MYSTERIES BEYOND EARTH

  An asteroid that is wider than the tallest building in the world is set to make one of its closest encounters with Earth. NASA projects that the asteroid, named 7482 (1994 PC1), will fly by on Tuesday.  The asteroid is estimated to measure at roughly 1 kilometer, or more than 3,280 feet, across — a size that is more than twice the height of New York's Empire State Building, which is 1,454 feet from base to antenna, and hundreds of feet more than Dubai's Burj Khalifa, the world's tallest building, which is 2,716.5 feet tall.  NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory believes that the space body could come within 1,231,184 miles of Earth. This would be the closest the asteroid has come to Earth since January 17, 1933, when NASA projected it came within less than 700,000 miles of the planet.  It's also anticipated that the asteroid will pass by Earth again in July this year, though at a far greater distance, NASA said. The next time it is anticipated to fly by Earth at such ...

  Australian company joins global effort to recycle dangerous space debris An Australian company is part of an international effort to recycle dangerous space junk into rocket fuel – in space. The orbit our planet depends on is getting clogged with debris from old spacecraft. Dead satellites and spent rocket parts are whizzing around at speeds of up to 28,000 kilometres an hour, posing a threat to communications satellites and the International  Space  Station. At those speeds, even a small screw or a  fleck of paint  poses a risk to facilities such as the ISS, as well as the humans in them. ‘A wild west out there’: Russian satellite debris worsens space junk problem Read more Last weekend, Russia fired a missile and  destroyed one of its own satellites , sending debris flying. The United States said that debris now “threatens the interests of all nations”. The worst-case scenario is cascading collisions between smaller and smaller bits of space junk until ...

Update for 6:20 am ET:  The Beaver Moon partial lunar eclipse has ended. Our  wrap story with videos is here . You can check out  amazing photos of the Beaver Moon lunar eclipse in our gallery . You can watch an ultra-long lunar eclipse online in the wee hours of Friday (Nov. 19) from one of several websites. The so-called  Beaver Moon lunar eclipse  will start at  1:02 a.m. EST (0602 GMT) , and the moon will be 97% covered by Earth's shadow at its peak. The eclipse will end at  6:03 a.m. EST (1203 GMT) . While the event will be visible from North and South America, Australia, and parts of Europe and Asia, you can also catch it online if you are clouded out. If you do have good weather, our guide on  how to photograph a lunar eclipse , as well as  how to photograph the moon  with a camera in general, can help you make the most of the event. If you need imaging gear, check out our  best cameras for astrophotography  and  be...

  Sierra Space, the subsidiary of private aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, raised $1.4 billion in new capital. The company’s valuation jumped to $4.5 billion following the raise, with investors including General Atlantic, Coatue, and Moore Strategic Ventures, as well as the funds of private equity firms BlackRock and AE Industrial Partners. Sierra Space has two major projects in development: The Dream Chaser spaceplane and the Orbital Reef space station, the latter which it partnered with Jeff Bezos’ Blue Origin to build. Sierra Space, the subsidiary of private aerospace contractor Sierra Nevada Corporation, raised $1.4 billion as the company expands its portfolio of space transportation products. The company’s valuation jumped to $4.5 billion following the raise, with investors including General Atlantic, Coatue, and Moore Strategic Ventures, as well as the private equity funds of BlackRock and AE Industrial Partners. Sierra Space has two major projects in developme...

  The new TOLIMAN space telescope could launch in the mid-2020s. A new space telescope mission unveiled today (Nov. 16) will look for habitable planets in the Alpha Centauri system, our sun's closest stellar neighbors.  The new mission, called TOLIMAN after an ancient Arabic-derived name for  Alpha Centauri , will carry a novel telescope fitted with a so-called diffractive pupil lens that spreads starlight into a flowerlike pattern. This unique lens will make it easier for astronomers using the scope to detect tiny irregularities in a stars' movements that are usually caused by the gravitational influence of orbiting planets, according to  a statement  by Breakthrough Initiatives, which is backing the mission. "Even for the very nearest bright stars in the night sky, finding planets is a huge technological challenge," Eduardo Bendek, an optical engineer at NASA's  Jet Propulsion Laboratory , a collaborator on the mission, said in the statement.  "Our T...