Geological evidence found in Ohio and Indiana in recent weeks is strengthening the case to attribute what happened 12,900 years ago in North America -- when the end of the last Ice Age unexpectedly turned into a phase of extinction for animals and humans – to a cataclysmic comet or asteroid explosion over top of Canada.

Nuclear explosive devices are the most effective means of protecting Earth from possible collisions with space bodies, including comets and asteroids, a Russian nuclear physicist told RIA Novosti on Tuesday.

A new mass spectrometry test can help sports anti-drug doping officials to detect whether an athlete has used drugs that boost naturally occurring steroid levels. The test is more sensitive compared to previous alternatives, more capable of revealing specific suspicious chemical in the body, faster to perform, and could be run on standard drug-screening laboratory equipment.

An Asteroid Deflection Research Center (ADRC) has been established on the Iowa State campus to bring researchers from around the world to develop asteroid deflection technologies. The center was signed into effect in April by the Office of the Executive Vice President and Provost.

Using visible and infrared data collected from telescopes on Hawaii’s Mauna Kea, a team of scientists, led by the University of Maryland’s Jessica Sunshine, have identified three asteroids that appear to be among our Solar System’s oldest objects.

The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico will observe a newly discovered asteroid on Jan. 27-28, as the object called 2007 TU24 passes within 1.4 lunar distances, or 334,000 miles, from Earth.

An asteroid could hit the planet Mars by the end of next month.

In research that could aid decisions about future asteroids on a collision course with Earth, MIT scientists have for the first time determined the composition of a near-Earth asteroid that has a very slight possibility of someday hitting our planet.

The US space agency NASA is going to extraordinary lengths to find out more about the history of the solar system. The Dawn spacecraft was launched this morning on a 5 billion kilometre journey to the asteroid zone between Mars and Jupiter, and if all goes well it will enter the orbit of the asteroid Vesta in 2011.

Every now and then a space rock hits the world's media – sometimes almost literally. Threatening asteroids that zoom past the Earth, fireballs in the sky seen by hundreds of people and mysterious craters which may have been caused by impacting meteorites; all make ESA's activities in this field, including the Don Quijote study, look increasingly timely.

The space-borne infrared observatory AKARI, observed asteroid Itokawa last month with its Infrared Camera. The data will be used to refine estimates of sizes of potentially hazardous asteroids in the future.

Dawn’s asteroid mission to Vesta and Ceres is delayed. The spacecraft launch now is scheduled for September.