There are so many asteroids. Just in our own backyard, we've found over 30,000 Near Earth asteroids. Exploring them using traditional methods and launching a custom-made mission, like Hayabusa or OSIRIS-REx, would almost certainly be cost-prohibitive. So how can we assess whether they would make good targets for early asteroid mining missions? Ground imaging can help, but there's nothing like being on-site on one of these asteroids to get a sense of what they are made of. Those visits would be much easier if we mass-produced the Asteroid Mobile Imager and Geologic Observer (AMIGO).

AMIGO is a concept developed at the University of Arizona. It is a standard design that fits into a 1U CubeSat package of 10 x 10 x 10 cm and carries an array of scientific equipment with it. These include a magnetometer, an electric field sensor, a microscope, a laser range finder, an inertial measurement unit (IMU), and, of course, a camera.

If you have ever seen a shooting star on a clear night, surely someone has invited you to make a wish. Nevertheless, this is a natural phenomenon without any magical connotation—beyond its great beauty, of course.

What is a shooting star, really? Where do these glowing, moving bodies come from? How and when can we observe this astronomical phenomenon?

Meteor shower or shooting stars?

Although we popularly call them shooting stars, they are not really stars but glowing dust particles. To understand why, it is a good idea to first distinguish between a meteoroid, meteor, and meteorite.

The word "meteor" refers to the astronomical phenomenon that occurs when one or more particles of matter (meteoroids) enter the atmosphere at high speed. These meteoroids, which are usually very small (between a tenth of a millimeter and a few centimeters in size), are fragments of dust, ice, or rock that wander through space.