Scientists find meteorite that came from innermost asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter

September 21st, 2009 SYDNEY - Researchers have discovered an unusual kind of meteorite in the Western Australian desert and have uncovered where in the solar system it came from, a new finding suggests. Meteorites are the only surviving physical record of the formation of our solar system and by analysing them researchers can glean valuable information about the conditions that existed when the early solar system was being formed.

September 17th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new study, scientists have found that auroral bright spots on the planet Jupiter are caused by the magnetosphere of its innermost moon - Ganymede. As Ganymede and Io orbit Jupiter, they interact with regions of plasma and generate electromagnetic waves that are projected along Jupiter's magnetic field lines towards Jupiter's poles where they cause auroral bright spots.

September 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - A new study that models the cratering history of Vesta and Ceres, which are the largest two objects in the asteroid belt, could help pinpoint when Jupiter began to form during the evolution of the early Solar System. The study, carried out by scientists at the Italian National Institute for Astrophysics in Rome, explored the hypothesis that one or both objects formed during Jupiter's formation by modeling their cratering histories during the birth of the giant planet.

September 14th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An international team of astronomers has discovered that Jupiter had captured the comet 147P/Kushida-Muramatsu as its temporary moon in the mid-20th century, in an irregular orbit for about twelve years. There are only a handful of known comets where this phenomenon of temporary satellite capture has occurred and the capture duration in the case of Kushida-Muramatsu, which orbited Jupiter between 1949 and 1961, is the third longest.

September 3rd, 2009 SYDNEY - NASA is preparing to launch an infrared telescope that will hunt down dark asteroids that have slipped beneath our radar. According to a report by ABC Science, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft recently arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California ahead of its launch later this year.

August 12th, 2009 LONDON - A committee appointed by the White House to review NASA's aims has put forward the idea to send astronauts on progressively longer space trips to asteroids, in order to prepare them for a landing on Mars. According to a report in New Scientist, committee member Edward Crawley of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology said that the first mission would fly by the moon.

July 24th, 2009 SYDNEY - Mars may have been a seething cauldron for nearly a 100 million years after its formation, thwarting evolution of life on the planet, according to an analysis of meteorites. The research has shown that the red planet remained excessively hot - with temperatures over 1,000 degrees Celsius - for 100 million years following its formation.

July 23rd, 2009 LONDON - A new computer simulation has suggested that millions of objects in the solar system's main asteroid belt may be icy interlopers from beyond Neptune that were flung into their present orbits after a violent migration of the giant planets. The solar system's main asteroid belt is a diverse mix of objects that orbit between Mars and Jupiter.

July 15th, 2009 Space invaders: Asteroid belt has rocks from afarWASHINGTON — A new astronomy theory says the solar system's main asteroid belt is littered with icy invaders from far away. The so-called invaders are asteroids that seem more like primitive frozen comets than the baked rocks that make up the overwhelming majority of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter.

June 11th, 2009 London, June 11 (ANI: A new analysis of craters of the Moon has suggested that the shattered remnants of a dwarf planet may have bombarded the inner planets in the early solar system. According to a report in New Scientist, several large impact scars on the moon appear to be around 3.9 billion years old, suggesting that the Earth and other objects of the inner solar system were heavily pounded at that time.

June 3rd, 2009 Swiss astronomer claims discovery of 2 asteroidsFALERA, Switzerland — A Swiss amateur astronomer claimed Wednesday that he has discovered two new asteroids among the hundreds of thousands between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. The asteroids identified by Jose De Queiroz have a diameter of between 1 kilometer and 2 kilometers, said a statement Mirasteilas observatory, which he runs.

May 27th, 2009 LONDON - Scientists have found formic acid, a molecule implicated in the origins of life, has been found at record levels on a meteorite that fell into the Tagish Lake in Canada in the year 2000. According to a report by BBC News, cold temperatures on the lake prevented the volatile chemical from dissipating quickly.

May 12th, 2009 WASHINGTON - In a new research, scientists suggest that a "supergiant" asteroid several times larger than the one that likely killed the dinosaurs struck Mars with such force that it shut down the planet's magnetic field. Based on the number of large craters present, scientists think very early Mars suffered 15 or so giant impacts within a span of about a hundred million years.

March 27th, 2009 WASHINGTON - Scientists have identified a tiny asteroid before it hit the earth, helping computers pinpoint its origins and predict the arrival of its shattered parts. The four-metre-diameter asteroid, called 2008 TC3, was initially sighted by the automated Catalina Sky Survey telescope at Mount Lemmon, Arizona, on Oct 6 last year.

March 4th, 2009 WASHINGTON - An asteroid as big as a 10-storeyed building flew past Earth Tuesday, the US space website has said. The space rock was perhaps a bit larger than one thought to have created a colossal explosion in the air above Siberia in 1908 that flattened 500,000 acres (2,000 square km) of forest.