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ODD ASTEROID: On April 7th, astronomers discovered a near-Earth asteroid following a curious path around the Sun. The orbit of 2003 GQ22 is nestled almost entirely inside Earth's own. "2003 GQ22 is nearly a member of the elusive inner-Earth object group, for which there is thought to be several members, but only one discovered to date (2003 CP20)," says Donald Yeomans, the manager of JPL's Near Earth Object Program. Inner-Earth asteroids start out like most space rocks--orbiting the Sun in the asteroid belt beyond Mars. But over the course of time, perhaps hundreds of millions of years or longer, they...

Earth has acquired a "quasi-moon" -- an asteroid that will encircle our planet for the next couple of years while it orbits the sun on a horseshoe-shaped path, according to a report to be published on Saturday in New Scientist. The asteroid, 2003 YN17, "is probably a chunk of debris" from an impact between a larger space rock and the surface of the moon, the British weekly says. 2003 YN17's orbital plane is roughly the same as the earth's, but its unusual path, compounded by a corkscrew-like track, means that sometimes it is ahead of us and sometimes it is...

Cat-and-mouse asteroid pulls close to Earth January 03 2003 at 07:25PM Washington - An asteroid playing a cat-and-mouse game with Earth will pull to its closest point in almost a century on Monday before swinging away for another 95 years, Nasa said in a statement. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is like a mouse teasing a cat, approaching Earth first on one side and then on another, without ever making contact or actually passing our planet as the two bodies circle the sun, the astronomers said on Thursday. At just 60m, the tiny asteroid will get within 6 000 000km on Monday....

Monday, 21 October, 2002, 16:27 GMT 17:27 UKEarth's little brother found The asteroid was found almost by accident By Dr David Whitehouse BBC News Online science editor Astronomers have discovered the first object ever that is in a companion orbit to the Earth. Asteroid 2002 AA29 is only about 100 metres wide and never comes closer than 3.6 million miles to our planet. But it shares the Earth's orbit around the Sun, at first on one side of the Earth and then escaping to travel along our planet's path around the Sun until it encounters the Earth from the other...

Newly Discovered Object Could be a Leftover Apollo Rocket Stage An analysis of the orbital motion of the newly discovered object J002E3 indicates that it could be a leftover Saturn V third stage from one of the Apollo missions, most likely the Apollo 12 mission, launched on November 14, 1969. The new object was discovered on September 3 by Bill Yeung, who noted that it was moving quite rapidly. Initial orbit computations by the Minor Planet Center indicated that the object was only about twice as far away as the Moon, and was actually in orbit about our planet....

At 8.45 on the morning of 15 April 136 BC, Babylon was plunged into darkness when the Moon passed in front of the Sun. An astrologer, who recorded the details in cuneiform characters on a clay tablet, wrote: "At 24 degrees after sunrise-a solar eclipse. When it began on the southwest side, Venus, Mercury and the normal stars were visible. Jupiter and Mars, which were in their period of disappearance, became visible. The Sun threw off the shadow from southwest to northeast." If present-day astronomers use a computer to run the movements of the Earth, Moon and Sun backwards...

Probe to 'look inside' asteroids By Paul Rincon BBC News Online science staff in Paris, France Studies of asteroids would aid Earth-protection strategies A new space mission concept unveiled at a Paris conference aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved. The perceived threat of asteroids colliding with our planet has renewed interest in space missions to understand these...

Reworked images reveal hot Venus By Dr David Whitehouse Mars it is not: Reprocessed Venus image As the world looks at Mars, an American scientist has produced the best images ever obtained from the surface of a rather different planet - Venus. The second planet from the Sun is blanketed with a thick layer of cloud. Computer researcher Don Mitchell used original digital data from two Soviet Venera probes that landed in 1975. His reprocessed and recalibrated images provide a much clearer view of the Venusian surface which is hotter even than the inside of a household oven. Original digital...