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Got any retirement plans? Sure you do — unfortunately, a 360-yard-wide rock named 99942 Apophis could put a damper on your Centrum Silver years.
That’s because in 2029, the asteroid will zip by Earth at a hair-raising 18,640 miles away — closer than most communications satellites holding orbit above our planet. And, depending on exactly where it passes us, there will be a 1-in-5,500 chance that it will strike the Earth’s surface in 2036.
And, based on the rock’s size, a direct hit would vaporize an area the size of New York City and its surrounding regions.
Ya we know it can do a great amount of damage due to its size but the chances are not all that great for hitting the earth. I am more concerned that Nasa is trimming other missions that are nearly ready to launch like Dawn and the amount that they are deffering is not all that great.
A scouting mission to the asteroid would cost NASA a few hundred million dollars out of its massive $14 billion budget.
Scout missions much like the econo mission of Dawn are meant to be cheap but is that really the right way to go. It seems that Nasa has a lot of tough decisions to make as of late in order to be able to meet the goals of the vision.
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Future thoughts have always revolved around trying to glow up such space rocks but now there are efforts under way to try and use gravitation attraction to tow it out of the way.
Here are a number of links each has differing info contained in each.
Gravity-Powered Asteroid Tractor Proposed to Thwart Impact
'Gravity tractor' to deflect Earth-bound asteroids
[url=http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-7.html]Gravity tractors beat bombs
Any threatening asteroids just need a nudge, say astronauts.[/url]
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Future thoughts have always revolved around trying to glow up such space rocks but now there are efforts under way to try and use gravitation attraction to tow it out of the way.
Here are a number of links each has differing info contained in each.
Gravity-Powered Asteroid Tractor Proposed to Thwart Impact
'Gravity tractor' to deflect Earth-bound asteroids
[url=http://www.nature.com/news/2005/051107/full/051107-7.html]Gravity tractors beat bombs
Any threatening asteroids just need a nudge, say astronauts.[/url]
From your second link:
Hands down winner
Lu’s team finally realised that the spacecraft might not need to land at all. Placing a heavy enough object near the asteroid for long enough could produce sufficient gravitational tug to change its orbit.
For a 200-metre-wide asteroid, the spacecraft would need to weigh about 20 tonnes and lurk 50 metres from its target for about a year to change its velocity enough to knock it off course.
"This is hands down the best idea I have seen," says Erik Asphaug, a planetary scientist at the University of California at Santa Cruz. "This will work, but you need to put a large enough spacecraft out there at the right time."
Taking the hit
Such large spacecraft are perfectly feasible, says Lu. In fact, NASA’s multi-billion-dollar Prometheus programme, which was set to explore the outer solar system but which has been delayed, planned to develop just such a vehicle, propelled by nuclear fission.
The strategy crucially relies on our ability to detect an asteroid threat about 20 years in advance. For larger asteroids this is realistic. But Asphaug says many smaller asteroids – less than about 500 metres across – may go unnoticed until only a few years before impact.
Asphaug suggests it may be better to invest in predicting when and where smaller asteroids could strike, than on massive hazard-averting spacecraft. Governments could then prepare to evacuate affected regions. "In many cases it makes more economic sense to just let the thing hit," he says
Journal reference: Nature (vol 438, p 177)
I wonder if this could be used as a case for putting funding back into JIMO.
Dig into the [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/2006/12/political-grab-bag.html]political grab bag[/url] at [url=http://child-civilization.blogspot.com/]Child Civilization[/url]
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Asteroid Probe Yields Insight For Planetary Defense
Following roughly two months of notable operations at asteroid Itokawa, Japan’s Hayabusa probe is damaged goods. Hindered by thruster and gyroscope breakdowns, the spacecraft is under makeshift attitude control with engineers hoping to finesse the craft onto a homeward-bound trajectory back to Earth.
On Wednesday, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA), announced that the troubled spacecraft would not begin its return flight back to Earth for at least another three years, owing to critical system failures including a fuel leak.
Earlier in the thread ideas of a tracking of the potential target asteriod was mentioned and as one can see. Any such missions probe must be very robust in order to survive.
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Russia Can Repel Asteroids To Save Earth: Official “if necessary,” deputy head of the Russian space agency Viktor Remishevsky said Oct. 24
rocket-manufacturing complex can create the means in space to repulse asteroids threatening Earth,”
Great if true but with a grain of salt is this just empty bosting..
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Apophis 370 metres (1,210 feet) smaller than Benus diameter of 490 m (1,610 ft; 0.30 mi)
Dimorphos 170 metres (560 ft) recently hit by NASA's DART, the minor-planet moon of the asteroid Didymos
Smacked asteroid's debris trail more than 6,000 miles long
https://apnews.com/article/astronomy-sc … a19623adba
GW's comments
This is the disruption scenario that I have been warning about. If Dimorphos was "destroyed", or even just "severely redistributed", what you are looking at for asteroid deflection purposes is converting a single bullet strike into a shotgun blast, which is way more damaging if done too close to Earth.
You have to do this so far out that much of the debris cloud misses the Earth because of spreading. That is a severe constraint upon when it is that you actually have to act, if you should detect one of these things on a collision course. The track record on that detection, is poor at best. So far.
I posted about this on my "exrocketman" site a long time ago. Multiple times, actually, but the most recent is "Asteroid Threats", dated 30 August 2020. If you go to the site, use the navigation tool on the left side of the page. Click on the year, then the month, then the title.
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