Astronomy, Earth | featured news

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.

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....

Researchers find that 6% of red dwarf stars host habitable, Earth-sized planets - meaning the closest may be just 13 light-years away.

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.

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....

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 space capsule has returned to Earth, ending the first commercially contracted re-supply mission to the International Space Station (ISS). The capsule was sent by the California-based company SpaceX, the first of 12 missions it will perform for US space agency Nasa... SpaceX says it is just a few years away from being able to provide an astronaut "taxi" service.

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.