Astronomy, Asteroid | featured news

A giant asteroid will make a flyby of Earth over the next few days, and armchair astronomers can watch the action live on their computers.

It sounds like the plot of a bad Bruce Willis movie, but some experts are saying it should be a reality. In order to prepare for massive asteroids that could aim for Earth in the future, researchers should ram a spaceship into a real asteroid to see if the space rock would shift course, scientists say.

A city-block size asteroid will fly by Earth this weekend, well beyond the orbit of the moon, and you can watch it zip safely by live in an online webcast.

Meet Amun 3554... Little more than a mile wide, it's one of the smallest M-class (metal-bearing) asteroids yet discovered... So, the total payout from one unassuming asteroid? $20,000,000,000,000. That’s what got Planetary Resources co-founder Peter Diamandis so excited. “There are $20 trillion checks up there waiting to be cashed,” he enthused at a space development conference in 2006.

A group of high-tech tycoons wants to mine nearby asteroids, hoping to turn science fiction into real profits. The plan is to use commercially built robotic ships to squeeze rocket fuel and valuable minerals like platinum and gold out of the lifeless rocks that routinely whiz by Earth. One of the company founders predicts they could have their version of a space-based gas station up and running by 2020.

An asteroid the size of a passenger jet will zoom close by Earth on Sunday  just in time for April Fools' Day, but it has no chance of hitting the Earth, NASA says.

The biggest asteroid to cruise by Earth in 35 years will make its closest approach Tuesday at 6:28 p.m. Scientists say there is no danger. The 1,200-foot-long charcoal-black space rock, called 2005 YU55, will come no closer than 200,000 miles, just inside the orbit of the moon. It is too faint to see with the naked eye, but backyard astronomers can spy the asteroid with six-inch or larger telescopes as the nearly spherical rock zooms across the constellations Aquila and Pegasus.

An asteroid bigger than an aircraft carrier will dart between the Earth and moon on Tuesday - the closest encounter by such a huge rock in 35 years.

A small asteroid zipped by Earth well inside the orbit of the moon on Friday, marking the second known space-rock encounter for our planet over the past week, NASA said.

NASA's Dawn spacecraft on Saturday became the first probe ever to enter orbit around an object in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.