asteroid

(Newser) - Not one but two catastrophic events may have spelled destruction for the Age of Dinosaurs, previously thought to have ended when an asteroid or comet struck the earth. New research suggests the prehistoric giants died off in “an unfortunate coincidence of a one-two punch—of Deccan volcanism and then...

(Newser) - This morning NASA launched a spacecraft that's headed to the asteroid belt, where it will get a close-up look at the belt's largest bodies, asteroid Vesta and the dwarf planet Ceres.  It's NASA’s first multi-target mission, and Dawn, which one engineer called “the first real interplanetary spaceship,...

(Newser) - Astronomers are preparing to send a probe to investigate an asteroid that in 2029 will pass closer to Earth than communications satellites do. The mission would gather information on the 1,000-foot-wide rock to figure out whether it poses a serious danger the next time it passes Earth in 2036.