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    China to Launch Tianwen-2 Mission to Capture Pieces of Near-Earth Asteroid

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    The robotic Tianwen-2 spacecraft will collect samples from Kamoʻoalewa, which some scientists suspect is a fragment of the moon.China has a space station and, in just a few short years, has landed robots on the moon and Mars. This week the country’s space agency is targeting new, far-flung destinations and setting off for an asteroid that could contain secrets that explain how Earth and the moon formed.The country’s Tianwen-2 spacecraft is set to lift off aboard a Long March 3B rocket from the Xichang Satellite Launch Center in southwest China some time on Thursday (it will be Wednesday in New York).After about a year, the robotic mission will arrive at 469219 Kamoʻoalewa, a near-Earth asteroid. There, it will perilously try to scoop up some rocky matter, and then swing back around to Earth. A capsule filled with geologic treasure would then plunge toward the planet for retrieval by scientists in late 2027.If Tianwen-2 pulls this off, China will become the third nation — after Japan and the United States — to retrieve pristine material from an asteroid.“All Chinese planetary scientists are now finger-crossed for this historic mission,” said Yuqi Qian, a lunar geologist at the University of Hong Kong.The spacecraft also has a secondary target, an unusual comet that it could study as part of an extended mission.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Earth Safe From Asteroid 2024 YR4, NASA Says

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      The odds that the space rock, 2024 YR4, will smash into our planet in 2032 have dropped to nearly zero, leading astronomers to conclude that we are no longer in danger.A NASA video showing the shifting odds that Asteroid 2024 YR4 would crash into Earth.Graphics by Nasa Jpl/cneosAstronomers have been carefully watching 2024 YR4, a space rock with a heightened chance of hitting Earth in 2032. But fear not: NASA announced on Monday that it posed a threat no longer — the odds that the asteroid would smash into our planet have dropped to nearly zero.“I knew this was likely to go away as we collected more data,” said Davide Farnocchia, a navigation engineer at the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. “I was sleeping pretty well.”Days after skywatchers reported their observations of 2024 YR4 on Dec. 27, 2024, scientists calculated that it had more than a 1 percent chance of striking Earth — the only large asteroid known to have an impact probability so big.As scientists studied more data on the object, the odds of impact continued to rise through January and February, from 1.2 percent to a peak of 3.1 percent on Tuesday last week.That may sound small, but the probability was higher than any ever recorded by NASA for an object of this size or bigger.Somewhere between 130 and 300 feet wide, 2024 YR4 is big enough to potentially wipe out a city. Early estimates of the asteroid’s trajectory showed it could possibly slam into or explode in the air over large metropolitan areas, including Mumbai, India, and Lagos, Nigeria. We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More

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      Comet Fragment Explodes in Dark Skies Over Spain and Portugal

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      A brilliant flash of blue, green and white on Saturday night came from a shard of an as yet unidentified comet that was moving around 100,000 miles per hour, experts said.A bright object broke up in Earth’s atmosphere on Saturday night, illuminating night skies over parts of Spain and Portugal. Experts say it was a fragment of a comet, perhaps only a few feet in size.ESA/PDO/AMS82 – AllSky7 via ReutersOn Saturday, revelers across Spain and Portugal ventured into the temperate springtime evening, hoping for a memorable night. None were expecting a visitor from outer space exploding above their heads.At 11:46 p.m. in Portugal, a fireball streaked across the sky, leaving a smoldering trail of incandescent graffiti in its wake. Footage shared on social media shows jaws dropping as the dark night briefly turns into day, blazing in shades of snowy white, otherworldly green and arctic blue.Rocky asteroids cause sky-high streaks as they self-destruct in Earth’s atmosphere with some frequency. But over the weekend, the projectile was plunging toward Earth at a remarkable speed — around 100,000 miles per hour, more than twice that expected by a typical asteroid. Experts say it had a strange trajectory, not matching the sort normally taken by nearby space rocks.That’s because the interloper wasn’t an asteroid. It was a fragment of a comet — an icy object that may have formed at the dawn of the solar system — that lost its battle with our planet’s atmosphere 37 miles above the Atlantic Ocean. None of the object is likely to have made it to the ground, the European Space Agency said.“It’s an unexpected interplanetary fireworks show,” said Meg Schwamb, a planetary astronomer at Queen’s University Belfast.It is not rare for comets to create shooting stars. “We have notable meteor showers throughout the year, which are the result of the Earth crossing debris clouds of specific comets,” Dr. Schwamb said. For example, the Perseids, which occur every August, are the result of our world’s sweeping through litter left behind by Comet Swift-Tuttle.We are having trouble retrieving the article content.Please enable JavaScript in your browser settings.Thank you for your patience while we verify access. If you are in Reader mode please exit and log into your Times account, or subscribe for all of The Times.Thank you for your patience while we verify access.Already a subscriber? Log in.Want all of The Times? Subscribe. More