Content tagged "ESA".
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On April 13, 2029, asteroid Apophis will skim past Earth at just 32,000 km — closer than geostationary satellites. During this once-in-10,000-year flyby, Earth's gravity will physically reshape the rock in real time. ESA and JAXA's Ramses mission will be there to document it.
In 2022, NASA slammed a spacecraft into the asteroid Dimorphos and changed its orbit — the first time humanity had ever deflected a space rock. Now ESA's Hera mission is heading there to examine the aftermath. Here's how far planetary defense has come.
BepiColombo, the joint ESA–JAXA mission launched in 2018, will finally enter Mercury's orbit in November 2026. Why does the journey take so long, and what makes Mercury such a puzzling world?
Discovered in 2025, 3I/ATLAS is only the third interstellar object ever detected. How do we know it came from outside the solar system? What makes it different from ʻOumuamua and 2I/Borisov? And why did ESA and NASA scramble to observe it so quickly? Here's what the data is telling us — and what it might unlock about planet formation across the galaxy.