Sentences with phrase «earth than the asteroid»

Not exact matches

And yet Ceres — the largest object in the asteroid belt — is less than one - tenth of a percent the size of Earth and less than 2 % the size of the moon:

Metzger points out that there are far more asteroids near Earth than could ever be explored solely through scientific funding, and highlights the role terrestrial mining operations have played in expanding geologic knowledge.

However, the Rosina mass spectrometer aboard Rosetta found that the ratio of deuterium to hydrogen in the comet is far greater than that found on Earth, adding to the growing body of evidence that the water on Earth was delivered not by comets, as previously thought, but by asteroids.

You may wish that we had any matchup other than Patriots - Eagles (again) or that that asteroid would hit Earth before we're subjected to a smug - looking Robert Kraft clutching another Lombardi Trophy.

The meteorite, dubbed Northwest Africa (NWA) 7034, contains a concentration of water by weight about ten times higher than in any of the other 100 or so known Martian meteorites — those rare rocks that get ejected from the Martian surface into space when an asteroid hits the planet, and eventually find their way to Earth.

NASA's Spaceguard survey program, established in 1998, aims to locate and follow at least 90 percent of the estimated 1,100 asteroids that come within about 30 million miles of Earth's orbit around the sun and that are larger than two - thirds of a mile wide.

Scientists could seek to understand the subtle pressure of light that causes asteroids to change their spin, and could retrieve samples for dating and chemical analysis that would offer a clearer picture of Solar System material than do meteorites, which, although they are pieces of asteroids, are altered during their fall through Earth's atmosphere.

This map shows the overlapping orbits (blue) of the 1,400 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids — objects more than about 400 feet wide that can approach within 4.6 million miles of Earth.

«With these system concept studies, we are taking the next steps to develop capabilities needed to send humans deeper into space than ever before, and ultimately to Mars, while testing new techniques to protect Earth from asteroids,» William Gerstenmaier, associate administrator for NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate.

By 2005, lawmakers in Washington asked NASA what it would take to be able to spot 90 percent of near - Earth asteroids more than 460 feet in diameter by 2020.

The extinction of the dinosaurs is therefore not — as science frequently assumes — due to the impact of the Chicxulub asteroid that struck Earth more than 65 million years ago.

Now, a global campaign to map Earth's ancient mega-eruptions, paired with advances in rock dating, is pushing us closer than ever to explaining why some volcanoes and asteroids kill and others don't.

NASA researchers have their own plan, the Near - Earth Object Program — the agency's program to spot 90 percent of all potentially hazardous asteroids more than two - thirds of a mile wide that might hit Earth in the foreseeable future.

Further calculations showed that the object, named 1996 JA1, would pass by at less of a distance than the moon is from Earth, spawning the first widespread media coverage of an asteroid threat.

Nonetheless, in 2029 the asteroid, dubbed Apophis — derived from the Egyptian god Apep, the destroyer who dwells in eternal darkness — will zoom closer to Earth than the world's communications satellites do.

If binary asteroids can form single craters, then Earth is more likely to be hit by a pair of objects in future than our planet's crater record would suggest.

But Phobos and Deimos, among the smallest moons in the solar system, look more like misshapen asteroids than Earth's moon, Sumner says.

Space rocks are much more brittle than Earth rocks, suggesting that asteroids on a collision course are more likely to burn up as fireballs in the sky

Although the consequences are roughly comparable in either case, an important difference is that objects in the solar system that circle far away from the sun on long - period orbits before returning, such as comets, would hit the earth at much greater velocities than close - orbiting (short - period) bodies, such as asteroids.

Surveys funded by NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program (NEOs include both asteroids and comets) account for more than 95 percent of discoveries so far.

Scientists estimate that several dozen asteroids in the 20 - to -40-foot (6 - to -12-meter) size range fly by Earth at a distance even closer than the moon every year.

«There are other elements involved, but if size were the only factor, we'd be looking for an asteroid smaller than about 40 feet (12 meters) across,» said Paul Chodas, a senior scientist in the Near - Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif. «There are hundreds of millions of objects out there in this size range, but they are small and don't reflect a lot of sunlight, so they can be hard to spot.

Another group has conducted experiments suggesting that the water at these depths was formed on Earth rather than being delivered by comets and asteroids.

As expected, the simulations showed that the larger, 1 - km asteroid created the bigger splash, throwing 42 trillion kilograms of water and vapour — enough to fill 16 million Olympic - sized swimming pools — across an area more than 1000 kilometres wide and up to hundreds of kilometres above the Earth's surface.

By examining infrared data taken earlier by the Spitzer Space Telescope, they discovered a swath of dust particles ranging in size from 0.1 to 20 microns (finer than a split hair) that added up to the mass of a large asteroid and, based on their warmth, were strewn about 1.8 Earth — sun distances from the star.

The researchers compared the Annama meteorite's orbit with known near - Earth asteroids (there are more than 1,500).

While researchers estimate accretion during late bombardment contributed less than one percent of Earth's present - day mass, giant asteroid impacts still had a profound effect on the geological evolution of early Earth.

During the past 3.5 billion years, it is estimated that more than 80 bodies, larger than the dinosaur - killing asteroid that struck the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago, have bombarded Earth.

The first image in the upper left was taken about 9.5 hours before closest approach, when Rosetta was still 510,000 km (315,000 miles) from the asteroid - more distant than the Moon is from the Earth!

The authors suggest that searches for these impact ejecta layers will be more fruitful for determining how many times Earth was hit by big asteroids than searches for large craters.

That's up to 9 kilometers per second slower than the average for bigger objects that have hit Earth over its history, says space scientist and asteroid specialist William Bottke of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado.

There may be a million asteroids with masses far greater than ocean liners in Earth - approaching orbits, nearly all of which telescopes have yet to see.

He notes that Congress gave NASA a 2005 mandate to find 90 percent of the near - Earth asteroids more than 140 meters in diameter — big enough to wipe out the Eastern Seaboard or most of California.

Rather than random occurrences, many large airbursts might result from collisions between Earth and streams of debris associated with small asteroids or comets.

New research shows that more than four billion years ago, the surface of Earth was heavily reprocessed — or mixed, buried and melted — as a result of giant asteroid impacts.

Morbidelli points out that far more asteroids slam into Earth than do comets.

There's a slim chance 1950 DA will hit Earth in 2880, and thanks to this finding, we'll know blasting the asteroid apart would be worse than useless: A strike might create multiple jumbles of rocks (held together with van der Waals» forces and gravity) heading our way.

An asteroid, after all, is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs, and the statistical threat of another strike motivates NASA's Near Earth Object Program, which aims to locate most of the bodies more than 1 kilometer in diameter that swing close to Earth.

Researchers will now have to sort out how more than 4 billion years of impacts — including one at the south pole that nearly destroyed the asteroid — reshaped Vesta after it developed a crust, mantle, and core much like Earth's.

Over Sentinel's 6 1/2 year mission, it will complete NASA's mandate to find 90 percent of the near - Earth asteroids larger than 140 meters wide.

It would orbit faster than Earth and, looking outwards, would see asteroids in Earth - crossing orbits more often than would ground - based instruments.

If one of those objects ever fell toward Earth, it would be tougher to spot than a comet (being much darker) and more difficult to divert than the typical near - Earth asteroid (as it would be traveling much faster).

For more than 30 years, scientists have argued about a controversial hypothesis relating to periodic mass extinctions and impact craters — caused by comet and asteroid showers — on Earth.

Earth is struck by an asteroid 60 meters (more than 190 feet) wide approximately once every 1500 years, whereas an asteroid 400 meters (more than 1,300 feet) across is likely to strike the planet every 100,000 years, according to Rumpf.

In 1999, the NEAR spacecraft showed that a single asteroid, Eros, contains more gold than has ever been mined on Earth.

Small asteroids are much more numerous than big ones — astronomers estimate near - Earth space likely contains millions of NEAs a few yards (meters) across, nearly 16,000 NEAs between 100 and 300 yards across, and nearly 5,000 NEAs between 300 and 1,000 yards in size.

If it's any comfort, Chodas explains that the chance of asteroid SG344's colliding with Earth in 2030 is less than the chance that an undiscovered object of the same size will hit Earth in any given year.

If binary asteroids can form single craters, then Earth is more likely to hit by a binary impact in future than our planet's crater record would suggest.

So far, surveys have discovered several thousand near - Earth objects, but astronomers estimate that as many as a million have diameters greater than 50 metres, big enough to be dangerous in a collision with Earth (see UN urged to coordinate killer asteroid defences).

There's a lot we still don't fully understand about these little guys but it looks like we may now be able to form a more coherent story of Earth's early years — one which fits with the idea that our planet suffered far more frequent bombardment from asteroids early on than it has in relatively recent times.»