Nick Moskovitz News Today

Perseids meteor shower 2023: everything you need to know about the best and most popular meteor shower of the year, which peaks in the early hours of August 13, 2023.

NASA announced yesterday that a spacecraft which slammed into an asteroid in September successfully shifted its orbit. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny reports, Flagstaff astronomers are among those involved in the first-ever planetary defense test.

NASA will attempt to strike an asteroid with a heavy spacecraft today. It’s an unprecedented test to see if it’s possible to deflect dangerous asteroids away from Earth. Astronomers on the ground in Flagstaff are standing by to help determine if the experiment is a success. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with two of them, Cristina Thomas of Northern Arizona University and Nick Moskovitz of Lowell Observatory.

Using some of the world’s most powerful telescopes, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test investigation team has completed a six-night observation campaign to confirm earlier calculations of the orbit of Dimorphos

NASA has made its final orbital calculations for an asteroid it intends to knock off course using a US$300 million spaceship this month.

NASAs DART spacecraft is perfectly on track to smash into double asteroid Didymos as a new observation campaign confirmed orbital parameters of the space rock.

Astronomers say a regular meteor shower tonight may turn into a spectacular “meteor storm” with a thousand of shooting stars per hour or more. That’s due to a dense cloud of dust left by the breakup of a comet decades ago. KNAU’s Melissa Sevigny spoke with Lowell Observatory astronomer Nick Moskovitz about why the event could be a downpour of meteors…. or just a drizzle.