NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Finds Water Clues on a Peanut-Shaped Asteroid

Sat, 27 Jun 2026 00:00:00 +0800

There’s a quiet tension at the heart of planetary science. We know water was abundant in the early solar system — its fingerprints are everywhere, from the Martian poles to the icy crusts of Jupiter’s moons. But exactly how it was distributed across the inner solar system remains one of the field’s most persistent open questions.

Last April, during a close flyby of the main-belt asteroid (52246) Donaldjohanson, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft delivered something that sharpens the picture: a peanut-shaped world tumbling through space in a slow, wobbling spin, its surface marked by minerals that could only have formed in the presence of liquid water.

Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth This Saturday, Visible with Small Telescopes

Wed, 24 Jun 2026 23:29:00 +0800

The European Space Agency has confirmed that a large near-Earth asteroid will make a close but perfectly safe pass by our planet this weekend, offering amateur astronomers a rare chance to spot a sizable interplanetary visitor. Asteroid (152637) 1997 NC1, a rocky body first catalogued in 1997, will reach its closest approach to Earth on Saturday at 19:14 Beijing time (11:14 UTC), coming within approximately 2.56 million kilometers — more than six times the distance between Earth and the Moon.

Asteroid on IT News

NASA's Lucy Spacecraft Finds Water Clues on a Peanut-Shaped Asteroid

Large Asteroid to Safely Pass Earth This Saturday, Visible with Small Telescopes