The probe was headed toward a small asteroid to scan it for valuable ... The spacecraft is designed to travel to the company’s target near-Earth asteroid and dock with the body in space.

However, an impact on the moon cannot be ruled out. Then in January of this year, the near approach of an asteroid perhaps ... Although Earth is a small target in a big solar system, it does ...

Last year, astronomers detected the near-earth asteroid ... done with small spacecraft, and YR4 provides an opportunity to begin this process." The study of asteroids is a growing field, with ...

Additional observations of the near-Earth object fortunately excluded these risks. Until recently, there remained a small risk ... times the Earth-Moon distance. Although the asteroid was still ...

"Scientifically there's a huge amount we can learn from asteroids," says Alan Fitzsimmons, an astronomer at Queens University Belfast and a member of one of Nasa's sky surveys that searches and tracks ...

Recently the asteroid 2024 YR4 ... I began focusing on, or at least being aware of, working in the field of near-Earth objects as far back as 1980. As we were discovering these objects and ...

Also aboard is a rover the size of a small dog that will test a Nokia cellphone network on the moon, and two smaller ... It had the goal of flying past a near-Earth asteroid and beaming back ...

The lunar lander, called Blue Ghost, settled onto the Moon's surface at 2:34 am CST (3:34 am EST; 08:34 UTC). A few dozen ...