Giant asteroid ‘Florence’ whizzes past Earth revealing two moons (IMAGES, VIDEOS)

Published time: 2 Sep, 2017 16:52 The largest asteroid to come so close to Earth in over a century whizzed by the planet Friday without a hitch – and revealed two tiny moons in the process. The highly anticipated asteroid ‘3122 Florence,’ measuring a whopping 2.8 miles (4.5 kilometers) in width, came within 4.4 million […]

NASA confirms two moons in the Solar System are venting oceans into space

Scientists are increasingly confident that an ocean below the icy surface of Enceladus could support life. (credit: Cassini Imaging Team, SSI, JPL, ESA, NASA) The prospects for life existing in our Solar System beyond Earth and finding it within a decade or two improved with two scientific findings announced Thursday by NASA. The space agency […]

One of Jupiter’s asteroid ‘moons’ is orbiting backwards

As a rule, you can safely assume that moons and asteroids will all orbit a planet in the same direction. If they didn’t, interactions with their host would likely send them flying off course. However, it’s now clear that there are exceptions to this rule: researchers have discovered that an asteroid is circling Jupiter in […]

Collapsing Mars moons could form rings, research claims

Published time: 21 Feb, 2017 21:00 New research suggests that Mars has begun building Saturn-like rings using the destroyed fragments of two of its moons. In a new paper published in the journal Icarus, researchers from the Physical Research Laboratory in India put forward the idea that some of the dust that surrounds Mars may […]