Samantha Mathewson joined Space.com as an intern in the summer of 2016. She received a B.A. in Journalism and Environmental Science at the University of New Haven, in Connecticut. Previously, her work has been published in Nature World News. When not writing or reading about science, Samantha enjoys traveling to new places and taking photos! You can follow her on Twitter @Sam_Ashley13.
, which visited an asteroid called Itokawa but experienced challenges that meant the spacecraft brought home only grains of the extraterrestrial material.
"Their small size presented potential challenges," study co-author Jordi Sort, a research professor at the Catalan Institution for Research and Advanced Studies at the Autonomous University of Barcelona , said in the statement."The three grains we received are only about a thousandth of a millimeter each. However, we still managed to test successfully, using a pyramidal indenter with a tip radius of about 50 nanometers — millionths of a millimeter — across.
Measuring the asteroid samples' physical properties allowed scientists to better understand how an asteroid may behave during an impact with"The success of AIDA [the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment collaboration, of which DART is one component] and comparable asteroid deflection efforts depends on good knowledge of the physical properties of the object to be deflected," study co-author Josep M.
United States Latest News, United States Headlines
Similar News:You can also read news stories similar to this one that we have collected from other news sources.
Celebrate Pi Day 2022 with these epic NASA math challenges for March 14Student activities blend delicious science with a healthy dose of real-life NASA missions. Answers will be shared on 3/15.
Read more »
NASA Is Cracking Open a 50-Year-Old Vacuum-Sealed Tube of Lunar Gas And SoilThe Apollo missions to the Moon brought a total of 2,196 rock samples to Earth. But NASA has only just started opening one of the last ones, collected 50 years ago.
Read more »
The incredible story of how NASA moved the $10 billion James Webb TelescopeThe James Webb Space Telescope made it to space, and its final Lagrange 2 orbit. But the journey on Earth was comparably tenuous, stretching 5,800 miles.
Read more »
How to watch two NASA astronauts spacewalk on Tuesday | Digital TrendsThis week, two astronauts from the International Space Station (ISS) will be performing a spacewalk. Here's howtowatch along from home.
Read more »
Pi Day Challenge: Solve Math Problems With NASAHappy Pi day to all those who celebrate! 🍰 Find the four NASA puzzles here: PS. The answers come out on the 15th so get cracking!!
Read more »