Historically planetary defense research has focused on deflecting asteroids by using momentum to nudge their cosmic course ...

James is a published author with multiple pop-history and science books to his name. He specializes in history, space, strange science, and anything out of the ordinary.View full profile James is a ...

Back in 1967, a group of MIT students were handed a wild assignment: come up with a plan to stop a massive asteroid from wiping out the planet. They took it seriously, worked through the maths, the ...

When one celestial object passes in front of another, it can cast a shadow that travels across space – and sometimes across Earth. These moments of alignment, known as eclipses, occultations, and ...

New observations show that asteroid 1998 KY26 is a mere 11 meters across and spinning twice as fast as previously thought. The discovery adds complexity to Hayabusa2’s 2031 mission but also heightens ...

🛍️ Amazon Big Spring Sale: 100+ editor-approved deals worth buying right now 🛍️ By Laura Baisas Published Jan 8, 2026 10:48 AM EST Add Popular Science (opens in a new tab) Adding us as a Preferred ...

Asteroid 433 Eros is swinging back into Earth’s neighborhood this weekend, bright enough for backyard telescopes and even some binoculars as it glides past our planet. The elongated space rock, famous ...

New data about the DART spacecraft’s effects adds evidence that Earth could be defended from future deadly asteroids by diverting their orbits. By Katrina Miller In 2022, NASA deliberately crashed a ...

When NASA’s DART spacecraft deliberately crashed into the asteroid moonlet Dimorphos, it did more than change the asteroid’s local orbit — it slightly shifted the path of the entire asteroid pair ...