New research led by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California has revealed the identity of a puzzling near-Earth object by precisely tracking its movement through space and using powerful observatories that image faint celestial objects. This object has a split personality: Previous images had revealed no obvious comet-like activity, suggesting it could
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NASA’s Perseverance Mars rover has discovered evidence that a 245-foot (75-meter-thick) pile of ancient rock on the rim of Jezero Crater was built by repeated asteroid impacts. This sequence of layered bedrock, dubbed the “Broom Point Member” by the rover’s science team, is likely more than 3.9 billion years old, making it some of the
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These X-ray computed tomography (XCT) scans released on March 17, 2026, give us a glimpse inside asteroid Bennu. They show the most common types of crack networks observed in Bennu samples; these networks solved a mystery that baffled NASA for years. When NASA’s OSIRIS-REx spacecraft first approached asteroid Bennu in 2018, scientists expected to see smooth, sandy beach-like surfaces. Instead, they
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