Asteroid | featured news

NASA is aiming to launch a rocket to an asteroid in five years and grab a boulder off of it — a stepping stone for an eventual trip sending humans to Mars.

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to lasso a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, a top senator revealed Friday.

If scientists detected a major asteroid headed for Earth now, it would take at least five years and billions of dollars to develop an effective defense system to either alter its course or destroy it, scientists say.

Could a “Deathstar” someday defend Earth against incoming threats from space? Last Friday, asteroid 2012 DA14 -- half a football field long and weighing about 190,000 tons -- missed plane Earth in a fly-by. Far smaller and therefore harder to detect was the 50 foot long asteroid that injured more than 1,000 Russians when it stuck a few hours earlier.

Private group works to prevent next close encounter with an asteroid or meteors. The Earth may have survived its close encounters with an asteroid and a meteor Friday, but the episodes focused new attention on gaps in astronomers' ability to identify smaller space rocks like these capable of inflicting widespread destruction.

Science editor Alan Boyle's blog: The best way for most of us to watch asteroid 2012 DA14 come within 17,200 miles of Earth, and then recede harmlessly into the cosmos, is to watch the show online.

A 150-foot-wide asteroid will come remarkably close to Earth next week, even closer than high-flying communication and weather satellites. It will be the nearest known flyby for an object of this size....

An asteroid will give Earth a historically close shave next week, but there's no chance that the space rock will slam into our planet on this pass, experts say.

Another company joined the commercial space race Tuesday with ambitious plans to mine asteroids near Earth, but experts say the physics and economics of the Final Frontier remain still daunting.

Upon further review, a big scary-sounding asteroid is no longer even a remote threat to smash into Earth in about 20 years, NASA says....