In a recent 60 day period asteroid hunters tracked 24 space rocks which came closer than our Moon. My team the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey operates 5 telescopes in the mountains around Tucson, Arizona. Our goal is to find objects like 2025 RM1 which are on an impact trajectory with our home planet in advance so that people in the effected area can be warned to stay away from doors and windows.

Throughout history small close approaching space rocks have been a part of our environment. Now, thanks to improved telescopes and cameras, asteroid hunters are routinely discovering these small asteroids as they pass closer than the Moon is to us. Since these tiny asteroids are only bright enough to detect for a few days out of their long, many month duration paths about the Sun, astronomers have had difficulty in determining how many of these small space rocks may exist in near Earth space. This effort received more emphasis when a house sized space rock exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia in 2013 releasing about 10 times the energy of the Hiroshima atomic bomb. Although this asteroid was tiny compared to the one that ended the dinosaurs rule of the planet, the air blast the Chelyabinsk bolide produced caused nearly 1,500 human injuries and damaged more than 7,000 buildings. In a 2017 paper in the Astronomical Journal, Dr. David Trilling of Northern Arizona University and his group of researchers present data from the Blanco 4 meter telescope at the Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile which they use to estimate that there are approximately 3.2 million Earth approaching asteroids similar in size to the Chelyabinsk impactor. My team the Catalina Sky Survey uses 4 telescopes, 24 nights per month, in the mountains north of Tucson, Arizona with the goal to provide warnings for people to stay away from doors and windows should a Chelyabinsk sized space rock be on an impact trajectory with planet Earth.

Dr Uisdean Nicholson from Heriot-Watt University and his team of 9 co-authors analyze 3D seismic imaging and drill cuttings from a 1980s oil well to make a convincing case that the Silverpit crater was produced by a the impact of a 1.5 football field diameter asteroid approximately 45 million years ago.

Humans have a long history of partnerships with a variety of micro organisms. Although the proportions vary widely with individuals, recent scientific estimates suggest that a typical human being has approximately the same number of bacteria and other microbes as they do actual human cells. Now it appears that a partnership with yeast and algae will enable spacefaring humans to use their waste products to produce food and plastics during long duration space flights. Dr. Mark Blenner of Clemson University leads a research group developing strains of yeast which obtain their nitrogen from untreated urine and their carbon dioxide from exhaled breath or the Martian atmosphere which has been converted into yeast food by algae. One of Blenner's yeast strains produces omega-3 fatty acids which are essential for heart, eye, and brain health while another strain of yeast has been engineered to produce polyester polymers which could be used by 3D printers to produce plastic tools and other useful devices. In the future research Blenner's team will focus on increasing the output of these tiny beasts to the point that they will generate useful amounts of nutrients and plastics from astronaut's waste products. This new research when added to the fact that on the International Space Station space travelers now routinely drink recycled water from their urine, sweat, and showers moves us closer to the day when space travelers literally use and reuse every atom that they lift from the Earth's surface enabling journeys that may last for years. The flip side of our partnership with microorganisms is that it is extremely difficult to protect the worlds we explore from a microorganism invasion which would threaten their home grown biology.

On a recent clear night my Catalina Sky Survey teammate Hannes Groller was asteroid hunting with the Steward Observatory 90 inch Bok telescope on Kitt Peak, Arizona when he discovered 8 natural visitors to our neighborhood. Telescopes around the world began to track and determine the natures these asteroids. Six of Hannes’s discoveries are classified as Near Earth Objects while the other two are more distant Mars crossing asteroids

The moon cycle from new moon through full moon and back to new moon again was used by many nations to regulate their activities and forms the basis of the Islamic lunar calendar. A calendar based on the first visibility of the lunar crescent is difficult to predict in advance since this observation depends on the clarity of the atmosphere and other local conditions. The interesting observational problem of when it is possible to spot the new moon has been analyzed in the scientific literature as an aid to historians who are seeking to interpret the writings of ancient civilizations.

Scientists are using many approaches to understanding the nature and history of 3I/Atlas the third known interstellar traveler in the night. At a hyperbolic velocity of 130,000 mph it is the fastest interstellar visitor ever measured.

Finding a meteorite that has traveled billions of miles through space to reach it's present location is exciting. It might even be worth real money.

Obtaining accurate data on the Earth’s climate and how it is changing is vital to inform agriculture , insurance risks, business planning, disaster preparedness, financial investments, wild fire mitigation, and national security. The USA should not be flying blind and relying on Europe and China for the data we need.

Friday the 13th appears to continue to be a lucky day for the human race. When astronomers first discovered Apophis in 2004 it appeared possible that this 3 million ton, 1,200 foot diameter asteroid traveling at 8 mi/s could impact our planet creating a crater a several miles diameter and more than a half mile deep. Additional observations over the years have eliminated this possibility as Apophis streaks by closer than the communications satellites on that lucky Friday the 13th. Further, current calculations have reduced the chances of Apophis colliding with Earth in the next 100 years to about one in 100,000. However, over the millennia Apophis is likely to strike the Earth as does one it's size once every 100,000 years or so.

The Lagrange point L4 is 60° ahead of Mars whereas L5 is 60° behind Mars on the red planet’s orbital path about the Sun. An object placed at either of these locations is trapped gravitationally and is likely to remain there indefinitely. The Mars L4 and L5 locations could provide a permanent place for staging and resupply missions to Mars and would give humans a different view of space weather and its effects on our home planet.

To reach the vicinity of the nearest star, 24 trillion miles away, in less than 20 years, an interstellar space probe would have to travel at a substantial fraction of the speed of light. Newton's laws of motion, published 300 years ago, predict that the greater the mass of an object the greater is the force required to increase it's velocity. In order to alleviate the need for the virtually unaffordable amount of energy required to accelerate a normal sized spacecraft to a speed of 20% of the speed of light, the Breakthrough Starshot program has funded the creation of 'Sprite' , the world's smallest spacecraft. About the size of a saltine cracker and having a mass of less than 2 dimes, the single-board Sprite spacecraft has all the essentials; solar panels, computing electronics, thermometers, gyroscopes, radio communication equipment and more. Working prototypes have been launched into Earth orbit by the Indian Space Research Organization attached to the Italian Max Valier and Latvian Ventra satellites. One of them has sent back signals which have been received by Cornell University's ground station. Dr. Zac Manchester who started the Sprite Spacecraft program while earning a PhD at Cornell University envisions using tiny spacecraft to explore near Earth Space as well as asteroids and moons in our solar system. In the future, fleets of the decedents of Sprite could be sent to explore intriguing planets in nearby alien solar systems. These tiny explorers will be propelled by high power Earth bound lasers directed at their solar sails and could reach and explore distant planets in a reasonable amount of time.

50 years ago scientists found that Chlorofluorocarbons or CFC chemicals in widespread use in refrigeration, air conditioning , and hair spray were beginning to damage the ozone layer in the Earth’s stratosphere which blocks harmful Solar UVB radiation from reaching the surface. The world wide response was the Montreal Protocol banning these chemicals from being released into the atmosphere. It saved millions of humans from dying of skin cancer. Satellite ashes are a new threat to the protective ozone layer.

Looking at the stars on a clear dark night, far from the artificial air glow humanity creates, have you ever wondered what it would be like to travel in truly deep interstellar space? 40 years after their launches in 1977, your representatives, the twin Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft are in the vast space between the stars in our Milky Way galaxy. Aboard each Voyager is a Golden Record time capsule which expected to last billions of years. This message from all of humanity is inscribed with greetings from Earth as well as sounds, images, and a decoding key which will enable any intelligent aliens which find a Voyager to discover who made it and where it came from.

The planets, millions of asteroids, tens of thousands of comets, distant icy worlds, and countless other bits and pieces of material orbit the Sun. A group of such co-orbiting objects is called the Taurid complex or swarm. It consists of Comet 2P/Enke, a number of near Earth asteroids, and the meteor stream which produces the Taurid meteor shower every October and November.

When the Japanese spacecraft Hayabusa [Hi ya Boo sa] visited the near Earth asteroid Itokawa in 2005 it found this 2000 foot by 800 foot elliptical world to have a variety of surface features. Instead of being a solid object like some asteroids, Itokawa is a rubble pile of boulders and pebbles held together by it's tiny gravity. The total volume of pebbles seems to be comparable to the volume of large rocks and boulders which make up Itokawa , however, the depths of the pebbles or their concentration in the center remains unknown. Given this uncertainty, this asteroid appears to be made up of a million times more small particles than larger ones. 

Astronomers have discovered some 1.4 million asteroids.  Approximately 35,000 of these space rocks come near Earth.  Less than 40 of them are classified as being Atira asteroids whose orbits lie entirely within the Earth’s orbit about the Sun. Only one of these, asteroid number 594913 named  'Ayló'chaxnim (eye-LAW-chax-nim ) has an orbit which is entirely within the orbit of the planet Venus. 

The lunar roving, battery powered, 4 wheel drive "Moon Buggy" allowed astronauts on Apollo 15, 16, and 17 to travel 8 mph on the lunar surface with a maximum range of approximately 4.7 mi. Some of the rocks that these space travelers brought back, from the tiny area they were able to visit on the Moon, contained volcanic glass beads with trace amounts of trapped water inside of them. 

Dr. Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office reports that on June 26, 2025 shortly after noon a beachball sized meteoroid traveling at approximately 30,000 miles per hour broke up about 27 miles above the town of West Forrest, Georgia.

Martian Trojan asteroids have stable orbits around the Sun, leading and trailing the red planet by 60 degrees, where the Sun's and Mars's gravity are balanced. For some time astronomers have considered it unlikely that these asteroids wandered in from the asteroid belt. Recently, Dr. David Polishook of the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel led a group of researchers who published a paper in the journal Nature Astronomy which sets forth evidence that a group of 7 Martian Trojan Asteroids were blasted from the Martian surface when a large asteroid impacted the red planet early in the history of the solar system. The impact more than 4 billion years or so ago which blasted loose a mile diameter chunk of Mars and gave it a speed of the more than the 3 mi/s required to escape the red planet gives us an insight into the level of violence which occurred before our solar system came into it's present relatively calm state.