IRON AND ICE - SINO DAILY

It's Complicated: Dawn Spurs Rewrite of Vesta's Story

Nov 07, 2013 (JPL)

Just when scientists thought they had a tidy theory for how the giant asteroid Vesta formed, a new paper from NASA's Dawn mission suggests the history is more c...

Comet ISON Roars Through Leo

Nov 06, 2013 (SPX)

In the early morning of Oct. 25 (6:45 a.m. EDT), NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., used a 14" telescope to capture this image of Comet C/...

Dawn Enjoying Smooth Travels Deep In The Main Asteroid Belt

Nov 05, 2013 (JPL)

Deep in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, Dawn is continuing its smooth, silent flight toward dwarf planet Ceres. Far behind it now is the giant ...

Another hazardous asteroid to dart close to Earth in 2065

Oct 29, 2013 (Voice of Russia)

Russian astronomers have discovered another potentially dangerous asteroid that is estimated to dart past Earth in 2065 at a distance of only 7,000km. The Aster...

Space cannon ready: Japan to shoot asteroid for samples in 2014 mission

Oct 24, 2013 (Voice of Russia)

A unique space cannon developed for Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully test-fired on Earth in preparation for a 2014 mission. During its upcoming jo...

Is the 'Christmas Comet' cracking up?

Oct 22, 2013 (AFP)

An incoming comet that skygazers had hoped would provide one of the greatest celestial shows of the century, could be a fizzle. So say astronomers tracking the ...

Comet ISON Appears Intact

Oct 18, 2013 (SPX)

A new image of the sunward plunging Comet ISON suggests that the comet is intact despite some predictions that the fragile icy nucleus might disintegrate as the...

Spacecraft images of asteroid reinforce telescope observations

Oct 17, 2013 (UPI)

NASA scientists say a spacecraft's close-up view of an asteroid can work with ground-based telescopes to clarify our understanding of a solar system object. The...

Comet ISON Details Emerge as it Races Toward the Sun

Oct 16, 2013 (SPX)

Scientists are unraveling more information on Comet C/2012 S1 (ISON) as it continues on its journey toward the Sun. Comet C/ISON will skim 730,000 miles above t...

Telescopes Large and Small Team Up to Study Triple Asteroid 87 Sylvia

Oct 16, 2013 (SPX)

Combining observations from the world's largest telescopes with small telescopes used by amateur astronomers, a team of astronomers discovered that the large ma...

Rosetta: 100 days to wake-up

Oct 16, 2013 (ESA)

ESA's comet-chasing mission Rosetta will wake up in 100 days' time from deep-space hibernation to reach the destination it has been cruising towards for a decad...

Watery asteroid discovered in dying star points to habitable exoplanets

Oct 14, 2013 (SPX)

Astronomers have found the shattered remains of an asteroid that contained huge amounts of water orbiting an exhausted star, or white dwarf. This suggests that ...

Comet ISON's chances of surviving close brush with the Sun

Oct 14, 2013 (SPX)

The much-anticipated close approach of comet ISON to the Sun this November may be spectacular as viewed from Earth, but it's unlikely to spell the end of the co...

Controllers prepare to awaken comet hunter from deep-space sleep

Oct 11, 2013 (UPI)

European space mission controllers say they're preparing to wake a comet-hunting spacecraft from a two-year deep-space hibernation as it nears its cosmic goal. ...

First ever evidence of a comet striking Earth

Oct 10, 2013 (SPX)

The first ever evidence of a comet entering Earth's atmosphere and exploding, raining down a shock wave of fire which obliterated every life form in its path, h...

First-ever comet material discovered on Earth: scientists

Oct 08, 2013 (AFP)

A comet exploded over modern-day Egypt 28 million years ago, raining down fire and leaving behind a "mysterious" black pebble -- the first-ever comet material f...

First HiRISE Images of Comet ISON

Oct 07, 2013 (SPX)

On 29 September 2013, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) maneuvered to point its High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera at ISON, a new co...

Asteroid near-miss reported by Russian scientists

Oct 07, 2013 (Voice of Russia)

A 15-meter asteroid, similar to the object that exploded above Russia in February, moving at a speed of 16km per second, was detected hours before it narrowly m...

Dawn Marks Six Years In Space

Sep 30, 2013 (JPL)

On the sixth anniversary of leaving Earth to embark on a daring deep-space expedition, Dawn is very, very far from its erstwhile planetary residence. Now humank...

Dawn Reality-Checks Telescope Studies of Asteroids

Sep 30, 2013 (JPL)

Tantalized by images from NASA's Hubble Space Telescope and ground-based data, scientists thought the giant asteroid Vesta deserved a closer look. They got a ch...