China · Pentagon · CIA · FBI · Engadget
Pentagon ships new batch of UFO files, China's Tianwen-2 reaches its asteroid target, and more science stories
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Catch up on the most interesting science news from the last week.
Key facts
- The China National Space Administration (CNSA) shared an image on Monday of asteroid 2016HO3 taken from 12.4 miles away (20 kilometers)
- Asteroid 2016HO3 is small, with a diameter estimated to be in the ballpark of 100 feet, though the observations by Tianwen-2 should allow for more precise measurements soon
- NASA transfers ownership of Maryland woodland to the US Fish and Wildlife Service
- This week also brought a new batch of declassified UFO files, and China's Tianwen-2 sent back its first image of the asteroid it'll attempt to collect a sample
Summary
A lot has happened in the last week, so here's a quick catch-up. Since the beginning of May, the US Department of Defense has been uploading files relating to unidentified anomalous (or aerial) phenomena (UAPs), aka UFOs, on a public database that you can freely comb through. There are scans of paper documents that contain firsthand accounts of sightings, in some cases with illustrations and photos, along with a slew of videos in the latest batch. Last spring, China launched a space probe on a mission to a near-Earth asteroid and back, and this week, the country announced the spacecraft Tianwen-2 has reached its target. China's upcoming attempt to grab material from the surface of an asteroid follows successful sample return missions by the US and Japan in recent years, which have yielded insights into the conditions that existed in the early solar system.