What are asteroids made of? While composed of metals, rocks, ices, and also many elements that are difficult to find and retrieve here on Earth — hence the growing interest in asteroid-mining missions — these drifting denizens of the Solar System have many different possible ways of forming. Some may be dense hunks of rock…
Tag: Itokawa
Asteroid!
This is Itokawa, a near-Earth asteroid that was investigated by the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency’s Hayabusa probe in September of 2005. The probe made a brief landing on the asteroid on November 19th of the same year, and again on the 25th, in an attempt to collect samples of the asteroid’s material, and also…
Lights in the Dark 