Monday, June 12, 2023

Asteroid Day

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6/12/23

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Coming Soon

Incoming! In less than three weeks, the world will celebrate Asteroid Day. Each June 30, this global event marks the anniversary of Earth’s largest asteroid impact in recorded history, the Siberia Tunguska event in 1908.

Asteroid Day is an opportunity to discuss what asteroids can teach us about the solar system, how we might someday extract resources from these space rocks and how we can protect our planet from apocalyptic asteroid impacts.

This year’s theme is “Thank you DART. Here comes Hera,” in honor of NASA’s DART mission. This year, that spacecraft successfully nudged an asteroid onto a new course to test a strategy for warding off asteroids headed for Earth . The European Space Agency’s Hera probe will soon take a closer look at the bumped asteroid’s new orbit.

Other asteroid buzz this year includes the return of NASA’s OSIRIS-Rex mission this fall, which will bring back a bit of the asteroid Bennu. Plus, NASA’s Psyche mission is set to launch in October, heading off to an asteroid that might be a bare planetary core.

Visit the Asteroid Day website for information on a live broadcast featuring astronauts, scientists and other experts. Find events around the globe or the resources to host your own. And check out their answers to frequently asked asteroid questions. You can find more asteroid explainers and news at Science News Explores.

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an image from the James Webb telescope showing newborn stars in a spiral galaxy

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Did you know that hydrogen is an elemental extrovert, willing to bond with all kinds of other atoms? We answered one young reader’s question about what atoms bond with hydrogen in our latest Instagram post! Find out the answers to more science questions by following @sn.explores. Young readers can also send their own questions to explores@sciencenews.org.

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