ASTEROID

High-tech NASA spacecraft Dawn is set to approach Vesta by July 16. Vesta, an asteroid located in a belt region between Mars and Jupiter that's populated by many asteroids, is interesting to scientists because it's believed to be a remnant of an embryonic planet.

NASA said Asteroid 2011 MD, a hunk of rock estimated to be anywhere from 16 to 35 feet wide, is going to fly by Earth today at a distance of 7,500 miles above the surface of the planet.

On Monday, Earth will encounter an asteroid that will narrowly miss a collision with our planet by a cosmic hair of 7,500 miles. The asteroid called 2011 MD is roughly the size of a large house, 10 meters in diameter, and will fly into our atmosphere zipping by TV satellites.

A US spacecraft is on track to rendezvous with a huge asteroid in a matter of weeks, NASA said, shedding new light on the history of cosmos.

NASA’s Dawn spacecraft is set to move into an orbit around asteroid Vesta on July 16 and subsequently study it.

An asteroid measuring about 16 feet to 35 feet or the size of a house, will fly by Earth at a handshaking distance on Monday and a lucky few people will be able to see the celestial wonder with their naked eye.

An asteroid, the size of a house, will come dangerously close to the Earth's atmosphere but will zoom by harmlessly on Monday, astronomers said.

On Monday, a small asteroid is expected to just skirt by earth. An asteroid only comes this close about once every 6 years.

A small asteroid is expected to whiz by earth on Monday. It's about 16 feet to 65 feet wide. At its closest, it will be only 7,500 miles from the earth, a distance that's a little less than the diameter of the earth.

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project (NEEMO) will send a set of diving crew to live in Aquarius underwater research laboratory located near Key Largo, Florida during October to test the equipment and operational concepts needed for exploration to near-Earth asteroids.

NASA is planning a mission to collect a piece of an asteroid and return it to Earth in order to discover clues to the formation of the solar system and possibly, the origins of life.

NASA announced plans launch a robot that will gather samples from distant asteroids.

The NASA Extreme Environment Mission Operations project (NEEMO) sends groups of NASA employees and contractors to live in Aquarius underwater laboratory for up to three weeks for studying human survival in preparation for future space exploration.

NASA captures images of Vesta, a large asteroid in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Scientists are hunting to prove the existence of a new planet called Tyche in the Solar System which is estimated to be four times the size of Jupiter.

A report by Russian scientists claims that the earth is on a collision course with the Apophis asteroid, likely to happen in the year 2036.

Earth will have another brush with the celestial throw of dice today, with an asteroid the size of a car passing close by the planet, but astronomers have ruled out jitters.

NASA said its Near-Earth Object WISE mission has discovered 20 comets and more than 33,000 asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter, in addition to 134 near-Earth objects (NEOs).

A huge asteroid the size of the Titanic has struck Jupiter, leaving a hole as large as the Pacific Ocean and causing temperatures to rise up to 4 Kelvin, scientists have confirmed. The July 2009 crash, which released the equivalent of five gigatons of TNT, had perplexed astronomers. But with the new findings, published in the journal Icarus, the mystery behind the huge scar on Jupiter is resolved.

An asteroid that once was seen as a danger to the Earth may soon be a once-in-a-century opportunity to get a close look at one - and learn more abut the ones that really are a hazard.

An international team of scientists studying remnants of an asteroid that crashed into the Nubian Desert found it had some of the same chemicals that are the building blocks of life on earth.