Posts tagged asteroid

Can’t touch this: Scientists are trying to build an asteroid shield to protect Earth from the giant space rocks. In three years they hope to have a plan to test devised

Scientists are trying to find a way to protect Earth from the giant rocks which travel around the Milky Way.

Run out of Berlin with funds from the EU, the NEOShield project, which will look for a way to protect earth from the space rocks, is expected to take three years to complete.

Some of the ideas being tossed around at the moment include repelling asteroids with projectiles or explosives or using gravity to change its course.

The project though is a little late as a chunk of rock 400 times the City of London is set to hurtle closer than a rock of its size has in a very long time.

The asteroid labelled ‘(433) Eros’ measures 19 by 8 by 8 miles and is set to pass by next week.

Despite its massive size, the cosmic rock shouldn’t be too cause too much of a threat as it is on a circular path far outside the moon’s orbit.

A smaller bus-sized asteroid is also set to pass extremely close to Earth today

The asteroid 2012 BX34, will pass within 36,750 miles of Earth at about 3:30 p.m. Friday, tweeted astronomers with NASA’s Asteroid Watch program.

Even though this is more than five times closer than the moon, at 11 meters wide, it won’t be any threat to earth.

‘It wouldn’t get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try,’ Asteroid Watch scientists tweeted yesterday.

Nevertheless, with NASA estimating that there are almost one thousand asteroids over one kilometre in length and 19,500 over 100-metres, scientists at the

With an investment of some €4 million by the European Commission and an extra €1.8 million coming from scientific institutions and partners, the German Aerospace Center aims to have a plan for a test mission drafted within three years.

After that, if they can find the extra cash, the mission may be launched by 2020.

The scientists will be looking at a host of ideas, many of which have already been proposed.

For one, there’s the ‘kinetic impactor’ plan where a massive projectile would deflect the asteroid.

Another is the ‘gravity tractor’ idea where a small probe would linger near the asteroid and use its gravitational traction to move it out of Earth’s way.

Or, like waging an all-out space war, some have suggested a full scale strike with nuclear missiles.

‘Of course, a lot of things have already been proposed,’ Alan Harris, the study’s leader, told Spiegel Online.

‘But, so far, most of them have come from a single institution, perhaps even from a single person. So it has been hard to pursue them.’

Investigating each idea ‘will take place on paper and in lab experiments, since we don’t have the money to do more than that,’ said Wolfram Lork, who works with a subsidiary on the project.

One other, coarser idea would be ‘blast deflection’ which would involve deterring the asteroid with directed explosive charges. Harris says this would be the ‘final, desperate approach.’

‘We would like to present plans for a feasible, affordable mission.

‘We want to show the world it can be done,’ Harris said, adding that the ultimate solution might be a combining a gravity tractor with a kinetic impactor.

By observing the huge craters around the world - such as the Barringer Crater in Arizona or the Nördlinger Ries near Munich - scientists know that asteroids have struck Earth in its history and that, without action, they could well strike again.

A small asteroid the size of a city bus zoomed between Earth and the moon’s orbit late on Friday just days after its discovery, but it never posed a threat to our planet, NASA says.

The asteroid 2012 BX34 passed within 59,044 kilometers of Earth when it made its closest approach.

The space rock is about 11 metres wide and would have broken apart in Earth’s atmosphere long before it reached the ground, if it had reached the planet at all, NASA scientists said.

“Asteroid 2012 BX34 is small,” astronomers with NASA’s Asteroid Watch at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., said in a Twitter message. “It wouldn’t get through our atmosphere intact even if it dared to try.”

The space rock passed Earth at a distance that is only about 0.17 times that between the Earth and the moon. For comparison, the moon typically orbits Earth at a distance of about 386,000 km.

“Asteroids this small are hard to spot, & luckily they pose the least concern,” Asteroid Watch scientists explained. “Our goal is to find the bigger ones.”

In September, NASA announced that it has spotted about 90 percent of the largest asteroids (the size of a mountain or bigger) that can come near Earth. About 911 such giant space rocks have been confirmed.

Astronomers estimate there are about 981 big near-Earth objects that occasionally creep close to our planet.

Asteroid 2012 BX34 was the second space rock to fly relatively close by Earth this week, Asteroid Watch scientists said.

On January 23, another small asteroid — called 2012 BS1 — passed by the planet at a range of about 1.2 million km, which is about 3.1 times the Earth-moon distance.

“Asteroid 2012 BS1 is so small (about 7 meters) it would disintegrate in our atmosphere if it were to come close to Earth,” the Asteroid Watch team wrote.

Astronomers with NASA and other science teams routinely scan the skies in search of near-Earth asteroids that could pose a danger to the planet.

Experts estimate that asteroids about 140 m across and bigger can cause widespread devastation near their impact sites, though a larger space rock would be required to cause destruction on a global scale.

This week, scientists from around the world are also discussing how Earth should respond to the threat of an asteroid impact. The so-called NEOShield project is a European commission led by the German Aerospace Center and includes scientists from universities and industrial partners in Germany, France, the United Kingdom, Spain, the United States and Russia.

(Source: Yahoo!)

(Editor’s note: Richard Hoagland has suggested that YU 55 may come a lot closer to the moon than the official sources are telling us. The timing of this asteroid also ties in with the FEMA drills scheduled for November 9, watch this space.)

CAPE CANAVERAL, Fla (Reuters) - A huge asteroid will pass closer to Earth than the moon Tuesday, giving scientists a rare chance for study without having to go through the time and expense of launching a probe, officials said.

Earth’s close encounter with Asteroid 2005 YU 55 will occur at 6:28 p.m. EST (2328 GMT) Tuesday, as the space rock sails about 201,000 miles from the planet.

“It is the first time since 1976 that an object of this size has passed this closely to the Earth. It gives us a great — and rare — chance to study a near-Earth object like this,” astronomer Scott Fisher, a program director with the National Science Foundation, said Thursday during a Web chat with reporters.

The orbit and position of the asteroid, which is about 1,312 feet in diameter, is well known, added senior research scientist Don Yeomans, with NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“There is no chance that this object will collide with the Earth or moon,” Yeomans said.

Thousands of amateur and professional astronomers are expected to track YU 55’s approach, which will be visible from the planet’s northern hemisphere. It will be too dim to be seen with the naked eye, however, and it will be moving too fast for viewing by the Hubble Space Telescope.

“The best time to observe it would be in the early evening on November 8 from the East Coast of the United States,” Yeomans said. “It is going to be very faint, even at its closest approach. You will need a decent-sized telescope to be able to actually see the object as it flies by.”

Scientists suspect YU 55 has been visiting Earth for thousands of years, but because gravitational tugs from the planets occasionally tweak its path, they cannot tell for sure how long the asteroid has been in its present orbit.

“These sorts of events have been happening for most of the lifetime of the Earth, about 4.5 billion years,” Fisher said.

Computer models showing the asteroid’s path for the next 100 years show there is no chance it will hit Earth during that time, added Yeomans.

“We do not think that it will ever impact the Earth or moon (but) we only have its orbit calculated for the next 100 years,” he said.

Previous studies show the asteroid, which is blacker than charcoal, is what is called a C-type asteroid that is likely made of carbon-based materials and some silicate rock.

More information about its composition and structure are expected from radar images and chemical studies of its light as the asteroid passes by the planet.

“I’ve read that we will be able to see details down to a size of about 15 feet across on the surface of the asteroid,” Fisher said.

NASA is working on a mission to return soil samples from an asteroid known as 1999 RQ36 in 2020, followed by a human mission to another asteroid in the mid-2020s.

Japan also plans to launch an asteroid sample return mission in 2018.

(Source: Yahoo!)