asteroid

Japan's Hayabusa2 completed a successful July 5 flyby of asteroid Torifune, passing about 10 km away and returning first optical and thermal images that show a two-lobed contact binary.

Science paper details the bilobate asteroid Lucy flew past in 2025: a slow end-over-end tumble, a 26.5-day wobble, and iron-rich clays that hint at ancient liquid water.

JAXA's extended Hayabusa2 mission will pass roughly 1 km from asteroid Torifune at 5 km/s on July 5, testing guidance for planetary defense.

After a year in transit, Tianwen-2 has rendezvoused with the tiny near-Earth asteroid and will map it before attempting to collect a sample for return to Earth.

A Nature Communications study argues Kamo'oalewa likely came from the Flora asteroid family, not the Moon, weeks before Tianwen-2 reaches its target.

Berlin signing on 7 May commits Japan to launch ESA's Ramses probe on an H3 rocket in 2028, in time to escort Apophis through its 32,000 km flyby of Earth.

Psyche will pass 4,500 kilometers above Mars on May 15 at 12,333 mph, harnessing the planet's gravity to redirect itself toward the metal-rich asteroid Psyche and calibrate its imager, magnetometer, and gamma-ray spectrometer.

Scientists have detected all five canonical nucleobases in pristine samples from asteroid Ryugu, the first confirmation of a complete set of DNA and RNA building blocks in material collected directly from space.