Beware of Asteroids

Jeannette · Mar 9, 2013

Here's a nice graph of asteroids that will buzz the earth. The largest will be in 2027, the next in size will be 2028, and the next large one in 2029. Scary huh?

http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20130215/179484941/Asteroids-That-Buzz-Planet-Earth.html

Doug_yvr · Mar 9, 2013

And those are only the ones they know of.

Bishadi · Mar 10, 2013

Jeannette said: ↑

Here's a nice graph of asteroids that will buzz the earth. The largest will be in 2027, the next in size will be 2028, and the next large one in 2029. Scary huh?

http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20130215/179484941/Asteroids-That-Buzz-Planet-Earth.html
Click to expand...

cool

at least you know what's in 'heaven'

waltky · Apr 7, 2013

Granny says fling it back at dem space aliens dat's been chuckin' dem asteroids at us...

NASA to capture asteroid for astronauts to explore
Sun, Apr 07, 2013 - IN THE BAG: The US space agency says that exploring the asteroid would speed up its mission to put a man on Mars and help develop a way to stop future collisions

NASA is planning for a robotic spaceship to capture a small asteroid and park it near the moon for astronauts to explore, Senator Bill Nelson said on Friday. The plan would speed up by four years the existing mission to land astronauts on an asteroid by bringing the space rock closer to Earth, Nelson said. The robotic ship would capture the 500 tonne, 7.6m asteroid in 2019. Using an Orion space capsule currently being developed a crew of about four astronauts would nuzzle up next to the rock in 2021 for a spacewalking exploration, a government document obtained by media showed. Nelson said this would help NASA develop the capability to nudge away a dangerous asteroid if one headed to Earth in the future. It also would be training for a future mission to send astronauts to Mars in the 2030s, he said.

Nelson, chairman of the Senate Subcommittee on Science and Space, said US President Barack Obama is putting US$100 million in planning money for the accelerated asteroid mission in next years budget, which comes out next week. The money would be used to find the right small asteroid. It really is a clever concept, Nelson said in a news conference in Florida, the state where NASA launches take place. Go find your ideal candidate for an asteroid. Go get it robotically and bring it back. While there are thousands of asteroids that size out there, finding the right one that comes by Earth at just the right time to be captured will not be easy, said Donald Yeomans, who heads NASAs Near Earth Object program, which monitors close-by asteroids.

He said that once a suitable rock is found, it would be captured with the space equivalent of a baggie with a drawstring. You bag it. You attach the solar propulsion module to de-spin it and bring it back to where you want it. Yeomans said that an asteroid of that size is no threat to Earth because it would burn up should it inadvertently enter Earths atmosphere. The mission as Nelson described is perfectly safe, he said. The US government document said the mission, with no price tag at the moment, would be inspirational because it will send humans farther than they have ever been before.

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/world/archives/2013/04/07/2003559035
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waltky · May 5, 2013

Granny says one o' these days one o' dem asteroids is gonna knock us all catty-whompus off the earth's axis...

Scientists Advance Asteroid Detection, Deflection, Detonation Research
May 02, 2013 - Amateur and professional skywatchers all over the world send observations to the Minor Planet Center, which collects information about near-Earth objects. The clearinghouse is just one way people are working to protect us from asteroid strikes. Scientists also are developing innovative ways to detect, deflect and possibly destroy dangerous asteroids in Earth's neighborhood.

Asteroid Alert

It sounds like something out of a Hollywood blockbuster. But it's real, and, it's getting $5 million from the U.S. space agency. The Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Last Alert System - ATLAS for short - is being developed with NASA support by a team of astronomers at the University of Hawaii. As the name implies, their goal is to find asteroids that are just about to make their final plunge and strike our planet.

A simulation of asteroid 2012 DA14 approaching from the south as it passes through the Earth-moon system

ATLAS is envisioned as a network of as many as eight ground-based telescopes, armed with cameras, that would scan the visible sky twice each night. The aim is for ATLAS to provide at least a day's warning for an asteroid that could wipe out a town, a week for one that could devastate a city, or three weeks' notice for one that could wipe out a larger area. "We really aren't going to be able to deflect these asteroids as they're coming in on their last plunge. There's just no chance of that," said astronomer John Tonry, who leads the ATLAS project. "The thing that we can do is provide warning, and the thing that is remarkable about the warning we can provide for asteroid impact is that it's not like hurricanes or tsunamis or earthquakes. It's really accurate. We can say exactly where and when this thing is going to come down."

Detection

ATLAS is designed for a shallow and wide search of the sky, which Tonry says would complement other projects that are searching deep into narrow slivers of sky to find objects still decades away. The system would be sensitive enough to spot a match flame from across the United States. Tonry says there would be a better-than-50/50 chance of providing a day's warning for an object like the meteor that exploded over Russia in February, if copies of ATLAS were spread around the world. "What we really want to do is get diversity around the planet," he said. "Hawaii can't see the southern sky, and if we really want to cover the whole sky, we need to get units in the southern hemisphere, like Australia or Chile or South Africa."

Space-Based Sentinel

Other scientists focus on space-based assets that aren't hindered by Earth's weather conditions, atmosphere or bright skies. A former NASA astronaut, Ed Lu, heads a non-profit organization called the B612 Foundation. Earlier this year, he told lawmakers about efforts to privately raise $450 million to build and operate an infrared space telescope called Sentinel. Lu says the goal is planetary defense. "As Sentinel moves around the Sun, faster than the Earth does, it will scan Earth's orbit, so it's going to find about 100-times more asteroids than all other telescopes combined," he said.

Deflection and Detonation
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waltky · May 6, 2013

Granny says dey's the Lord's weapons o' destruction like it says in Isa. 13.5...

NASA Explores Technology to Face Asteroid Danger
May 01, 2013 WASHINGTON Asteroids - those millions of chunks of space rock, large and small, that drift and spin across our solar system - hold promise for space explorers even as they pose a threat to us on Earth.

When NASA Administrator Charles Bolden discussed the U.S. space agency's proposed 2014 budget with lawmakers in late April, he highlighted a new mission - a plan to capture an asteroid in deep space and bring it to the vicinity of the moon, where astronauts could later explore it. "We are developing a process or technology that will come forward in the asteroid retrieval mission that will demonstrate that humans can, in fact, alter the path of an asteroid that's headed toward Earth," he said. A key part of the planned mission, Bolden underscored, is to show that an asteroid's path can be diverted.

Robotics and advanced SEP technologies like this artist's concept of an SEP-based spacecraft could one day find, rendezvous with, capture and relocate an asteroid to a stable point in the lunar vicinity.

Asteroid Threats

Earlier this year, a small meteor unexpectedly exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and produced a shockwave that shattered thousands of windows and injured more than 1,000 people. The same day, a well-tracked, 45-meter-wide asteroid called 2012 DA14 whizzed safely past Earth, closer than our geosynchronous satellites. It was a record close approach for something that size. Experts say asteroids larger than 100 meters across strike the Earth's surface, on average, about once every 10,000 years, and there are no records of an asteroid killing anyone in modern history.

John Holdren, the U.S. president's assistant for science and technology, discussed asteroid threats at a hearing on Capitol Hill in March. He told lawmakers that given the rarity of large asteroid impacts, the potential loss of human life from such an event works out to fewer than 100 people per year, which he compared to 5 million deaths each year from tobacco. "It doesn't look like a very big threat," Holdren said. "But, of course, that is not really a meaningful way to present a risk of this character, where you're talking about a low probability of a very big disaster, and in those sorts of situations, we tend to invest in insurance to reduce the likelihood of a disaster we would regard as intolerable."

Insurance, of course, was not an option for dinosaurs, which are believed to have been killed off 65 million years ago after a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid crashed into the Earth. Holdren says an asteroid even a fraction of that size could undo life as we know it. "A one-kilometer asteroid would be carrying energy in the range of tens of millions of megatons. That is as much or more energy as was in the combined arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War," he said. "An asteroid of that size, a kilometer or bigger, could plausibly end civilization."

Tracking Asteroids
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waltky · May 17, 2013

Uncle Ferd says, "Yea - an' dey thought dat one dat hit Russia was gonna be a fly-by...

Dark, massive asteroid to fly by Earth on May 31
May 17, 2013, It's 1.7 miles long. Its surface is covered in a sticky black substance similar to the gunk at the bottom of a barbecue. If it impacted Earth it would probably result in global extinction. Good thing it is just making a flyby.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 will make its closest pass to Earth on May 31 at 1:59 p.m. PDT. Scientists are not sure where this unusually large space rock, which was discovered 15 years ago, originated from. But the mysterious sooty substance on its surface could indicate it may be the result of a comet that flew too close to the sun, said Amy Mainzer, who tracks near-Earth objects at Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Cañada Flintridge. It might also have leaked out of the asteroid belt between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, she said.

We will know more after the asteroid zips closer to Earth and scientists using the Deep Space Network antenna in Goldstone, Calif., and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico can get a better look at it. Astronomers at both observatories plan to track it closely from May 30 to June 9, according to a JPL release.

The orbit of asteroid 1998 QE2.

At its closest approach the asteroid will still be 3.6 million miles from our planet (about 15 times the distance between the Earth and the moon), but it will be close enough for these powerful radar antennas to see features as small as 12 feet across. "With radar we can transform an object from a point of light into a small world with its own characteristics," Lance Benner, JPL's principal investigator for Goldstone radar observations, said in a statement. There is no chance that asteroid 1998 QE2 could collide with Earth this go-around, and its next close approach won't be until 2119.

Still, Mainzer said the size of the asteroid, and its potential for mass destruction, should remind us that there are some scary things flying around in space. "This is a really big asteroid, similar in size to the one that killed off the dinosaurs, and it's getting very close to us," she said. "Fortunately we've been tracking its orbit very carefully so we know with great certainty it won't hit us. "We don't need to panic, but we do need to pay attention," she said.

Source
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waltky · Aug 1, 2013

WISE telescope to be used to find asteroids...

Mothballed NASA telescope may get new life as asteroid hunter
1 Aug.`13 - NASA is considering re-activating a mothballed space telescope to help find asteroids that could be on a collision course with Earth, according to a senior U.S. space agency official.

Launched in December 2009, the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE, telescope spent about a year taking pictures for an all-sky map. With its infrared detectors, WISE was able to peer through thick layers of dust and see even relatively dim objects such as cool brown dwarf stars in great detail. NASA then put WISE to work on another mission looking for asteroids and comets in the solar system. Of particular interest were objects in orbits that pass relatively close to Earth. WISE found about 150 near-Earth asteroids, including 20 that were potentially hazardous, before funding for the project ran out. The telescope was put into hibernation in February 2011.

NASA is now reviewing options for enhancing its asteroid-hunting efforts including bringing WISE out of hibernation, Lindley Johnson, who oversees the agency's Near-Earth Objects observations program, said this week. This follows February's explosion of a small asteroid in the skies above Russia and the near-Earth passage of a larger one the same day. More than 1,500 people were hurt by flying glass and debris after that small asteroid exploded above Chelyabinsk, Russia. The larger asteroid then zipped past Earth closer than the networks of communication satellites that ring the planet. Together, those events served as a celestial alarm clock, prompting congressional hearings and fresh calls for NASA and other agencies to step up asteroid detection initiatives.

NASA says it already has found about 95 percent of the asteroids that are .62 miles or larger in diameter. "If an object of that size were to impact the Earth, it would have global consequences," Lindley said during a NASA advisory committee meeting in Washington. "One as much as 100 meters (328 feet) in size would have regional effects and could cause a great many casualties." The Obama administration has requested funding from Congress to double NASA's $20 million Near-Earth Objects detection programs for the 2014 fiscal year beginning October 1. Costs for WISE's potential re-activation and operation were not released, but Johnson said it may be possible within the program's current $20 million annual budget and would easily fit within the proposed $40 million spending plan.

NASA's human exploration program also has been developing an initiative to send a robotic spacecraft to a small nearby asteroid and redirect it into a high orbit around the moon, officials said. Astronauts would then visit the asteroid as part of an initial foray to send humans beyond the International Space Station, which flies about 250 miles above Earth. Another $85 million in Obama's $17.7 billion 2014 spending plan for NASA would start technology developments and planning for the robotic portion of the asteroid encounter. NASA is about halfway through a 15-year effort to find 90 percent of all near-Earth objects that are as small as about 459 feet in diameter. Scientists say one of the quickest ways to speed up the effort is to re-activate WISE. "We think it can be operated for three years and get much more data," Johnson said. Time is of the essence as WISE is expected to slip from its optimal viewing orbit around Earth by early 2017.

http://news.yahoo.com/mothballed-nasa-telescope-may-life-asteroid-hunter-004529922.html
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OldManOnFire · Aug 2, 2013

Jeannette said: ↑

Here's a nice graph of asteroids that will buzz the earth. The largest will be in 2027, the next in size will be 2028, and the next large one in 2029. Scary huh?

http://en.rian.ru/infographics/20130215/179484941/Asteroids-That-Buzz-Planet-Earth.html
Click to expand...

What are our options? Let them strike Earth...nudge them into an orbit that misses Earth...break them into a billion smaller pieces and deal with smaller impacts?

If we create the capability to 'nudge' them into another orbit how do we know we didn't just create a death sentence for another celestial body?

I'm guessing we don't possess the capability to break them into pieces or nudge them?? So this brings us back to option 1; they will strike Earth.

IMO these and other potential events simply point out how insignificant Earthlings are in the grand scheme of things.

Lastly, it's interesting how the collective we sensationalize asteroid events yet we have 10,000 or whatever number of nuclear devices laying around...

Alfalfa · Aug 2, 2013

What is your the definition of "buzz" 15 million miles?

DarkDaimon · Aug 2, 2013

Alfalfa said: ↑

What is your the definition of "buzz" 15 million miles?
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As Einstein said at his family reunion, "it's all relative!".

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Beware of Asteroids

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