Less than 24 hours after the Minor Planet Center announced a new asteroid, it said the object was actually Musk's electric car launched into space as payload on a rocket.

In 2029, one of the solar system's many asteroids will pass Earth close enough to see with the naked eye. But asteroid Apophis won't travel the same path again.

It took a while for scientists to gain access to the samples that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission took from the asteroid Bennu, but the wait is proving to be worth it. A new study published January 29 in Nature describes an unexpected discovery in the material delivered by OSIRIS-REx: residues of compounds left over by the evaporation of liquid water.

BS4 may be anywhere between 17 and 40 feet across, and will approach at about twice the distance between the Earth and moon.

The “asteroid” wasn’t a space rock after all. It was a cherry-red Tesla Roadster that Elon Musk launched into space to much fanfare in 2018 as part of a publicity stunt during the maiden flight of SpaceX’s Falcon Heavy rocket. The car, complete with a mannequin named “Starman” in the driver’s seat, had been orbiting the Sun ever since.

Two new studies show a briny, carbon-rich environment on the parent body of the Bennu asteroid was suitable for assembling the building blocks of life.

Scientists studying samples that NASA collected from the asteroid Bennu found a wide assortment of organic molecules that shed light on how life arose.

PT5, a near-Earth object discovered last year, has captivated scientists with its potential lunar origins. Likely ejected into space after a massive impact on the Moon thousands of years ago, the asteroid’s orbit closely matches Earth’s.

January 30, 2025. More for You

Planetary defense is a global imperative, of course, but for the time being, NASA — and, by extension, the United States — is leading the charge. Others players, including the European Space Agency, Japan, and (imminently, with their own DART-like mission) China, are also contributing to the fight against lethal asteroids.

NASA’s Lucy mission will continue its journey to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, which share Jupiter’s orbit around the Sun, in 2025. One key event for Lucy is its flyby of the inner main-belt asteroid 52246 Donaldjohanson, scheduled for April 20, 2025.