Jupiter and Saturn helped to produce where we live.
Our home planet was formed after a period of chaos in the solar system
Today our solar system is a pretty calm place. However, meteorites we find on Earth as well as the cratering we observe on our Moon, Mercury, Mars, and other bodies suggest that our solar system was born wild and stayed that way for a while. There is also the puzzling fact that our sparsely packed inner solar system is very different from the densely packed, close in, planetary systems which have formed about nearby stars.

Traveling an additional billion miles beyond Pluto, the New Horizons spacecraft is now sending back data on 2014 MU69, a strange snow man shaped object which orbits the Sun once every 298 years. The New Horizons is spacecraft is likely to continue its lonely odyssey until the end of time.

Rocky metallic asteroid can stand the heat.
A block and a half sized asteroid makes visits to Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter.

In our Milky Way Galaxy alone there are probably 25 billion planets located within the habitable zone of its star where there could be air to breathe and liquid water on its surface. The search is on for advanced civilizations .

What happens when an asteroid is heading in our direction.
A close approaching asteroid was observed as it passed between the Earth and our Moon.

Without followup data, many if not most of the Earth approaching objects would be lost as they move away from us leaving us with no idea when they might return to near Earth space or perhaps even strike our home planet.

My Catalina Sky Survey teammates have discovered an asteroid which could be a potential mining target. Mining asteroids may be a much cheaper way to get the raw materials that space colonists need when compared to the cost of lugging supplies up from the surface of our planet. Using the abundant solar energy in space, water ice from asteroids can be turned into hydrogen and oxygen which is ideal rocket fuel. The metals which many asteroids contain can be turned into the items space explorers need.

A small telescope makes a substantial contribution to our knowledge of the celestial visitors to our neighborhood

By drilling into a crater rim, researchers hope to discover how the Earth and it's life forms recovered from an asteroid impact.

On a recent training night with Teddy Pruyne at the controls of our 60 inch telescope on Mt. Lemmon, Arizona, this duo discovered six new Earth Approaching Objects, an inner main belt asteroid, and rediscovered an inner main belt asteroid which had been lost.