What would we do if we spotted a hazardous asteroid on a collision course with Earth? Could we deflect it safely to prevent the impact?

Last year, NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission tried to find out whether a "kinetic impactor" could do the job: smashing a 600kg spacecraft the size of a fridge into an asteroid the size of an Aussie Rules football field.

Early results from this first real-world test of our potential planetary defense systems looked promising. However, it's only now that the first scientific results are being published: five papers in Nature have recreated the impact, and analyzed how it changed the asteroid's momentum and orbit, while twostudies investigate the debris knocked off by the impact.

The conclusion: "kinetic impactor technology is a viable technique to potentially defend Earth if necessary".

We have long been fascinated with the idea of alien life. The earliest written record presenting the idea of "aliens" is seen in the satiric work of Assyrian writer Lucian of Samosata dated to 200 AD.

In one novel, Lucian writes of a journey to the Moon and the bizarre life he imagines living there—everything from three-headed vultures to fleas the size of elephants.

Now, 2,000 years later, we still write stories of epic adventures beyond Earth to meet otherworldly beings (Hitchhiker's Guide, anyone?). Stories like these entertain and inspire, and we are forever trying to find out if science fiction will become science fact.

Not all alien life is the same

When looking for life beyond Earth, we are faced with two possibilities. We might find basic microbial life hiding somewhere in our Solar System; or we will identify signals from intelligent life somewhere far away.

Unlike in Star Wars, we're not talking far, far away in another galaxy, but rather around other nearby stars. It is this second possibility which really excites me, and should excite you too.

The failed launch of a Vega-C European rocket in French Guiana last December was due to the deterioration of a key engine component that resulted in a rapid loss of boosting power, European Space Agency officials said Friday.

The launching from the Kourou space port would have been the first commercial launch for the Vega-C and presented a new option for European space payloads after numerous delays to the next-generation Ariane 6 rocket and cancelled Russian cooperation over the Ukraine war.

But shortly after lift-off on December 21 with a payload of two observation satellites, the rocket deviated from its programmed trajectory and communications were lost, forcing officials to destroy it over the Atlantic Ocean.

An ESA investigative panel found that pressure in the Zefiro 40 motor, made by Italy's Avio, had started falling during the second stage of lift-off, the commission's co-president Pierre-Yves Tissier told journalists.

At three minutes 27 seconds after the launch, "the rocket's acceleration had fallen almost to zero," he said.

Investigators determined that a nozzle neck supposed to ensure constant combustion pressure in the motor had failed to resist the enormous pressure and temperatures reaching 3,000 degrees Celsius (5,432 degrees Fahrenheit).