With all the recent buzz over asteroid AD14, the meteor over Chelyabinsk, the fragments of meteorite recovered in Russia's Ural mountains, and yesterday's news that the fireball originated from our solar system's asteroid belt, one can't help but wonder: what's the difference between all these -oids, -ors and -ites?…

Over a hundred people are injured after a meteor or meteors reportedly exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia this morning. Although there are no confirmed deaths, the full extent of the situation is still being assessed.

On February 15, asteroid 2012 DA14 is scheduled to pay us a visit. The 150 foot (45 meter) rock has no chance of hitting us — but it'll be the closest approach that's ever been observed by astronomers.

On December 12, the three-mile-long (4.8 km) asteroid Toutatis came within 4.3 million miles (6.9 million km) of Earth — which is about 18 lunar distances. During the flyby, NASA used its 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, to generate a series of radar data images — which…

A 15 kilometer wide asteroid is headed toward the Earth, but NASA scientists spot it three years before impact. Movie lore not withstanding, what the hell are we supposed to do? Could we even organize the global community enough to stop this flaming ball that astronomers call a near-Earth object (NEO)? Let's find out. …

Many of you have probably heard about asteroid 2005 YU55, the massive rocky body that tomorrow night will collide with Earth in a ball of flames pass the planet safely, albeit closer than any asteroid in the last 35 years.

NASA recently repurposed a satellite called WISE that had completed its mission with all instruments intact and quite a bit of fuel. Renaming the mission NEOWISE, the space agency gave the satellite a new job: map the entire volume of space in the vicinity of Earth's orbit around the sun, looking for every possible…

Designer Zachary Vabolis has catalogued 17 asteroids over 1000 meters that have skimmed by Earth or will in the near future. Who's coming by next? The 32,000-meter 1036 Ganymed, which whizzes by on October 13, 2011.

The goal is to get humans to Mars by the mid-2030s, but what are the stepping stones that will get us there? Returning to the Moon gets a lot of publicity, but the better test might be a near-Earth asteroid.