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Category: asteroid/comet impacts

Dino-killing asteroid may have fueled underground life for 8 million years

The asteroid that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs also created an underground environment suited to supporting new life, and new research suggests it lasted for millions of years longer than previously suspected.

The finding has surprised the international team of researchers behind it, who came to their conclusions by pairing sophisticated new analysis of samples taken from the Chicxulub crater in Mexico with computer modeling of the geological effects of the asteroid impact that formed the crater 66 million years ago.

The research, published in the journal Communications Earth & Environment, casts new light on how life may have first been incubated in hydrothermal systems in the earliest chapters of Earth’s history and could help direct the search for life on other planets.

Discovery of stromatolite formation in post-impact hydrothermal lacustrine environments and its implications for early Earth

Stromatolites within the Hapcheon impact crater suggest that asteroid impacts created hydrothermal oases fostering early life and habitability, according to geochemical, isotopic, and microbial analyses from the Hapcheon crater lake in Korea.

Asteroid Apophis will skim past Earth in 2029, and a new joint mission plans to watch every change

The European Space Agency (ESA) and the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) have signed a Memorandum of Cooperation to deepen collaboration in planetary defense, alongside a dedicated agreement for collaboration on the Rapid Apophis Mission for Space Safety (Ramses) to the near-Earth asteroid Apophis.

The agreements were signed on 7 May by ESA Director General Josef Aschbacher and JAXA President Hiroshi Yamakawa at the Embassy of Italy in Berlin, Germany, in the presence of European and Japanese institutional and industrial leadership. The event was hosted in collaboration with the Italian Space Agency (ASI), in light of ESA’s selection of OHB Italia as prime contractor for the Ramses mission.

The move builds on a joint statement from November 2024, in which ESA and JAXA committed to expanding large-scale cooperation, including on planetary defense.

NASA Curiosity rover finds mysterious life linked molecules on Mars

NASA’s Curiosity rover has identified a wide range of organic molecules on Mars, including compounds that scientists consider key ingredients for the origin of life on Earth.

The discovery comes from a chemical experiment carried out on another planet for the first time. Results show that the Martian surface is capable of preserving molecules that could act as potential signs of ancient life. However, the experiment cannot determine whether these organic compounds came from past life on Mars, natural geological processes, or meteorites that struck the planet.

To confirm any true evidence of past life, scientists would need to bring Martian rock samples back to Earth for detailed study.

The sun is tearing an asteroid to pieces, and Earth is now flying through the fallout

Across Earth, every night, thousands of automated stargazers are waiting to take pictures of shooting stars. I am one of the scientists who study these meteors.

Most movies and news alerts focus on large asteroids that could destroy Earth. And your phone notifies you every few months that an object nine washing machines wide is going to just narrowly skim past. However, the small dust and rubble that enter our atmosphere daily tell an equally interesting story.

My planetary science colleagues and I use camera observations of the night sky to better understand dust, car-sized asteroids and debris from comets in our solar system.

The discovery of a buried delta on Mars could boost the search for life

There’s more evidence that water once flowed on Mars with the discovery of an ancient river delta deep below the surface. NASA’s Perseverance rover found it more than 35 meters beneath Jezero Crater using ground-penetrating radar. Perseverance was launched in 2020 to search for signs of ancient life on the red planet. Since landing in February 2021, it has been exploring Jezero Crater and collecting rock samples.

The crater, which is approximately 45 kilometers (28 miles) in diameter, lies north of the Martian equator and was formed by an asteroid impact almost 4 billion years ago. NASA chose this spot to explore because numerous geological features suggest that water once flowed here and may have supported ancient life, specifically, a part of the crater called the Margin Unit. This area is packed with carbonates, which on Earth, usually form in stable aqueous environments, such as shallow seas or lakebeds.

The new research is published in the journal Science Advances and is based on data from 78 traverses of the area from September 2023 to February 2024.

The Moon Was Hit Again: NASA Scientists Discover a Newly Formed Crater

A bright new lunar crater detected in spacecraft images shows that asteroid impacts continue to reshape the Moon’s surface today. The Moon’s familiar surface tells a story of both ancient violence and ongoing change. While its vast dark basins formed during a period of intense bombardment billion

“At First, We Thought Something Was Wrong” — NASA DART Mission Reveals a Cosmic Snowball Fight

Images from NASA’s DART mission revealed the first direct evidence that asteroids in a binary system can exchange rocks and dust. Slow moving debris from the asteroid Didymos appears to have struck its moon Dimorphos, leaving distinctive streaks scientists describe as “cosmic snowballs.” Around 1

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