NASA's Apollo missions brought back moon rock samples for scientists to study. We've learned a great deal over the ensuing decades, but one enduring mystery remains. Many of those lunar samples show signs of exposure to strong magnetic fields comparable to Earth's, yet the Moon doesn't have such a field today. So, how did the moon rocks get their magnetism?

There have been many attempts to explain this anomaly. The latest comes from MIT scientists, who argue in a new paper published in the journal Science Advances that a large asteroid impact briefly boosted the Moon's early weak magnetic field—and that this spike is what is recorded in some lunar samples.

Evidence gleaned from orbiting spacecraft observations, as well as results announced earlier this year from China's Chang'e 5 and Chang'e 6 missions, is largely consistent with the existence of at least a weak magnetic field on the early Moon. But where did this field come from? These usually form in planetary bodies as a result of a dynamo, in which molten metals in the core start to convect thanks to slowly dissipating heat. The problem is that the early Moon's small core had a mantle that wasn't much cooler than its core, so there would not have been significant convection to produce a sufficiently strong dynamo.

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The space agency is investigating an issue with the spacecraft's fuel pressure.

Asteroid Donaldjohanson has turned out to be a picturesque waypoint as NASA’s mission heads toward Jupiter’s Trojan asteroids.

The mission is set for a close encounter with the small main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson on April 20.

Astronomers have traced the origin of asteroid 2024 YR4, which appears to have broken off from a larger space rock.

New Webb Telescope data confirms that asteroid 2024 YR4 poses no threat to Earth during its 2032 flyby. As for the Moon, not so much.

The ESA probe spotted the moon while en route to witness the aftermath of NASA's asteroid deflection test.

AstroForge's attempt to launch the first commercial deep space mission fell apart shortly after liftoff.

The main belt asteroid Donaldjohanson is now in sight as the Discovery Program mission prepares for a flyby of the object in April.

2024 YR4 turned heads when it became the most dangerously rated asteroid earlier this week.

Investors on the lookout for startups working at the frontiers of technology are casting their nets ever further into unchartered territory, sometimes literally as well as figuratively. In one of the latest examples, a startup called Karman+ with ambitions to build autonomous spacecraft that can travel to asteroids and then mine them for materials has […]

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2024 YR4's odds jumped to a 1-in-32 chance of impact, though that number will likely fall as the asteroid continues to be monitored.

The odds of asteroid 2024 YR4 hitting Earth are shifting, with the space rock now carrying a 1-in-48 chance of collision.

Asteroid 2024 YR4 has a 2.2% chance of striking Earth in seven years, but recent updates keep pushing the odds in the wrong direction.

Something in the sky captured the attention of astronomers in the final days of 2024. A telescope in Chile scanning the night sky detected a faint point of light, and it didn't correspond to any of the thousands of known stars, comets, and asteroids in astronomers' all-sky catalog.

The detection on December 27 came from one of a network of telescopes managed by the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS), a NASA-funded project to provide warning of asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

Within a few days, scientists gathered enough information on the asteroid—officially designated 2024 YR4—to determine that its orbit will bring it quite close to Earth in 2028, and then again in 2032. Astronomers ruled out any chance of an impact with Earth in 2028, but there's a small chance the asteroid might hit our planet on December 22, 2032.

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Bennu has a 1-in-2,700 chance of colliding with Earth in 2182, causing a global winter and drought.

A dive into probabilities, asteroid impact modeling, and what sort of damage an approximately 180-foot asteroid could cause on Earth.

A bright fireball streaked across the sky above mountains, glaciers, and spruce forest near the town of Revelstoke in British Columbia, Canada, on the evening of March 31, 1965. Fragments of this meteorite, discovered by beaver trappers, fell over a lake. A layer of ice saved them from the depths and allowed scientists a peek into the birth of the solar system.

Nearly 60 years later, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission returned from space with a sample of an asteroid named Bennu, similar to the one that rained rocks over Revelstoke. Our research team has published a chemical analysis of those samples, providing insight into how some of the ingredients for life may have first arrived on Earth.

Born in the years bracketing the Revelstoke meteorite’s fall, the two of us have spent our careers in the meteorite collections of the Smithsonian Institution in Washington, DC, and the Natural History Museum in London. We’ve dreamed of studying samples from a Revelstoke-like asteroid collected by a spacecraft.

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The discovery is a capstone achievement for NASA, which went to great lengths to secure and deliver asteroid samples from asteroid Bennu in 2020.

The asteroid, designated 2024 YR4, jumped to the top of NASA's risk chart, with a slim but measurable chance of striking Earth in just seven years.