteroid impacts have occurred, such as the Chelyabinsk asteroid event and the devastating Chicxulub asteroid, which is believed to have resulted in dinosaur extinction. More recently, an incident in France involved a space rock striking a woman in the chest. Putting things in perspective is NASA's Dr. Kelly E. Fast, who emphasizes that Earth has experienced asteroid impacts in the past and believes that such events will recur. The idea is to find and track all asteroids that pose a threat to Earth and deal with it.

NASA's Voyager 2 spacecraft was back chatting it up Friday after flight controllers corrected a mistake that had led to weeks of silence.

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is gearing up for the big reveal of the pristine asteroid sample that was collected by its OSIRIS-REx spacecraft. During its mission, the spacecraft collected a sample from an asteroid called Bennu which has a 1/2700 chance of impacting Earth between 2175 and 2195. Studying it will not only improve our understanding of asteroids that could impact Earth but also shed light on planet formation and the origin of organics and water that could have led to life, as per NASA.