Estimating the mass of a potentially dangerous asteroid remains a key parameter for planetary protection, but traditional radio frequency tracking methods do not allow accurate measurement of small ...

Microbes blasted off a planet by an asteroid strike may survive the journey to another world, including Earth, according to a ...

"For asteroids of the size scale relevant to planetary defense (i.e., ∼50-500 m), the mass can only be directly measured ...

It's been about eight months since the Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) saw first light. Now the telescope is scanning the night sky to detect transient changes and sending alerts to astronomers and ...

This week the telescope revealed its first real-time sky alerts, issuing 800,000 alerts for transient events in just one night, February 24, 2026. Some of these were variable stars – which go through ...

Rubin Observatory begins sending hundreds of thousands of nightly alerts as it prepares for its 10-year sky survey, tracking supernovae, asteroids, galaxies and other changing objects in near real ...

Rubin Observatory detected 800,000 cosmic changes in one night, launching its 10-year mission to create a real-time movie of ...

Asteroids, exploding stars, and feasting black holes swarm in the first-ever batch of nightly alerts from the Vera C. Rubin ...

For the first time ever, scientists have uncovered a vast field of tektites in Brazil — mysterious glassy fragments forged when a powerful extraterrestrial object slammed into Earth about 6.3 million ...

Active small bodies—including comets, active asteroids, icy minor planets, and transitional objects—occupy a unique position in planetary science. As ...

A NASA planetary defense officer warns thousands of near-Earth asteroids capable of destroying a city remain undetected.

NASA planetary defense experts warn that up to 15,000 undetected asteroids could devastate a major city on Earth.