Sentences with phrase «rather than asteroids»

Disrupting comets (white and red v's) rather than asteroids (green) contribute most of the dust that makes up the zodiacal cloud (purple haze and inset).

ICY INTERIOR The solar system's first interstellar visitor might be a comet rather than an asteroid.

Not exact matches

Rather than slowly amassing bulk over time, the original members of the asteroid belt rapidly formed into rocks hundreds of kilometers across, researchers propose.

Astronomers say that incoming asteroids smaller than that would have a regional, rather than global, effect; ones that are less than about 180 feet are likely to disintegrate in the atmosphere.

Hu likens it to an asteroid hitting a piece of paper: The paper is so light that, rather than getting crushed, it is just pushed aside.

Commenting on the findings lead researcher Dr Roberto Raddi, of the University of Warwick's Astronomy and Astrophysics Group, said: «Our research has found that, rather than being unique, water - rich asteroids similar to those found in our Solar System appear to be frequent.

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

«This is the strongest evidence from fossils that the main driver of this extinction event was the after - effects of a huge asteroid impact, rather than a slower decline caused by natural changes to the climate or by severe volcanism stressing global environments.»

Of those deportees, about 4 % came from within about 375 million kilometers of the sun, rendering them rock - or metal - rich bodies like asteroids rather than icy orbs like comets, the researchers report online ahead of print in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society.

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

But rather than a monotonously uniform surface homogenized by impact cratering over the eons, the first up - close look at the asteroid reveals a full palette of mineral «colors» (mapped here in false color reflecting the wide range of rock compositions).

Rather than catastrophic resurfacing that would take as little as 10 million years, Venus may have had gradual turnover of a thin crust stirred by mantle plumes or asteroid collisions that renewed the surface 1 percent at a time over billions of years.

Officials in charge of NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission announced that they will snatch a small boulder off an asteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire aAsteroid Redirect Mission announced that they will snatch a small boulder off an asteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire aasteroid, as illustrated above, rather than bag up an entire asteroidasteroid.

Ideas abounded: using ion engines to ferry up the components of a moon base; beaming power to robotic rovers on the Martian moon Phobos; attaching high - power Hall effect thrusters to the International Space Station (ISS) and putting it on a Mars cycler orbit; preplacing chemical rocket boosters along an interplanetary trajectory in advance so astronauts could pick them up along the way; using exploration pods like those in 2001: A Space Odyssey rather than space suits; instead of sending astronauts to an asteroid, bringing a (very small) asteroid to astronauts at the space station.

Since we commanded the Hubble Space Telescope to track Pluto during the imaging, objects not moving with Pluto (like stars and asteroids) appear as streaks in the images, rather than a point - like source moving with Pluto.

It looks like NASA's stepping - stone to Mars will be a miniature space station in lunar orbit rather than a chunk of captured asteroid.

Artist's conception of the Psyche mission, which would investigate a large unique metallic asteroid called Psyche, which is composed of mostly iron and nickel, rather than rock.

Bolden was grilled by subcommittee chairman Steve Palazzo (R - MS) and committee chairman Smith on why he was ignoring NAC's advice to (1) obtain an independent cost evaluation (ICE) of ARM prior to the Mission Concept Review (which just took place), and (2) modify it so that its primary objective is demonstration of high power solar electric propulsion rather than obtaining a sample of an asteroid, and to send the spacecraft to Mars and back rather than to an asteroid.

Fate has it that most of these wandering asteroids are very dark and are often spotted later rather than sooner by astronomers.

When Planetary Resources actually begins sending its first robotic prospectors to asteroids, the company will concentrate on space rocks that are relatively close to Earth, rather than heading out into the more distant Asteroid Belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Then, rather than looking at all of the asteroids in this region, they narrowed their search to dark, carbon - rich asteroids, which are not as common as bright asteroids in this part of the belt.

A key result of the new work is the size of the impactor; we find that a large impactor — similar in size to the largest asteroids Vesta and Ceres — is needed, rather than a giant impactor.

* it:... specifically (as it had been mentioned before) I suggested that maybe it would be easier to get an asteroid there rather than shoot stuff up with a rail gun launch system (I think that's what was being discussed by others).

Makes sense, but has anyone got a good handle on the likelihood of encountering undetected «clouds of gravel» rather than single asteroids?

Why would we have reason to think most asteroids are in one piece, rather than thinking they come in all degress of crumbled - fragmented?

An asteroid of this size might make one think of disaster movies, such as «Armageddon»; however, «rather than destroying the Earth, it could be used to help mankind,» Bewick said.