NASA has hit a comet with an impactor, during the Deep Impact mission. The goal of that mission was to study the surface by making a crater and stirring up the surface material so it could be studied. — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
I think Dawn has done an amazing job showing that asteroids aren't just hunks of rock. They're worlds - they're places an astronaut can explore. I think the Rosetta mission also did an amazing job of that. — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
There are all these interesting rules about asteroid nomenclature. Once you discover it, you have the right to name it, but there's a catch. — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
NEOWISE needed a cryogen coolant to keep its sensors cool, and that ran out. — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
We've actually named asteroids for other famous women in history, like Rosa Parks, Harriet Tubman, and Sojourner Truth. But it's really this Malala one… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
An asteroid impact in the worst case scenario is a terrifying thing. It seems very uncontrollable: in popular culture, it's often a metaphor for… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
Back in the day, I've heard, particularly with the near-Earth asteroids, there were some asteroid hunters that knew the names of every one. — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
Certainly what happened to the dinosaurs was not good - that was a terrible day for the dinosaurs, very sad. But I have to… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
The best thing to do is to study these asteroids so we know the range of parameters we would have to deal with and… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
Changing the asteroid's velocity changes the time when the asteroid crosses Earth's orbit. After all, just because it crosses Earth's path doesn't mean there… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
One of the reasons NEOWISE is so valuable is that it sees the sky in the thermal infrared. That means that instead of seeing… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
I think the public perception about asteroids is that they're kind of metaphors for acts of God, the fact that we have no control… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
There are physical bodies, physical worlds that astronauts could visit, that we haven't found yet. Especially, there's these close approaches of asteroids. They pass… — Carrie Nugent Copy Share Image
