Mission Cup 2021: Psyche

For Mission Cup 2020, I nominated the planned NASA orbiter mission, Psyche. This exciting mission will visit the M-type (meaning that they are predominantly made of iron-nickel metal rather than silicate rock) asteroid, 16 Psyche, and is due to launch … Continue reading →

Mission Cup 2021 Semi Finalist: Hayabusa2- To Ryugu and Back

Hayabusa2 is a Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) led mission to study and sample asteroid 162173 Ryugu. As a primitive carbonaceous asteroid, investigations of Ryugu could address some important questions surrounding the very origins of our Solar System and how … Continue reading →

Mission Cup 2021 Semi Finalist: OSIRIS-REx – TAG You’re It

The Mission: NASA’s OSIRIS-REx mission was launched on the 8th of September 2016, with its target being the near-Earth asteroid Bennu. It’s the first U.S. asteroid sample return mission and is due to return to Earth in 2023 with primitive asteroid … Continue reading →

New group paper about ‘Miller Range 11100 Meteorite: a Piece of Asteroid Vesta’

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The following blog post has been written by Tim Gregory, who is undertaking a PhD at the University of Bristol. Tim is a recent graduate of our MSci Geology with Planetary Science degree programme, and his new paper, just published in … Continue reading →

Visit to the Ries impact crater in Germany

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You may have seen the recent news about the near-Earth flyby of a 2.7 km asteroid. Fortunately the rock missed collision with the Earth, and continued its journey around the Solar System. However, in the past Earth has not been … Continue reading →

Weekly News Round-up 11.04.13

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Hello readers! Welcome to this week’s news round-up. We’ve had a very exciting week here in Manchester, including receiving a variety of new and interesting samples. Sadly, the spectrometers are still not working completely but we are several steps closer to getting … Continue reading →

I’ve just seen something in the sky! What do I call it?!

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A Quick and Easy Guide to Naming Your Near Earth Object Sighting! Many of the recent Russian meteorite related comments being banded round by the media and things like twitter that are just plain wrong, I though I’d post a … Continue reading →

Weekly News Round-up 15.02.13

Good morning! Its been yet another busy week in the lab here in Manchester. I’ve been zapping pieces of pyroxene from the Allegan and Dhofar 125 meteorites with my laser, and getting lovely I-Xe isochrons from them. Anyway, here are … Continue reading →

Dawn at Vesta

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As dawn is breaking on the UK tomorrow the Dawn spacecraft will have begun its year-long orbit of the asteroid Vesta. Data will start being gathered in August. Dawn is a ground-breaking mission, the first to orbit a main-belt asteroid … Continue reading →