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An international drill led by Vishnu Reddy tests astronomers' ability to respond to a highly unlikely — but not impossible — scenario: an asteroid on course to collide with Earth.
Seasonal dark streaks on Mars have been described as possible signs of flowing water, but a new study shows they are a better fit to dry flow processes.
Astronomers led by the UA's Vishnu Reddy have confirmed the true asteroid nature of one of Earth's companions on its journey around the sun. The small near-Earth object known as 2016 HO3 measures no more than 100 meters across and appears to circle around the Earth as a "quasi-satellite."
Asteroid 288P, first discovered more than a decade ago by the UA's Spacewatch program, is one of the most unusual known objects of the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It's the first known binary asteroid also classified as a comet.
As the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft performs a maneuver to embark on its trajectory to asteroid Bennu, scientists and engineers from all of the mission's teams convene at the UA.
UA professor Alfred McEwen recounts some of the highlights of NASA's Cassini-Huygens mission, in which UA researchers played significant roles. The spacecraft's final plunge into the upper atmosphere of Saturn on Friday will mark the end of the nearly 20-year mission.
While out of range for the total solar eclipse, Arizonans will still get to enjoy Monday's event, and the Flandrau Science Center & Planetarium will be the UA's activity hub.
For the first time, an actual (but harmless) space rock will be used for a campaign to test NASA's network of observatories and scientists who work with planetary defense. The idea for the exercise came from Vishnu Reddy of the UA's Lunar and Planetary Laboratory.
The event will bring together five researchers from the University who work at the forefront of asteroid science, including OSIRIS-REx principal investigator Dante Lauretta.
The arrival of a sample from OSIRIS-REx is still six years away, but the UA's Tom Zega already is preparing for it. Zega will be one of the first scientists to receive the rubble returned to Earth from the asteroid Bennu by the UA-led mission. "Sample return is a treasure trove of information," he says.