Osiris-Rex leaves Bennu
Osiris-Rex is coming home. Nasa's robotic prospector reached asteroid Bennu in 2018 and spent two years flying near and around it, before collecting rubble from the surface in October 2020. It is estimated that the spacecraft has collected between 200gr to 400gr of samples, cited as Nasa’s biggest cosmic haul since the Apollo moon rocks. The trip back home started yesterday and
NEOROCKS on YouTube
We have just launched our NEOROCKS YouTube Channel. We’ll be updating it regularly and for now you can find our partners e-lightning talks from the 7th IAA Planetary Defense Confererence. It’s Friday, settle down this evening with a glass of wine and some popcorn and learn some more about Near Earth Objects! Photo by GR Stocks on Unsplash
NEOROCKS in Horizon Magazine
Hot of the press! Our own Ettore Perozzi from the Italian Space Agency was interviewed for the Horizon Magazine. Have a look here at what he had to say about “how do we know if an asteroid headed our way is dangerous?” and about what NEOROCKS is doing to assess the threat of near earth objectives in rapid time. Photo by Elena Mozhvilo
NEOROCKS @ 7th IAA PDC Conference 2021
The 7th IAA Planetary Defense Confererence will be held (online) on April 26-30, 2021. Hosted by UNOOSA in collaboration with ESA, the bi-annual conference brings together world experts to discuss the threat to Earth posed by asteroids and comets and actions that might be taken to deflect a threatening object. Our NEOROCKS partners will be there of course! Fabrizio Bernardi from Spacedys will
Amazing week for Asteroid research!
This week, NASA’s Osiris-Rex spacecraft completed its “tag-and-go” manoeuvre to collect surface rock from asteroid Bennu. This is an amazing achievement, reported all over the world. We’ve collected some great press articles for you, so you can find out more about this mission and why it is so important: Official NASA Oxiris Rex Page (In English) BBC News “Elation as Nasa's Osiris-Rex probe
Congratulations Andrea Ghez!
NEOROCKS sends huge congratulations to Andrea Ghez, Nobel Prize in Physics 2020! The Nobel Prize in Physics 2020 was divided, one half awarded to Roger Penrose "for the discovery that black hole formation is a robust prediction of the general theory of relativity", the other half jointly to Reinhard Genzel and Andrea Ghez "for the discovery of a supermassive compact object
MANIFESTO FOR EU COVID-19 RESEARCH
The European Commission has launched the MANIFESTO FOR EU COVID-19 RESEARCH, to maximise the accessibility of research results in the fight against COVID-19. The Manifesto is part of the EU Coronavirus response, the common European response to the coronavirus outbreak. It provides guiding principles for beneficiaries of EU research grants for coronavirus prevention, testing, treatment and vaccination to ensure that their research
NEOROCKS and IAWN
In 2013, the United Nation's General Assembly agreed to support a series of recommendations for an international response to a potential NEO impact threat. These included the establishment of an International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN). IAWN is tasked with designing a strategy to assist Governments in analysing asteroid impact consequences and planning mitigation responses. NEOROCKS is providing input to IAWN, thanks to
The ASTEROID that went by – what does it really mean?
At the beginning of June (on the 5th to be precise), the largest asteroid this year passed between the Earth and the moon. You might have heard a few people talking about in during Asteroid Day ? The asteroid is called 2020 LD and it has an estimated equivalent diameter of between 63 and 200 m (this means that it is
Doing anything for Asteroid day?
NEOROCKS is! We’ve already been live on Asteroid Day TV with the ESA-Italy Planetary Defense session, moderated by Ettore Perozzi from ASI and featuring our coordinator Elisabetta Dotto, INAF. Missed that? Don’t worry, it will be showing again on ESA TV on the 30th and you can check it out here. Then on Friday 26 June, we were on Italian national television