A small asteroid roughly the size of a house slipped past Earth on the night of May 18, 2026, passing closer than the Moon and threading through a region of space occupied by some of the satellites that keep GPS systems and communications networks running.

A massive airplane-sized asteroid named (2026 JP1) is set to fly past Earth on May 20, 2026. Scientists say it is safe, but is this close approach a problem? Know here.

Asteroid mining seems simple in theory. A spacecraft flies up to a giant rock in space, scoops out some material, and either processes it on site or returns it back to a huge central processing facility.

Plotting the optimal trajectory to visit multiple asteroids is a fiendishly difficult take on the Traveling Salesperson problem, but a new mathematical approach has succeeded in solving it.

See multiple views from the Hayabusa2 spacecraft's touching down on asteroid 162173 Ryugu. Credit: JAXA/U. Tokyo/Kochi U./Rikkyo U./Nagoya U./Chiba Inst. Tech./Meiji U./U. Aizu/AIST

A team of researchers has unveiled a groundbreaking mathematical method that could dramatically improve how spacecraft visit multiple moving celestial bodies, a problem that has long puzzled mission planners.

A famously unlucky date is getting a cosmic twist. NASA says the asteroid Apophis will safely pass close to Earth on Friday, April 13, 2029, coming about 20,000 miles from the planet's surface. That is closer than many satellites in geosynchronous orbit,