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With DART asteroid mission, NASA makes its 1st foray into planetary defense

The first operation to ever collide a spacecraft with an asteroid is set to launch Wednesday (Nov. 24) and will see whether humans can deflect a potentially disastrous cosmic impact. For such an ambitious goal, the NASA project — called the Double ...

Asteroid Didymos: NASA's galactic target practice for DART

The smaller asteroid in the system, known as Dimorphos, is the target of a NASA mission to demonstrate its developing planetary defense techniques. While Didymos is not threat to Earth, this technology could protect Earth from other space rocks that may be ...

NASA's asteroid-slamming mission will test new ion drive system

NASA's mission DART will test our ability to redirect an asteroid by quite literally crashing into it — but the spacecraft will also test a new type of propulsion system for the agency. NASA's Evolutionary Xenon Thruster-Commercial (NEXT-C) is an ion ...

James Webb Space Telescope launch delayed to Dec. 22

Webb has been completed, folded up and has survived a journey at sea to arrive in October at its launch site, Europe's Spaceport in Kourou, French Guiana. However, a recent incident during launch preparations has forced the mission team to delay liftoff a ...

Why we're grateful for the tiny Ingenuity helicopter on Mars

CNN

CNN

(CNN) This year, we've watched the story of a little chopper unfold on another planet. And much like the joy brought by the successful landing of the Perseverance rover on Mars in February, the journey of its Ingenuity helicopter sidekick is just what ...

Hubble Space Telescope team revives powerful camera instrument after glitch

The Hubble Space Telescope continues to bounce back from its latest glitch. In late October, the famous space observatory suffered a problem with the synchronization of its internal messaging, causing all five of its main scientific instruments to go ...

In a first test of its planetary defense efforts, NASA's going to shove an asteroid

NPR

NPR

NASA is about to launch an unprecedented mission to knock an asteroid slightly off-course. In the first real-world test of a technique that could someday be used to protect Earth from a threatening space rock, a spacecraft is scheduled to blast off ...

NASA's DART mission to crash into an asteroid: Why, when and how to watch

DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) is NASA's test run of a futuristic planetary defense system intended to protect Earth from incoming asteroids by literally slamming spacecraft into them. Get the CNET How To newsletter.

Monarchs evolved mutations to withstand milkweed toxins; so did their predators

Phys.Org

Phys.Org

Monarch butterflies and their close relatives thrive on poisonous milkweed, thanks to genetic mutations that block the effects of the plant's toxins while allowing the poisons to accumulate in the caterpillar or adult insects as deterrents to hungry ...

Watch this mesmerizing video of butterfly scales forming inside a chrysalis

Larger, overlapping scales in red and green begin to form their structural details midway through development. Anthony McDougal and Sungsam Kang. A butterfly's beginnings are wondrous. Gently nestled in its cocoon, a caterpillar transforms into a ...