When we think of the solar system, we tend to think of the Sun and the nine planets that orbit it. But there’s a lot more orbiting the Sun than just planets (and dwarf planets — we see you, Pluto!) ...

An asteroid could wipe out humanity, but it's unlikely. Near-misses are more common than impacts, though planetary defence is something that money should be spent on because the chance isn't zero. An ...

Global cooperation is, unsurprisingly for a threat that comes from the stars, essential. Source: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory Note: The Earth, Sun and asteroids are depicted as representations, not ...

Today, an asteroid larger than Manhattan – large enough it could end civilization, or at least wreck a country – is casually flying by Earth. Don’t panic. This rocky beast named (887) Alinda has zero ...

What would we do if an asteroid was hurtling toward Earth? “You simply run into it with a spacecraft. You don’t need Bruce Willis,” former astronaut and co-founder of the B612 Foundation, Dr. Ed Lu, ...

Millions of asteroids are floating around in space. Find out what you know about these relics of our solar system. (Jungmin Ryu for The Washington Post) Warning: This ...

Life on Earth may have begun with a gift from a comet. Its existence was once threatened by an asteroid. Its future may ...

The number 40,000 might not sound particularly dramatic, but it represents humanity's growing catalog of near-Earth asteroids ...

On a special episode (first released on October 2, 2024) of The Excerpt podcast: Hollywood has long been enamored with end-of-the-world science fiction where asteroids play the leading role. But the ...

Hundreds of asteroids in our solar system have a secret moon, a European Space Agency spacecraft has discovered. ESA's Gaia mission, which is designed to map the stars in our Milky Way galaxy in ...

The dotted white streak cutting across this photo of a faraway galaxy might seem like a nuisance for astronomers, but it's actually the mark of a previously undiscovered asteroid. The image, snapped ...

Much remains to be known about the chemical composition of small asteroids. Their potential to harbor valuable metals, materials from the early solar system, and the possibility of obtaining a ...