NASA finally has counted up all the asteroid samples returned by a spacecraft last fall.

After a seven-year mission, NASA revealed the asteroid sample it collected from a 4 billion-mile journey and brought back to Earth last month.

Planet Earth is about to receive the biggest sample yet from an asteroid.

DART is the world’s first mission to test technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid hazards.

A large asteroid is set to fly by Earth Tuesday afternoon.

NASA has launched a spacecraft on a mission to smash into an asteroid and test whether it would be possible to knock a speeding space rock off course if one were to threaten Earth.

The United Arab Emirates has announced plans to send a probe to land on an asteroid between Mars and Jupiter to collect data on the origins of the universe.

How scientists know we’re not going to get squashed by an asteroidPublished: October 22, 2020, 10:12 amA NASA spacecraft called OSIRIS-REx just collected a piece of a potentially hazardous asteroid to bring a sample back to Earth. The U.S. space agency also has several other asteroid spacecraft missions in the works and is not alone in its determination to better understand asteroids in order to deflect large space rocks but also to learn from these fossils of our solar system.

In a recent episode of the podcast “Space Curious,” planetary scientists helped us understand why this is. They also explained how we know where asteroids are, and why we’re not all going to get squashed by one anytime soon. “The main reason we go to Bennu is because it is the most potentially hazardous asteroid,” Campins said. “It’s a primitive asteroid,” Campins said. Campins said when someone reads about an asteroid headed for Earth, it’s a good idea to do some fact checking.

Instead of a cosmic rock, the newly discovered object appears to be an old rocket from a failed moon-landing mission 54 years ago that’s finally making its way back home, according to NASA's leading asteroid expert. The lander ended up crashing into the moon after one of its thrusters failed to ignite on the way there. The rocket, meanwhile, swept past the moon and into orbit around the sun as intended junk, never to be seen again — until perhaps now. What caught Chodas’ attention is that its near-circular orbit around the sun is quite similar to Earth’s — unusual for an asteroid. Chodas' latest target of interest was passed by Earth in their respective laps around the sun in 1984 and 2002.