Beijing: China has announced plans to build an asteroid monitoring and defence system, which will help address the threats of asteroids hitting Earth, media reports said.According to China National Space Administration (CNSA) deputy head Wu Yanhua, the country aims to carry out a technical experiment as early as 2025 on a threatening asteroid by closely tracking and attacking it to change its orbit, Global Times reported.China will proceed to set up a near-Earth asteroid monitoring and defence system to deal with the threat of an asteroid impacting spacecraft, and contribute to protect the safety of the Earth and mankind, Wu said during an interview with the China Central Television.The country will set up a ground-based and space-based monitoring and warning system for asteroids to catalogue and analyse asteroids that pose a threat to humanity's space activities, and then relevant technology and engineering will be developed to dispel the threats.The CNSA is also developing a simulation software for possible impact from near-Earth asteroids and will organise rehearsals for the defence process to address the common threat and shouldering the responsibility as a major global power in safeguarding the Earth with other countries, Wu was quoted as saying Global Times.The system is currently at the project establishment phase and being reviewed for approval, which involves the close coordination of multiple departments, the report said.Earlier this year, in January, a white paper published by Chinese officials mentioned plans to study a planetary defence system, and last October, the country also hosted a planetary defence conference. Even as the US and Russia are also building asteroid monitoring systems, China's defence system could be an important supplement in addressing the threats of asteroids hitting Earth, Song Zhongping, a military expert and space observer, was quoted as saying."This is another practical solution that China proposes to build a community with a shared future for mankind, and it is the duty for a major space power to protect mankind from possible disasters that could end the entire human civilization," Song said.To deter a potential asteroid attack, China needs a carrier rocket with exceptionally large thrust, which would put the country in the front line of the world's asteroid defence technology, said Li Mingtao, professor at the National Space Science Center under the Chinese Academy of Sciences.&nbsp;—IANS

China has announced plans to build an asteroid monitoring and defence system, which will help address the threats of asteroids hitting Earth, media reports said.

China To Launch New Asteroid-Deflection Mission By 2025

Tokyo: Japan's Hayabusa2 space mission, which brought to Earth samples from an asteroid in late 2020, has found more than 20 types of amino acids in it, according to Japanese space agency JAXA officials.In 2018, Hayabusa2 landed atop a moving asteroid named Ryugu and collected particles from above and below its surface. In December 2020, it returned to Earth with a sealed capsule containing about five grams of dust and rock.The discovery of amino acids showed for the first time that they exist on an asteroid in space, Japan Times reported. Amino acids are substances that make proteins and are indispensable for life. Although it is not known how amino acids arrived on ancient Earth, one theory says they were brought by meteorites, with amino acids being detected in a meteorite found on Earth. It is also possible that such acids were transferred from the surrounding environs."We previously only had a handful of these rocks to study, and all of them were meteorites that fell to Earth and were stored in museums for decades to centuries, which changed their compositions," said geochemist Nicolas Dauphas, one of the three University of Chicago researchers who worked with a Japan-led international team of scientists to analyse the fragments."Having pristine samples from outer space is simply incredible. They are witnesses from parts of the solar system that we have not otherwise explored."Hayabusa2 delivered the subsurface materials to Earth without exposing them to outside air after collecting the samples that had not been weathered by sunlight or cosmic rays.Hayabusa2 left Earth in 2014 and reached its stationary position above Ryugu in June 2018 after traveling 3.2 billion km on an elliptical orbit around the sun for more than three years.The probe touched down on the asteroid twice the following year, collecting the first-ever subsurface samples from an asteroid, the report said. This mission is the first of several international missions that will bring back samples from another asteroid named Bennu, as well as unexplored areas on our moon, Mars, and Mars' moon Phobos. This should all be taking place in the next 10 to 20 years. —IANS

Japan's Hayabusa2 space mission, which brought to Earth samples from an asteroid in late 2020, has found more than 20 types of amino acids in it, according to Japanese space agency JAXA officials.

Japan's Hayabusa2 Probe Finds Amino Acids In Asteroid Samples

Tokyo: Japan's Hayabusa2 space mission, which brought to Earth samples from an asteroid in late 2020, has found more than 20 types of amino acids in it, according to Japanese space agency JAXA officials. In 2018, Hayabusa2 landed atop a moving asteroid named Ryugu and collected particles from above and below its surface. In December 2020, it returned to Earth with a sealed capsule containing about five grams of dust and rock. The discovery of amino acids showed for the first time that they exist on an asteroid in space, Japan Times reported.Amino acids are substances that make proteins and are indispensable for life.Although it is not known how amino acids arrived on ancient Earth, one theory says they were brought by meteorites, with amino acids being detected in a meteorite found on Earth. It is also possible that such acids were transferred from the surrounding environs. "We previously only had a handful of these rocks to study, and all of them were meteorites that fell to Earth and were stored in museums for decades to centuries, which changed their compositions," said geochemist Nicolas Dauphas, one of the three University of Chicago researchers who worked with a Japan-led international team of scientists to analyse the fragments."Having pristine samples from outer space is simply incredible. They are witnesses from parts of the solar system that we have not otherwise explored." Hayabusa2 delivered the subsurface materials to Earth without exposing them to outside air after collecting the samples that had not been weathered by sunlight or cosmic rays.Hayabusa2 left Earth in 2014 and reached its stationary position above Ryugu in June 2018 after traveling 3.2 billion km on an elliptical orbit around the sun for more than three years.The probe touched down on the asteroid twice the following year, collecting the first-ever subsurface samples from an asteroid, the report said.This mission is the first of several international missions that will bring back samples from another asteroid named Bennu, as well as unexplored areas on our moon, Mars, and Mars' moon Phobos. This should all be taking place in the next 10 to 20 years.—IANS

Tokyo, June 10 Japan's Hayabusa2 space mission, which brought to Earth samples from an asteroid in late 2020, has found more than 20 types of amino acids in it, according to Japanese space agency JAXA officials.

Japan's Hayabusa2 probe finds amino acids in asteroid samples

Washington: According to a study by the University of Helsinki, the European Gaia space mission has produced an unprecedented amount of new, improved, and detailed data for almost two billion objects in the Milky Way galaxy and the surrounding cosmos. The Gaia Data Release 3 on Monday revolutionizes our knowledge of the Solar System and the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies.The Gaia space mission of the European Space Agency ESA is constructing an ultraprecise three-dimensional map of our Milky Way galaxy, observing almost two billion stars or roughly one percent of all the stars in our galaxy. Gaia was launched in December 2013 and has collected science data from July 2014. On Monday, June 13, ESA released Gaia data in Data Release 3 (DR3). Finnish researchers were strongly involved in the release.Gaia data allows, for example, for the derivation of asteroid and exoplanet orbits and physical properties. The data helps unveil the origin and future evolution of the Solar System and the Milky Way and helps understand stellar and planetary-system evolution and our place in the cosmos.Gaia revolves about its axis slowly in about six hours and is composed of two optical space telescopes. Three science instruments allow for accurate determination of stellar positions and velocities as well as the spectral properties. Gaia resides at about 1,5 million kilometers from the Earth in the anti-Sun direction, where it orbits the Sun together with the Earth in the proximity of the so-called Sun-Earth Lagrange L2-point.Gaia DR3 on June 13, 2022 was significant across astronomy. Some 50 scientific articles are being published with DR3, of which nine articles have been devoted to underscoring the exceptionally significant potential of DR3 for future research.The new DR3 data comprises, for example, the chemical compositions, temperatures, colors, masses, brightnesses, ages, and radial velocities of stars. DR3 includes the largest ever binary star catalog for the Milky Way, more than 150 000 Solar System objects, largely asteroids but also planetary satellites, as well as millions of galaxies and quasars beyond the Milky Way."There are so many revolutionary advances that it is difficult to pinpoint a single most significant advance. Based on Gaia DR3, Finnish researchers will change the conception of asteroids in our Solar System, exoplanets and stars in our Milky Way galaxy, as well as galaxies themselves, including the Milky Way and its surrounding satellite galaxies. Returning to our home planet, Gaia will produce an ultraprecise reference frame for navigation and positioning," says Academy Professor Karri Muinonen from the University of Helsinki.Gaia and asteroidsThe ten-fold increase in the number of asteroids reported in Gaia DR3 as compared to DR2 means that there is a significant increase in the number of close encounters between Gaia-detected asteroids. These close encounters can be utilized for asteroid mass estimation and we expect a significant increase in the number of asteroid masses to be derived by using Gaia DR3 astrometry, in particular, when combined with astrometry obtained by other telescopes.In the conventional computation of an asteroid's orbit, the asteroid is assumed to be a point-like object and its size, shape, rotation and surface light scattering properties are not taken into account. The Gaia DR3 astrometry is, however, so accurate that the angular offset between the asteroid's center of mass and the center of the area illuminated by the Sun and visible to Gaia must be accounted for. Based on Gaia DR3, the offset has been certified for asteroid (21) Lutetia (Figure 2). The ESA Rosetta space mission imaged Lutetia during the flyby on July 10, 2010. With the help of the Rosetta Lutetia imagery and ground-based astronomical observations, a rotation period, rotational pole orientation, and detailed shape model were derived. When the physical modeling is incorporated into orbit computation, the systematic errors are removed and, contrary to conventional computation, all observations can be incorporated into the orbit solution. Consequently, the Gaia astrometry provides information about the physical properties of asteroids. These properties need to be taken into account using physical models or empirical error models for the astrometry.The Gaia DR3 includes, for the first time, spectral observations. The spectrum measures the color of the target, meaning the brightness at different wavelengths. One especially interesting feature is that the new release contains about 60 000 spectra of asteroids in our Solar System (Figure 3). The asteroid spectrum contains information on their composition and, thus, about their origin and the evolution of the whole Solar System. Before the Gaia DR3, there has been only few thousand asteroid spectra available, so Gaia will multiply the amount of data by more than an order of magnitude.Gaia and exoplanetsGaia is expected to produce detections of up to 20 000 giant exoplanets by measuring their gravitational effect on the movement of their host stars. This will enable finding virtually all Jupiter-like exoplanets in the Solar neighbourhood over the coming years and determining how common are Solar System -like architectures. The first such astrometric Gaia detection was a giant exoplanet around epsilon Indi A, that corresponds to the nearest Jupiter-like exoplanet only 12 light years away. The first such detections are possible because acceleration observed in radial velocity surveys can be combined with movement data from Gaia to determine the orbits and planetary masses.Gaia and galaxiesThe microarcsecond resolution of Gaia DR3 provides precise measurements of the motions of stars, not only within our own Milky Way galaxy, but also for the many satellite galaxies that surround it. From the motion of stars within the Milky Way itself, we can accurately measure its mass, and together with the proper motion of satellites, we can now accurately determine their orbits. This lets us look both into the past and into the future of the Milky Way galaxy system. For example, we can find out which of the galaxies that surround the Milky Way are true satellites, and which are just passing by. We can also investigate if the evolution of the Milky Way conforms to cosmological models, and in particular, whether the satellite orbits fit the standard dark matter model.Gaia and reference framesThe International Celestial Reference Frame, ICRF3, is based on the position of a few thousand quasars determined by Very Long Baseline Interferometry (VLBI) at radio wavelengths. ICRF3 is used to obtain the coordinates of celestial objects and to determine the orbits of satellites. Quasars of ICRF3 are also fixed points on the sky that can be used to determine the precise orientation of the Earth in space at any time. Without this information, for example, satellite positioning would not work.Gaia's data contain about 1,6 million quasars, which can be used to create a more accurate Celestial Reference Frame in visible light replacing the current one. In the future, this will have an impact on the accuracy of both satellite positioning and measurements of Earth-exploring satellites. —ANI

According to a study by the University of Helsinki, the European Gaia space mission has produced an unprecedented amount of new, improved, and detailed data for almost two billion objects in the Milky Way galaxy and the surrounding cosmos. The Gaia Data Release 3 on Monday revolutionizes our knowledge of the Solar System and the Milky Way and its satellite galaxies.

Gaia Space Telescope Rocks Science Of Asteroids: Study

Washington: NASA has cancelled its planned 2022 launch attempt of the Psyche asteroid mission -- the agency's first mission designed to study a metal-rich asteroid.The halt is "due to the late delivery of the spacecraft's flight software and testing equipment", which hindered the agency's plan to complete the testing needed ahead of its remaining launch period this year, which ends on October 11. The mission team needs more time to ensure that the software will function properly in flight, NASA said in a statement.As the mission team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California began testing the system, a compatibility issue was discovered with the software's testbed simulators. In May, NASA shifted the mission's targeted launch date from August 1 to September 20 to accommodate the work needed. The issue with the testbeds has been identified and corrected; however, there is not enough time to complete a full checkout of the software for a launch this year."Flying to a distant metal-rich asteroid, using Mars for a gravity assist on the way there, takes incredible precision. We must get it right. Hundreds of people have put remarkable effort into Psyche during this pandemic, and the work will continue as the complex flight software is thoroughly tested and assessed," said JPL Director Laurie Leshin, in the statement. "The decision to delay the launch wasn't easy, but it is the right one," Leshin added.The mission's 2022 launch period, which ran from August 1 through October 11, would have allowed the spacecraft to arrive at the asteroid Psyche in 2026.There are possible launch periods in both 2023 and 2024, but the relative orbital positions of Psyche and Earth mean the spacecraft would not arrive at the asteroid until 2029 and 2030, respectively. The exact dates of these potential launch periods are yet to be determined, NASA said."Our amazing team has overcome almost all of the incredible challenges of building a spacecraft during COVID," said Psyche Principal Investigator Lindy Elkins-Tanton of Arizona State University (ASU), who leads the mission."We have conquered numerous hardware and software challenges, and we've been stopped in the end by this one last problem. We just need a little more time and will get this one licked too," Elkins-Tanton said.NASA selected Psyche in 2017 as part of the agency's Discovery Programme -- a line of low-cost, competitive missions led by a single principal investigator.Total life-cycle mission costs for Psyche, including the rocket, are $985 million. Of that, $717 million has been spent to date. The estimated costs involved to support each of the full range of available mission options are currently being calculated, NASA said. —IANS

NASA has cancelled its planned 2022 launch attempt of the Psyche asteroid mission -- the agency's first mission designed to study a metal-rich asteroid.

NASA Halts Psyche Mission To Unexplored Metal World

Washington: When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at the asteroid Bennu, scientists discovered something surprising about the asteroid's surface wasn't smooth like many were expecting but was covered in large boulders. Now, a team of physicists think they know why.That popcorn-like effect may even help to tidy up smaller asteroids, causing them to lose dust and look rough and craggy from space.The researchers published their results July 11 in the journal Nature Astronomy. Their findings may help scientists better understand how asteroids change shape over time -- and how these bodies migrate through space, sometimes bringing them dangerously close to Earth, said Hsiang-Wen (Sean) Hsu, lead author of the study."The more fine-grained material, or regolith, these asteroids lose, the faster they migrate," said Hsu, a research associate at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) at CU Boulder.The research began with a few curious photos. In 2020, a NASA spacecraft named OSIRIS-REx travelled more than 1 billion miles to rendezvous with the asteroid (191055) Bennu, which is about as tall as the Empire State Building. But when the spacecraft arrived, scientists didn't find what they were expecting: The asteroid's surface looked like rough sandpaper, not smooth and dusty like researchers had predicted. There were even large boulders scattered over its exterior.Now, Hsu and his colleagues have drawn on computer simulations, or models, and laboratory experiments to explore that puzzle. He said that forces akin to static electricity may be kicking the smallest grains of dust, some no bigger than a single bacterium, off the asteroid and into space -- leaving only larger rocks behind.Bennu isn't alone, said study co-author Mihaly Horanyi."We're realizing that these same physics are occurring on other airless bodies like the moon and even the rings of Saturn," said Horanyi, a researcher at LASP and professor of physics at CU Boulder.Bennu and RyuguAsteroids might look like they're frozen in time, but these bodies evolve throughout their lifetimes.Hsu explained that asteroids like Bennu are constantly spinning, which exposes their surfaces to sunlight, then shadow and sunlight again. That never-ending cycle of heating and cooling puts a strain on the largest rocks at the surface, until they inevitably crack. "It's happening every day, all the time," Hsu said. "You wind up eroding a big piece of rock into smaller pieces."Which is why, before scientists arrived at Bennu, many were expecting to find it covered in smooth sand -- a bit like how the moon looks today. Not long before, a Japanese space mission landed on a second small asteroid called Ryugu. The team found a similarly rough and craggy terrain.Hsu and his colleagues were suspicious.Since the 1990s, researchers at LASP have used vacuum chambers in the lab to investigate the strange properties of dust in space, including a feat they call "electrostatic lofting." Study co-lead author Xu Wang explained that as the sun's rays bathe small grains of dust, they begin to pick up negative charges. Those charges will build until, suddenly, the particles burst apart, like two magnets repelling each other.In some cases, those grains of dust can pop away at speeds of more than 20 miles per hour (or more than 8 meters per second)."No one had ever considered this process on the surface of an asteroid before," said Wang, a research associate at LASP.Small asteroid, big asteroidTo do that, the researchers, including former CU Boulder undergraduate students Anthony Carroll and Noah Hood, ran a series of calculations examining the physics of regolith on two hypothetical asteroids. They tracked how dust might form, then hop around over hundreds of thousands of years. One of those faux asteroids was about a half-mile across (similar in size to Ryugu) and the second several miles wide (closer in diameter to big asteroids like Eros). The size made a difference. According to the team's estimates, when grains of dust jumped on the bigger asteroid, they couldn't gain enough speed to break free of its gravity. The same wasn't true on the smaller, Ryugu-like asteroid."The gravity on the smaller asteroid is so weak that it can't hold back the escape," Hsu said. "The fine-grained regolith will be lost."That lost dust, in turn, will expose the surface of the asteroids to even more erosion, leading to a boulder-rich scenery like scientists found on Ryugu and Bennu. Within several million years, in fact, the smaller asteroid was almost completely swept clean of fine dust. The Eros-like asteroid, however, stayed dusty.Hsu noted that this scrubbing effect could help to give the orbits of small asteroids a nudge. He explained that asteroids migrate because the sun's radiation pushes on them slowly over time. Based on previous research by other scientists, he suspects that asteroids covered in boulders may move faster than those with a dustier appearance.He and his colleagues may soon get more proof to back up their calculations. In less than 3 months, a NASA mission called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will visit a pair of smaller asteroids -- and Hsu will be watching to see how dusty they are. "We will have new surface images to test our theory," he said. "It's nice for us, but also a little nerve-wracking." —ANI

When NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft arrived at the asteroid Bennu, scientists discovered something surprising about the asteroid's surface wasn't smooth like many were expecting but was covered in large boulders. Now, a team of physicists think they know why.

Hopping Space Dust Makes Asteroids Look Rougher: Study

Washington:&nbsp;Scientists from NASA's OSIRIS-REx have found that the Sun's heat fractures rocks on Bennu in just 10,000 to 100,000 years, revealing that surface regeneration happens a lot quicker on asteroids than on Earth.For the findings, the team analysed rock fractures on asteroid Bennu from high-resolution images taken by the spacecraft OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer).This information will help scientists estimate how long it takes boulders on asteroids like Bennu to break down into smaller particles, which may either eject into space or stay on the asteroid's surface.Tens of thousands of years might sound pretty slow, but "we thought surface regeneration on asteroids took a few millions of years," said Marco Delbo, senior scientist at Universite Cote d'Azur, France."We were surprised to learn that the ageing and weathering process on asteroids happens so quickly, geologically speaking," Delbo said.Rapid temperature changes on Bennu have created internal stress that fractures and breaks down rocks, similar to how a cold glass breaks under hot water.The Sun rises every 4.3 hours on Bennu. At the equator, daytime highs can reach almost about 127 Celsius, and nighttime lows plummet to nearly minus 23 Celsius.OSIRIS-REx scientists spotted cracks in the rocks in spacecraft images from the first surveys of the asteroid. The fractures seemed to point in the same direction, "a distinct signature that temperature shocks between the day and the night could be the cause", said Delbo.Delbo and his colleagues measured the length and angles of more than 1,500 fractures in OSIRIS-REx images by hand: some shorter than a tennis racket, others longer than a tennis court.They found the fractures predominantly align in the northwest-southeast direction, indicating they were caused by the Sun, which is shown here to be the primary force changing Bennu's landscape."If landslides or impacts were moving boulders faster than the boulders were cracking, the fractures would point in random directions," said Delbo.The scientists used a computer model and their fracture measurements to calculate the 10,000 to 100,000-year timeframe for thermal fractures to propagate and split rocks."The thermal fractures on Bennu are quite similar to what we find on Earth and on Mars in terms of how they form," said Christophe Matonti, a co-author of the paper at Universite Cote d'Azur, CNRS, Observatoire de la Cote d'Azur, Geoazur, Sophia-Antipolis, Valbonne, France."It is fascinating to see that they can exist and are similar in very 'exotic' physical conditions [low gravity, no atmosphere], even compared to Mars."OSIRIS-REx will return a sample from Bennu to Earth on September 24, 2023. —IANS

Scientists from NASA's OSIRIS-REx have found that the Sun's heat fractures rocks on Bennu in just 10,000 to 100,000 years, revealing that surface regeneration happens a lot quicker on asteroids than on Earth.

NASA finds asteroid Bennu 'aged early' by Sun

Washington: A "potentially hazardous" giant asteroid is likely to come within about 4.3 million km of Earth on Friday, according to NASA.
The asteroid, named 2015 FF, has an estimated diameter between 13 and 28 metres, according to NASA's Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).
It will zoom past the Earth at a speed of about 33,012 km/h, Live Science reported.
NASA defines any space object that comes within 193 million km of Earth as a "near-Earth object" and any fast-moving object within 7.5 million km as "potentially hazardous."
NASA has estimated the trajectories of all the near-Earth objects beyond the end of the century. Currently the Earth faces no known danger from an apocalyptic asteroid collision for at least the next 100 years.
Several space agencies are already working on ways to possibly deflect asteroids flying straight at Earth. Last November. NASA launched a spacecraft as a part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, which plans to redirect a nonhazardous asteroid by ramming it off course. China is also in the early planning stages of an asteroid-redirect mission. By slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, the country says it would be able to divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with Earth, the report said. —IANS

 A "potentially hazardous" giant asteroid is likely to come within about 4.3 million km of Earth on Friday, according to NASA.

Potentially Hazardous Giant Asteroid To Zoom Past Earth On August 12

Washington: A NASA spacecraft was set to smash into an asteroid early on Tuesday, in a bid to test a technology to defend Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards in the future.
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a first such mission, was set to impact its target asteroid -- which poses no threat to Earth -- at 7.14 p.m. on Monday (4.44 a.m. on Tuesday IST).
"This test will show a spacecraft can autonomously navigate to a target asteroid and intentionally collide with it to change the asteroid's motion in a way that can be measured using ground-based telescopes," the US space agency said in an update.
DART's target is the binary, near-Earth asteroid system Didymos, composed of the roughly 780-metre diameter "Didymos" and the smaller, approximately 160-metre size "Dimorphos", which orbits Didymos.
DART will impact Dimorphos to change its orbit within the binary system, and the DART Investigation Team will compare the results of DART's kinetic impact with the asteroid to highly detailed computer simulations of kinetic impacts on asteroids, according to NASA.
"Doing so will evaluate the effectiveness of this mitigation approach and assess how best to apply it to future planetary defense scenarios, as well as how accurate the computer simulations are and how well they reflect the behaviour of a real asteroid," the space agency added.
DART will provide important data to help better prepare for an asteroid that might pose an impact hazard to Earth, should one ever be discovered.&nbsp;
—IANS

A NASA spacecraft was set to smash into an asteroid early on Tuesday, in a bid to test a technology to defend Earth against potential asteroid or comet hazards in the future.

 NASA set to crash spacecraft into asteroid to protect Earth in future

Washington: A NASA spacecraft named Lucy, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the earth's atmosphere, passing a mere 350 kms above the surface on October 16, to gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.
The Trojan asteroids are trapped in orbits around the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter, either far ahead of or behind the giant planet.
Lucy is currently one year into a 12-year voyage and this gravity assist will place it on a new trajectory for a two-year orbit, at which time it will return to Earth for a second gravity assist,NASA said in a statement.
This second assist will give Lucy the energy it needs to cross the main asteroid belt, where it will observe asteroid 'Donaldjohanson', and then travel into the leading Trojan asteroid swarm.
There, Lucy will fly past six Trojan asteroids: Eurybates and its satellite Queta, Polymele and its yet unnamed satellite, Leucus, and Orus.
Lucy will then return to Earth for a third gravity assist in 2030 to re-target the spacecraft for a rendezvous with the Patroclus-Menoetius binary asteroid pair in the trailing Trojan asteroid swarm, according to the space agency.
Lucy's trajectory will bring the spacecraft very close to Earth, lower even than the International Space Station, which means that Lucy will pass through a region full of earth-orbiting satellites and debris.
To ensure the safety of the spacecraft,NASA developed procedures to anticipate any potential hazard and, if needed, to execute a small manoeuvre to avoid a collision.
"The Lucy team has prepared two different manoeuvres. If the team detects that Lucy is at risk of colliding with a satellite or piece of debris, then, 12 hours before the closest approach to Earth, the spacecraft will execute one of these, altering the time of closest approach by either two or four seconds," said Coralie Adam, Lucy deputy navigation team chief from KinetX Aerospace in Simi Valley, California.
This is a small correction, but it is enough to avoid a potentially catastrophic collision, Adam added.
Lucy will be passing the Earth at such a low altitude that the team had to include the effect of atmospheric drag when designing this flyby.
"In the original plan, Lucy was actually going to pass about 30 miles closer to the Earth," said Rich Burns, Lucy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Lucy will then rapidly recede from the Earth's vicinity, passing by the Moon and taking a few more calibration images before continuing out into interplanetary space.&nbsp;
—IANS

A NASA spacecraft named Lucy, the first mission to the Jupiter Trojan asteroids, will skim the earth's atmosphere, passing a mere 350 kms above the surface on October 16, to gain some of the orbital energy it needs to travel to this never-before-visited population of asteroids.

 Lucy spacecraft set to swing by Earth to reach Jupiter asteroids

Washington (The Hawk): Due to concerns with the mission development earlier this year, Psyche was unable to launch as scheduled in 2022. This prompted an internal assessment of the mission's ability to address these problems and launch successfully in 2023.
A project-proposed mission replan and a different, independent evaluation that was commissioned in June by NASA and the agency's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California to look into the reasons for the delay served as the foundation for this continuation/termination review.
Thomas Zurbuchen, assistant administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, said, "I appreciate the hard work of the independent review board and the JPL-led team toward mission success." "The lessons from Psyche will be applied to every mission in our portfolio," the statement continued. Psyche's potential to advance our knowledge of the interior of our planet and its scientific breakthroughs during its existence excite me.
The independent review board is still finishing up its report, which will be made public once finished along with NASA's reaction.
The spacecraft's flight software is still being tested by the mission crew in advance of the launch in 2023. Similar to the August 2022 mission plan, the new trajectory will deliver the spacecraft toward the asteroid Psyche with a Mars gravity assist in 2026. The Psyche spacecraft will reach the asteroid in August 2029 after launching in October 2023.
JPL Director Laurie Leshin remarked, "I'm incredibly proud of the Psyche team. "During this examination, they have shown substantial advancements toward the upcoming launch date. I have faith that the plan will work out and am enthusiastic about the distinctive and significant science that this mission will return.
In 2017, NASA chose Psyche to examine the same-named, undiscovered metal-rich asteroid. It belongs to the agency's Discovery Program, a group of competitive, low-cost missions run by a lone principle investigator.
The Janus project, which explores twin binary asteroid systems and was initially intended to launch alongside Psyche on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy rocket, is still under consideration by NASA. The Psyche spacecraft is integrated with NASA's Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration, demonstrating high-data-rate laser communications, and it will proceed as scheduled on the rescheduled launch date.
The Psyche mission is overseen by Arizona State University. The mission's general management, system engineering, integration and test, and mission operations are all handled by JPL, which is run by Caltech in Pasadena, California, on behalf of NASA. The spaceship chassis for the high-power solar electric propulsion is made by Maxar Technologies in Palo Alto, California. The launch is being overseen by NASA's Launch Services Program, which has its headquarters at Florida's Kennedy Space Center. The Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, oversees NASA's Discovery Program, which includes the Psyche spacecraft.
(Inputs from Agencies)

Due to concerns with the mission development earlier this year, Psyche was unable to launch as scheduled in 2022. This prompted an internal assessment of the mission's ability to address these problems and launch successfully in 2023.

NASA has scheduled a mission to explore a metal-rich asteroid for October 2023

Washington: The U.S. space agency has announced that it will launch its delayed Psyche mission, aimed at investigating an asteroid of similar name, in October next year.
NASA selected Psyche in 2017 to investigate a previously unexplored metal-rich asteroid of the same name. It is part of the agency's Discovery Programme, a line of low-cost, competitive missions led by a single principal investigator.
Earlier this year, Psyche missed its planned 2022 launch period as a result of mission development problems, leading to an internal review of whether the mission would be able to overcome these issues to successfully launch in 2023.
"The lessons learned from Psyche will be implemented across our entire mission portfolio. I am excited about the science insights Psyche will provide during its lifetime and its promise to contribute to our understanding of our own planet's core," said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington."
The mission team continues to complete testing of the spacecraft's flight software in preparation for the 2023 launch date.
The new flight profile is similar to the one originally planned for August 2022, using a Mars gravity assist in 2026 to send the spacecraft on its way to the asteroid Psyche.
With an October 2023 launch date, the Psyche spacecraft will arrive at the asteroid in August 2029, NASA said in a statement late on Friday.
"I am confident in the plan moving forward and excited by the unique and important science this mission will return," said JPL Director Laurie Leshin. —IANS

 The U.S. space agency has announced that it will launch its delayed Psyche mission, aimed at investigating an asteroid of similar name, in October next year.

NASA Space Mission To Probe Metal-Rich Asteroid Now Set For Oct 2023

New Delhi (The Hawk): Dermatologists advised that skin creams containing steroids, which are available as over-the-counter medications and applied directly to the skin to alleviate inflammation and irritation, have a number of negative effects and occasionally may result in permanent stretch marks and discoloration.
"Steroids are immunosuppressive medications that lower immune levels in the body. If a patient has irritated skin or other conditions connected to skin inflammation, the medication will be prescribed by the doctor. Steroids are occasionally used to help patients' discomfort by reducing skin inflammation and irritation, but this is not a long-term solution "explained dermatologist Dr. Manish Jhangra of RML Hospital.
"But we must also gradually cease using steroids as soon as possible. There is a danger that inflammation could reappear if we abruptly cease taking the steroids. Because of this, the usage of steroids requires cautious consideration "explained he.
Steroids are applied topically and orally to treat skin conditions. Topical corticosteroids are a class of steroid medication used topically to soothe and calm irritated skin. The biggest issue, though, is that these steroids are easily marketed over the counter. Numerous creams that contain steroids typically combine a variety of ingredients, including anti-bacterial, anti-fungal, and the steroids themselves.
According to RML doctor, using lotions that contain steroids won't help a fungal infection get better; instead, they'll make it worse and lower immunity levels, which will make the body unable to fight off the infection.
"The majority of patients who come to the outpatient department (OPD) are individuals who have been using creams containing steroids continually, which frequently results in other adverse effects, like serious skin infections, leaving the skin damaged for years even after extensive treatments," he stated.
The dermatology specialists at RML Hospital have also started a campaign against steroid-containing skin creams that are marketed as over-the-counter medications.
According to Dr. Jhangra, the availability of these steroids over-the-counter is the cause of the rise in adverse effects of these steroids, which include redness, hair growth on the face, thin skin, and a burning feeling.
(Inputs from Agencies)

Dermatologists advised that skin creams containing steroids, which are available as over-the-counter medications and applied directly to the skin to alleviate inflammation and irritation, have a number of negative effects and occasionally may result in permanent stretch marks and discoloration.

Experts are concerned about the increasing usage of steroid-containing skin products

Washington: Twilight observations have enabled astronomers to spot three near-Earth asteroids (NEA) hiding in the glare of the Sun. These NEAs are part of an elusive population that lurks inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. One of the asteroids is the largest object that is potentially hazardous to Earth to be discovered in the last eight years.
An international team using the Dark Energy Camera (DECam) mounted on the Victor M. Blanco 4-meter Telescope at Cerro Tololo Inter-American Observatory in Chile, a Program of NSF's NOIRLab, has discovered three new near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) hiding in the inner Solar System, the region interior to the orbits of Earth and Venus. This is a notoriously challenging region for observations because asteroid hunters have to contend with the glare of the Sun.
By taking advantage of the brief yet favorable observing conditions during twilight, however, the astronomers found an elusive trio of NEAs. One is a 1.5-kilometer-wide asteroid called 2022 AP7, which has an orbit that may someday place it in Earth's path. The other asteroids, called 2021 LJ4 and 2021 PH27, have orbits that safely remain completely interior to Earth's orbit. Also of special interest to astronomers and astrophysicists, 2021 PH27 is the closest known asteroid to the Sun. As such, it has the largest general-relativity effects [1] of any object in our Solar System and during its orbit its surface gets hot enough to melt lead.
"Our twilight survey is scouring the area within the orbits of Earth and Venus for asteroids," said Scott S. Sheppard, an astronomer at the Earth and Planets Laboratory of the Carnegie Institution for Science and the lead author of the paper describing this work. "So far we have found two large near-Earth asteroids that are about 1 kilometer across, a size that we call planet killers."
"There are likely only a few NEAs with similar sizes left to find, and these large undiscovered asteroids likely have orbits that keep them interior to the orbits of Earth and Venus most of the time," said Sheppard. "Only about 25 asteroids with orbits completely within Earth's orbit have been discovered to date because of the difficulty of observing near the glare of the Sun."
Finding asteroids in the inner Solar System is a daunting observational challenge. Astronomers have only two brief 10-minute windows each night to survey this area and have to contend with a bright background sky resulting from the Sun's glare. Additionally, such observations are very near to the horizon, meaning that astronomers have to observe through a thick layer of Earth's atmosphere, which can blur and distort their observations. [2]
Discovering these three new asteroids despite these challenges was possible thanks to the unique observing capabilities of DECam. The state-of-the-art instrument is one of the highest-performance, wide-field CCD imagers in the world, giving astronomers the ability to capture large areas of sky with great sensitivity. Astronomers refer to observations as 'deep' if they capture faint objects. When hunting for asteroids inside Earth's orbit, the capability to capture both deep and wide-field observations is indispensable. DECam was funded by the US Department of Energy (DOE) and was built and tested at DOE's Fermilab. "Large areas of sky are required because the inner asteroids are rare, and deep images are needed because asteroids are faint and you are fighting the bright twilight sky near the Sun as well as the distorting effect of Earth's atmosphere," said Sheppard. "DECam can cover large areas of sky to depths not achievable on smaller telescopes, allowing us to go deeper, cover more sky, and probe the inner Solar System in ways never done before."
As well as detecting asteroids that could potentially pose a threat to Earth, this research is an important step toward understanding the distribution of small bodies in our Solar System. Asteroids that are further from the Sun than Earth are easiest to detect. Because of that these more-distant asteroids tend to dominate current theoretical models of the asteroid population. [3]
Detecting these objects also allows astronomers to understand how asteroids are transported throughout the inner Solar System and how gravitational interactions and the heat of the Sun can contribute to their fragmentation.
"Our DECam survey is one of the largest and most sensitive searches ever performed for objects within Earth's orbit and near to Venus's orbit," said Sheppard. "This is a unique chance to understand what types of objects are lurking in the inner Solar System."
"After ten years of remarkable service, DECam continues to yield important scientific discoveries while at the same time contributing to planetary defense, a crucial service that benefits all humanity," said Chris Davis, NSF Program Director for NOIRLab. DECam was originally built to carry out the Dark Energy Survey, which was conducted by the DOE and the US National Science Foundation between 2013 and 2019. —ANI

Twilight observations have enabled astronomers to spot three near-Earth asteroids (NEA) hiding in the glare of the Sun. These NEAs are part of an elusive population that lurks inside the orbits of Earth and Venus. 

Astronomers Spot Largest Potentially Hazardous Asteroid Detected In Eight Years

Washington: The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, was used by a large, international collaboration to study grains collected from a near-Earth asteroid to further our understanding of the evolution of our solar system.
Researchers from the University of Leicester brought a fragment of the Ryugu asteroid to Diamond's Nanoprobe beamline I14 where a special technique called X-ray Absorption Near Edge Spectroscopy (XANES) was used to map out the chemical states of the elements within the asteroid material, to examine its composition in fine detail. The team also studied the asteroid grains using an electron microscope at Diamond's electron Physical Science Imaging Centre (ePSIC).
Julia Parker is the Principal Beamline Scientist for I14 at Diamond. She said: "The X-ray Nanoprobe allows scientists to examine the chemical structure of their samples at micron to nano lengthscales, which is complemented by the nano to atomic resolution of the imaging at ePSIC. It's very exciting to be able to contribute to the understanding of these unique samples, and to work with the team at Leicester to demonstrate how the techniques at the beamline, and correlatively at ePSIC, can benefit future sample return missions."
The data collected at Diamond contributed to a wider study of the space weathering signatures on the asteroid. The pristine asteroid samples enabled the collaborators to explore how space weathering can alter the physical and chemical composition of the surface of carbonaceous asteroids like Ryugu. The researchers discovered that the surface of Ryugu is dehydrated and that it is likely that space weathering is responsible. The findings of the study, published today in Nature Astronomy, have led the authors to conclude that asteroids that appear dry on the surface may be water-rich, potentially requiring revision of our understanding of the abundances of asteroid types and the formation history of the asteroid belt. Ryugu is a near-Earth asteroid, around 900 metres in diameter, first discovered in 1999 within the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. It is named after the undersea palace of the Dragon God in Japanese mythology. In 2014, the Japanese state space agency JAXA launched Hayabusa2, an asteroid sample-return mission, to rendezvous with the
Ryugu asteroid and collect material samples from its surface and sub-surface. The spacecraft returned to Earth in 2020, releasing a capsule containing precious fragments of the asteroid. These small samples were distributed to labs around the world for scientific study, including the University of Leicester's School of Physics &amp; Astronomy and Space Park where John Bridges, one of the authors on the paper, is a Professor of Planetary Science.
John said: "This unique mission to gather samples from the most primitive, carbonaceous, building blocks of the Solar System needs the world's most detailed microscopy, and thats why JAXA and the Fine Grained Mineralogy team wanted us to analyse samples at Diamond's X-ray nanoprobe beamline. We helped reveal the nature of space weathering on this asteroid with micrometeorite impacts and the solar wind creating dehydrated serpentine minerals, and an associated reduction from oxidised Fe3+ to more reduced Fe2+.
It's important to build up experience in studying samples returned from asteroids, as in the Hayabusa2 mission, because soon there will be new samples from other asteroid types, the Moon and within the next 10 years Mars, returned to Earth. The UK community will be able to perform some of the critical analyses due to our facilities at Diamond and the electron microscopes at ePSIC."
The building blocks of Ryugu are remnants of interactions between water, minerals and organics in the early Solar System prior to the formation of Earth. Understanding the composition of asteroids can help explain how the early solar system developed, and subsequently how the Earth formed. They may even help explain how life on Earth came about, with asteroids believed to have delivered much of the planet's water as well as organic compounds such as amino acids, which provide the fundamental building blocks from which all human life is constructed.
The information that is being gleaned from these tiny asteroid samples will help us to better understand the origin not only of the planets and stars but also of life itself. Whether it's fragments of asteroids, ancient paintings or unknown virus structures, at the synchrotron, scientists can study their samples using a machine that is 10,000 times more powerful than a traditional microscope. —ANI

The UK's national synchrotron facility, Diamond Light Source, was used by a large, international collaboration to study grains collected from a near-Earth asteroid to further our understanding of the evolution of our solar system.

Ancient Asteroid Grains Provide Insight Into Evolution Of Our Solar System

Washington: New research into the durability and age of an ancient asteroid made of rocky rubble and dust, revealed significant findings that could contribute to potentially saving the planet if one ever hurtled toward Earth.
Curtin University-led research into the durability and age of an ancient asteroid made of rocky rubble and dust, revealed significant findings that could contribute to potentially saving the planet if one ever hurtled toward Earth.
The international team studied three tiny dust particles collected from the surface of ancient 500-metre-long rubble pile asteroid, Itokawa, returned to Earth by the Japanese Space Agency's Hayabusa 1 probe.
The study's results showed asteroid Itokawa, which is 2 million kilometres from Earth and around the size of Sydney Harbour Bridge, was hard to destroy and resistant to collision.
Lead author Professor Fred Jourdan, Director of the Western Australian Argon Isotope Facility, part of the John de Laeter Centre and the School of Earth and Planetary Sciences at Curtin, said the team also found Itokawa is almost as old as the solar system itself. "Unlike monolithic asteroids, Itokawa is not a single lump of rock, but belongs to the rubble pile family which means it's entirely made of loose boulders and rocks, with almost half of it being empty space," Professor Jourdan said. "The survival time of monolithic asteroids the size of Itokawa is predicted to be only several hundreds of thousands of years in the asteroid belt.
"The huge impact that destroyed Itokawa's monolithic parent asteroid and formed Itokawa happened at least 4.2 billion years ago. Such an astonishingly long survival time for an asteroid the size of Itokawa is attributed to the shock-absorbent nature of rubble pile material. "In short, we found that Itokawa is like a giant space cushion, and very hard to destroy."
The Curtin-led team used two complementary techniques to analyse the three dust particles. The first one is called Electron Backscattered Diffraction and can measure if a rock has been shocked by any meteor impact. The second method - argon-argon dating - is used to date asteroid impacts. Co-author Associate Professor Nick Timms, also from Curtin's School of Earth and Planetary Sciences, said the durability of rubble pile asteroids was previously unknown, jeopardising the ability to design defence strategies in case one was hurtling toward Earth.
"We set out to answer whether rubble pile asteroids are resistant to being shocked or whether they fragment at the slightest knock," Associate Professor Timms said.
"Now that we have found they can survive in the solar system for almost its entire history, they must be more abundant in the asteroid belt than previously thought, so there is more chance that if a big asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, it will be a rubble pile.
"The good news is that we can also use this information to our advantage - if an asteroid is detected too late for a kinetic push, we can then potentially use a more aggressive approach like using the shockwave of a close-by nuclear blast to push a rubble-pile asteroid off course without destroying it." —ANI

New research into the durability and age of an ancient asteroid made of rocky rubble and dust, revealed significant findings that could contribute to potentially saving the planet if one ever hurtled toward Earth.

Asteroid Findings From Specks Of Space Dust Could Save The Planet: Research

Bulandshahr: Six students from Grade 11 in VidyaGyan, Bulandshahr, participated in the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) which is a global event to identify asteroids.
From the overall 1000 detections, VidyaGyan students were able to identify 17 preliminary asteroid detections of which three have been provisionally recognised by NASA and the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC).
NASA will further observe the detected asteroids for the next six months.
According to an official release issued here on Friday, the names of the students are Mayank Kumar, Sumit Kishorewani, Aditya Rajput, Arpita Baliyan, Vijay Pratapsingh, Ansh Kumar Singh.
The students' contributions have been identified as valuable additions to the global understanding of asteroids and have been acknowledged by NASA.
Participants from 17 countries, including the US, Brazil, Colombia, Israel, Mexico, Nepal, Bhutan, Bangladesh, India and more, as well as several research institutes, attended the event. —IANS

Six students from Grade 11 in VidyaGyan, Bulandshahr, participated in the International Astronomical Search Collaboration (IASC) which is a global event to identify asteroids.

Six Vidyagyan Students Identify 17 Asteroids

New Delhi: The US space agency is set to receive historic asteroid sample delivery on September 24, becoming the first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft is cruising back to Earth with a sample it collected from the rocky surface of asteroid Bennu.
After seven years in space, including a nail-biting touchdown on Bennu to gather dust and rocks, this intrepid mission is about to face one of its biggest challenges yet: deliver the asteroid sample to Earth while protecting it from heat, vibrations, and earthly contaminants.
"Once the sample capsule touches down, our team will be racing against the clock to recover it and get it to the safety of a temporary clean room," said Mike Moreau, deputy project manager at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland.
Over the next six months, the OSIRIS-REx team will practice and refine the procedures required to recover the sample in the state of Utah and transport it to a new lab built for the material at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas.
There, scientists will unpack the sample, distribute up to a quarter of it to the OSIRIS-REx science team around the world for analysis, and curate the rest for other scientists to study, now and in future generations, NASA said in a statement.
Asteroids are the ancient materials left over from the original era of planet formation and may contain molecular precursors to life.
Scientists have learned a great deal from studying asteroid fragments that have naturally reached the ground as meteorites. But to understand whether asteroids played a role in delivering these compounds to Earth's surface over 4 billion years ago, scientists need a pristine sample from space, free from terrestrial contaminants.
The return to Earth of samples from asteroid Bennu will be the culmination of a more than 12-year effort by NASA and its mission partners but marks the beginning of a new phase of discovery. —IANS

The US space agency is set to receive historic asteroid sample delivery on September 24, becoming the first-ever mission to return an asteroid sample to Earth.

World Sets Eye On Historic Asteroid Sample Delivery By NASA

London: The use of anabolic steroids can cause serious side effects, including heart failure and depression, for years after the end of your use, a new study showed on Saturday.

According to the studies presented at the European Congress of Endocrinology in Istanbul, anabolic steroids (synthetic hormones that mimic the naturally-occurring sex hormone testosterone), are used to increase muscle mass and boost athletic performance.

These performance-enhancing drugs have negative side effects, such as breast growth, hair loss, decreased testosterone levels, erectile dysfunction, and an increased risk of heart disease, stroke, and liver or kidney failure in men.

In the first study, the researchers examined 64 healthy men, between the ages of 18 and 50, who did recreational strength training in Denmark.

Of these men, 28 were using anabolic steroids, 22 were former steroid users, and 14 had never used these steroids.

The researchers used a Positron Emission Tomography-Computed Tomography (PET-CT) scan with the radioactive tracer Rubidium-82 to assess how much blood flowed to their heart muscle while resting and exercising and discovered that both former and current users had poor blood flow to the heart.

The findings indicate that former steroid users are more likely to develop heart disease when compared to those who have never used them, said the study.

"Previous studies have shown that the heart function almost normalises after anabolic steroids are discontinued, but our study suggests that former anabolic steroid users are at an increased risk of heart disease years after stopping as cardiac microcirculation -- the blood flow through the smallest vessels in the circulatory system -- seems persistently impaired," said lead author Dr Yeliz Bulut.

Moreover, Dr Bulut and colleagues conducted another study in which they collected questionnaires and blood samples from three groups of men aged 18-50 years: 89 current anabolic steroid users, 61 former steroid users, and 30 men who had never used steroids before.

The study found that former anabolic steroid users report a worse quality of life on their physical and mental health, such as fatigue, social functioning and emotional well-being, despite stopping years earlier.

"Our study adds to the growing body of literature that an impaired quality of life in previous anabolic steroid users seems to persist years following cessation and could be caused by both withdrawal and/or hypogonadal symptoms due to a sudden drop in testosterone levels in the blood," said Dr Bulut. —IANS

The use of anabolic steroids can cause serious side effects, including heart failure and depression, for years after the end of your use, a new study showed on Saturday

Steroid use associated with risk of heart disease, worse quality of life: Study

Washington: In-depth research of the fossil record has shown a Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, which include humans, dogs, and bats, indicating they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short period before the dinosaurs became extinct. The catastrophic destruction triggered by the asteroid hitting the Earth resulted in the death of all non-avian dinosaurs in an event termed the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) mass extinction. Debate has long raged among researchers over whether placental mammals were present alongside the dinosaurs before the mass extinction, or whether they only evolved after the dinosaurs were done away with. Fossils of placental mammals are only found in rocks younger than 66 million years old, which is when the asteroid hit Earth, suggesting that the group evolved after the mass extinction. However, molecular data has long suggested an older age for placental mammals. In a new paper published in the journal Current Biology, a team of palaeobiologists from the University of Bristol and the University of Fribourg used statistical analysis of the fossil record to determine that placental mammals originated before the mass extinction, meaning they co-existed with dinosaurs for a short time. However, it was only after the asteroid impact that modern lineages of placental mammals began to evolve, suggesting that they were better able to diversify once the dinosaurs were gone. The researchers collected extensive fossil data from placental mammal groups extending all the way back to the mass extinction 66 million years ago. Lead author Emily Carlisle of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences said: "We pulled together thousands of fossils of placental mammals and were able to see the patterns of origination and extinction of the different groups. Based on this, we could estimate when placental mammals evolved." Co-author Daniele Silvestro (University of Fribourg) explained: "The model we used estimates origination ages based on when lineages first appear in the fossil record and the pattern of species diversity through time for the lineage. It can also estimate extinction ages based on last appearances when the group is extinct." Co-author Professor Phil Donoghue, also from Bristol, added: "By examining both origins and extinctions, we can more clearly see the impact of events such as the K-Pg mass extinction or the Paleocene-Eocene Thermal Maximum (PETM)." Primates, the group that includes the human lineage, as well as Lagomorpha (rabbits and hares) and Carnivora (dogs and cats) were shown to have evolved just before the K-Pg mass extinction, which means their ancestors were mingling with dinosaurs. After they survived the asteroid impact, placental mammals rapidly diversified, perhaps spurred on by the loss of competition from the dinosaurs. —ANI

In-depth research of the fossil record has shown a Cretaceous origin for placental mammals, which include humans

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