Asteroids, Comets, and Meteors

[firestar464]

Most sensitive radio observations to date find no evidence of technosignature from 3I/ATLAS

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-sensitive ... ature.html

[Yuli Ban]

Most sensitive radio observations to date find no evidence of technosignature from 3I/ATLAS

https://phys.org/news/2025-12-sensitive ... ature.html

But my YouTube clickbait said that 3I/ATLAS is a giant mothership currently parked in Earth orbit and sending out probes and messages about our imminent doom/need to save Earth/how to get laid with space babes!

[firestar464]

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[weatheriscool]

[caltrek]

This Comet Mysteriously Reversed Its Spin After Passing The Sun, But Why?
By Michelle Starr
February 20, 2026

Introduction:

(Science Alert) A comet whizzing through the Solar System has astonished scientists by doing something they had never seen before.
In early 2017, comet 41P/Tuttle-Giacobini-Kresák made its 5.4-year close approach to the Sun, or perihelion.

As it did so, its spin appeared to slow down to a complete halt, before likely starting up again in the opposite direction, according to astronomer David Jewitt of the University of California, Los Angeles.

The reversal itself isn't the crazy part; changes in cometary spin are known to happen sometimes as these icy objects draw near to the Sun. Rather, it's how quickly and dramatically the reversal occurred.

"The previous record for a comet spindown went to 103P/Hartley 2, which slowed its rotation from 17 to 19 hours over 90 days," said astronomer Dennis Bodewits of the University of Maryland, describing the slowdown phase in 2018.

Read more here: https://www.sciencealert.com/this-come ... -but-why

[wjfox]

NASA changed an asteroid's orbit around the sun for the first time

6 March 2026

Humanity has shifted an asteroid’s orbit around the sun for the first time. This was achieved by NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission in 2022, but the effect has only now been measured.

DART’s target was a small asteroid called Dimorphos, which orbits a larger one called Didymos. The spacecraft crashed into the smaller rock in an effort to shift its orbit around the larger one, testing whether this method, called a kinetic impactor, would be an effective way to change an asteroid’s trajectory if it were heading towards Earth and send it careening past safely.

The mission was a smashing success, shortening the length of Dimorphos’s orbit by 32 minutes. In the years since then, astronomers have continued to watch the system, and with nearly 6000 observations, they have been able to calculate the change in the pair’s overall orbit around the sun: it has slowed down by 11.7 micrometres per second, or around 40 millimetres per hour. That is expected to decrease the radius of its orbit by about 360 metres.

“It doesn’t sound like a lot, but the whole idea behind these kinetic impacts is that if you do one early enough, a small impact makes a large change in the overall position,” says Rahil Makadia at the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign, part of the team monitoring the asteroids’ orbits. “It’s a very tiny number, but if you let it accumulate over decades, then it can grow into a big one.”

The slowdown had two causes: the initial impact by the spacecraft and an additional push from the jet of debris sent up from Dimorphos’s surface in the aftermath. Makadia and his colleagues calculated that the two effects were about equal to one another, which in turn allowed them to calculate the masses and densities of the asteroids. Dimorphos is about half as dense as Didymos, which adds credence to the idea that it is a so-called rubble pile that formed from material flung off of Didymos due to its rotation.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/25 ... irst-time/



Steve Gribben/Johns Hopkins APL/NASA

[caltrek]

Life Forms Can Catch Rides to Other Planets on Asteroid Debris
March 5, 2026

Introduction:

(Futurity) Tiny life forms tucked into debris from an asteroid hit could catapult to other planets—including Earth—and survive, a new study finds.

The work demonstrates that a certain hardy bacterium easily withstands extreme pressure comparable to an ejection from Mars after an asteroid hit, as well as the inhospitable conditions it would face during the ensuing interplanetary journey.

The study in PNAS Nexus suggests that microorganisms can survive remarkably more extreme conditions than expected, and raises questions about origins of life. The work also has significant implications for planetary protection and space missions.

“Life might actually survive being ejected from one planet and moving to another,” says senior author K.T. Ramesh, an engineer who studies how materials behave in extreme conditions.

“This is a really big deal that changes the way you think about the question of how life begins and how life began on Earth.”

Read more here: https://www.futurity.org/life-forms-as ... -3324902

[weatheriscool]

[firestar464]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

Do Look Up: Asteroid Apophis Will Fly by Earth in Three Years
By Richard Tresch Fienberg
April 13, 2026

Introduction:

(Sky & Telescope) Most stargazers have never seen an asteroid without optical aid. If achieving that feat is on your astronomical bucket list, mark Friday, April 13, 2029, on your calendar. That night, near-Earth asteroid 99942 Apophis will sail past our planet, briefly dipping inside the belt of geosynchronous satellites that hover 22,200 miles (35,800 km) above the equator. The 340-meter (1,100-foot) space rock will brighten to magnitude 3.1, comparable to Albireo, the star that marks the beak of Cygnus, the Swan.

For a point of comparison, consider the brightest asteroid in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, 4 Vesta. At its next opposition in October 2026, Vesta will likely get no brighter than magnitude 6.4. To see such a faint point of light directly, you need exceptional eyesight and truly dark, clear, and transparent skies. By contrast, at the climax of its 2029 flyby, Apophis should be readily visible to unaided eyes, even from moderately light-polluted areas.

Those of us in the Americas, however, will have to travel if we want to eyeball Apophis, because the flyby occurs at night over Europe, Africa, and western Asia. To determine the optimal locations from which to view Apophis, I contacted Michael Zeiler, the astro-cartographer behind EclipseAtlas.com, and Ernie Wright of the Scientific Visualization Studio at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. Between the asteroid’s orbit data on the NASA/JPL Horizons System, Ernie’s facility with NASA’s SPICE observation-geometry software, and Michael’s cartographic skills, I knew we could create attractive maps depicting where on Earth Apophis will be best seen during its historic visit.

Conclusion:

Upon its discovery in 2004, Apophis looked quite threatening (S&T: November 2006, page 28), but it’s now clear that there’s no chance the asteroid will collide with Earth any time in the next 100 years (S&T: November 2021, page 11). Ordinarily a 3rd-magnitude asteroid would be very bad news, but in this case, it’s no cause for alarm — just a rare chance to cross another celestial observation off your bucket list!

Read more here: https://skyandtelescope.org/astronomy- ... e-years/

[caltrek]

Rubin Observatory Spots 11,000 New Asteroids
By Philip Plait
April 20, 2026

Introduction:

(Bad Astronomy) The Vera C. Rubin Observatory has been in testing mode for a while now, and will soon begin routine scientific operations, where it will scan huge chunks of the sky every night looking for transients: objects that change their brightness or positions in the sky. This includes exploding stars, flaring black holes… and a lot of much solar system objects in our cosmic back yard.

I’ve already written on how 2,000 asteroids were discovered in early observations. Well, scientists just announced that looking at early images taken over the course of about six weeks, they have now found a staggering 11,000 asteroids. Eleven thousand.

Those are new discoveries, previously unknown rocks mostly orbiting in the Main Belt between Mars and Jupiter. It also spotted an addition 80,000 previously known asteroids as well! Holy wow. Many of those are what are called recovered asteroids, ones that were not observed long enough initially to get good orbits for them, so they became lost. Rubin has found them again, adding a long time baseline of observations that help nail down the shapes of their orbits.

Read more here: https://badastronomy.beehiiv.com/p/rub ... steroids

[wjfox]

[wjfox]

Asteroid set to fly very close to Earth

Asteroid 2026JH2 has enough mass to wipe out a city and will zoom past Earth next week

By Matthew Sparkes
13 May 2026

An asteroid with the potential to ruin a city will pass Earth next week. 2026JH2, as it has been labelled by the astronomy community, is predicted to zoom by our planet at an estimated distance of 90,917 kilometres – only a quarter of the distance between us and the moon.

“In astronomical terms, it’s as close as you can get without hitting,” says Mark Norris at the University of Lancashire, UK.

Within the next year, there are only five known asteroids that will pass within the orbit of the moon, and only one other will come closer than 2026JH2.

2026JH2 – which was spotted only this week by observers at the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona and the Farpoint Observatory in Kansas – will pass closest to Earth at 9.38pm UTC on 18 May. Norris says it will only be visible from the northern hemisphere very briefly and that even astronomers in the southern hemisphere will find it challenging to view, because its 9.17-kilometres-per-second speed relative to Earth means it will track across the sky almost as fast as artificial satellites.

The asteroid is estimated to be between 16 and 36 metres in diameter, according to data published by the Sormano Astronomical Observatory. “It’s the kind of thing that would ruin a city quite efficiently, if it hit,” says Norris.

https://www.newscientist.com/article/25 ... -to-earth/

[weatheriscool]

[wjfox]

[caltrek]

We received 49 reports about a fireball seen over DE, MA, MD, ME, NJ, NH, NY, Ontario, Québec and VT on Saturday, May 30th 2026 around 18:07 UT.

Source: https://fireball.amsmeteors.org/members ... /2026/3867

[wjfox]