From NASA’s Spaceweather.com and NASA JPL Twitter feed. It only takes one missed space rock to ruin your day.
On Friday November 6th at 2132 UT (16:32/ 4:32PM EST) asteroid 2009 VA barely missed Earth when it flew just 14,000 km above the planet’s surface. For comparison, Earth’s diameter is 12,756.1 km. That near miss was well inside the “Clarke Belt” of geosynchronous satellites.(35,786 km/22,236 mi)
Friday’s (Nov 6) flyby of asteroid 2009 VA is the third closest on record. (That we know about.)
If it had hit, the ~6-meter wide space rock would have disintegrated in the atmosphere as a spectacular fireball, causing no significant damage to the ground. But the fact that there was so little warning is troubling.
2009 VA was discovered just 15 hours before closest approach by astronomers working at the Catalina Sky Survey.
While millions worry about CO2, there seems to be little worry nor action about this list:
It is a threat we can actually develop technology for to do something about.
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To explain how Clarke envisioned the ability to detect and deflect civilization killers, we have to take a step past the space elevator. Construct of larger faster vehicles is much easier if it is done in space. Once the vehicles are completed, they are docked at what are known as Lagrange points, Jupiter’s Lagrange points are the ones Clarke envisioned. They are far enough out that the “space tugs” could successfully redirect these mobile chunks of real estate. “Warp” drive is not necessary, as we have Ion drive that exist today. It is really not that far out of an idea. Talk to anyone who is over 80 years old, and not a single one of them could have guessed what todays world would have been like when they were young. We must not allow humanity and negativity cause us to collapse in on ourselves. Aliens did not build the pyramids, men did.
Glenn (16:36:23) :
“If you have any suggestions about how we could tag rocks flying thru space at enormous speeds, share them.”
One would launch the instrument package on the same trajectory and attain NEAR speed. Then the target slowly creeps up on it.
I realize this object gave little reaction time, however many are detected early.
We have already landed a NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft NOT designed for landing on a asteroid (Eros). It remains there today.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/02/12/near.landing.02/
I seem to recall reading that major asteroid impacts average about one every 500,000 to 700,000 years and equivalent supervolcano eruptions average about once every 100,000 years (Source: BBC).
I have also read an estimate based on geological evidence that damaging super solar flares similar to the famous Carrington Event of September 1859 occur, on average, about once every 500 years — about 1000 times more frequent than ‘major’ asteroid impacts.
A repeat of this solar event with our modern electrically dependent society could do much more damage than just disrupt telegraph communications and render some telegraph operators unconscious from electric shock.
David Ball,
I’m with you.
Ever read the “Firestar ” series by Mike Flynn?
Flynn with Pounelle and Niven wrote “Fallen Angels” which was meant to be satire but seems to be being used as a manual by the AGW types.
Thank you Mike Borgelt. It has been many years now that I have moved away from the science fiction. It was what got me into reading as a youth and turned me into a voracious reader. I will endeavor to find Flynn’s series on your recommendation, as I believe it is time to be a little less serious and more imaginative in my choices again. I read to my children even before they were born, and they love when daddy reads to them today. It is a source of comfort for us all. Fear and fight the book burners.
G. Karst (21:25:21) :
Glenn (16:36:23) :
“If you have any suggestions about how we could tag rocks flying thru space at enormous speeds, share them.”
One would launch the instrument package on the same trajectory and attain NEAR speed. Then the target slowly creeps up on it.
I realize this object gave little reaction time, however many are detected early.
We have already landed a NEAR-Shoemaker spacecraft NOT designed for landing on a asteroid (Eros). It remains there today.
http://archives.cnn.com/2001/TECH/space/02/12/near.landing.02/
******************
NEAR isn’t providing us with Eros’ location either, and “tagging” in the useful sense isn’t shown to be within our current ability by the example of the NEAR spacecraft.
Do we really know if it remains there today? I doubt it would still be on a 6 meter rock.
Of course, in your original post you were referring to tagging previously unknown objects such as the small 5 meter rock that just missed when they’re near us so that we could keep an eye on them. Your language was clear on “when they pass” and “when they are in our face”. That technology is far far away, Star Trek stuff.
Sure, now that “asteroid 2009 VA” has been discovered, it’s location can be tracked to an extent. But there are thousands of these that we know about, and an unknown number that we do. It would be nice to have them all tagged so that we had more exact data available when they do get close (whatever value that is). Tagging them all is just science fiction, though, and unless they are all tagged, it only takes one that is unknown to hit without warning.
David Ball (14:58:10) :
“I guess Glenn is unaware that we have “tagged” NEOs recently. http://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/deepimpact/main/index.html – I cannot remember the name of the vehicle that flew through the comets tale a few years ago. Must have been SciFi.”
No, but splattering something on a 7 kilometer rock isn’t “tagging”, and is a little different than usefully tagging a 6 meter rock for years and years of tracking. Running out and tagging previously unknown objects just as they pass by is also science fiction.
WEEKEND FIREBALLS: On Saturday, Nov. 7th, just as the sun was setting over San Francisco Bay, a brilliant meteor glided across the sky and disappeared into the sunset. Witnesses say it was “slow-moving,” “white and green,” and that it left behind “a trail of smoke and sparkles of debris.” The fireball was gone before most photographers had a chance to raise their cameras, but several people managed to capture the lingering trail of debris:
http://spaceweather.com/meteors/taurids/images2009/07nov09/wagy_strip.jpg
Gwen Wagy took this picture out the window of a car in Marina, Califonia. “The twisting trail resembled a noctilucent cloud,” notes husband Chris.
Meteor expert Peter Jenniskens of NASA’s Ames Research Center believes the fireball was “a small asteroid that crashed into our atmosphere. The remains [of the space rock] probably landed in the Pacific Ocean.”
Another possibility is that the fireball was a piece of periodic Comet 2P/Encke. Every year around this time, Earth passes through a stream of debris from the comet, and the encounter causes meteors to shoot out of the constellation Taurus. “The Taurid shower is definitely active,” notes Bill Cooke of NASA’s Meteoroid Environment Office. “Our all-sky cameras have been picking up a couple of Taurid fireballs every night.” At the time of the Bay Area fireball, the constellation Taurus was rising in the east, so a Taurid identification is not yet out of the question.
On the same night a few hours later, Brian Emfinger of Ozark, Arkansas, photographed a definite Taurid: movie. “I estimate its brightness at around magnitude -10 (almost 200 times brighter than Venus).” Sky watchers should be alert for more fireballs in the nights ahead as Taurid activity continues until at least Nov. 12th. The best time to look is during the hours around midnight when the constellation Taurus is high overhead: sky map. http://spaceweather.com/meteors/taurids/images2009/07nov09/emfinger1.wmv?PHPSESSID=838fdjufjn647s9sdnap55cp21
Uh, Anthony, do you wish me to post the Taurids complex-a periodic calamity for Earth again?
We see in Glenn a classic case of the mind clouded by negativity. If all mankind thought this way, we would never accomplish anything. He has not contributed one positive thing or idea to the conversation. Very helpful. Although some of my detractors would probably enjoy seeing me flung into space by the rubber band man, it is indicative of where his mind is focused (or not focused as the case may be). This posting is probably redundant since Glenn has sullied his views on his own.
The problem is not just unknown objects. Even known objects alter their orbits and trajectories, due to unknown perturbations. These could be collisions with other space rocks, gravitational tugs, etc.
If all we want to do is tag the object, it is relatively easy. Tagging can be done using a hardened impacter which embeds itself into the object. These “bullets” could be fired via a rail gun, rocket, etc. Anything passing close to the earth could then be tagged. Rapid fire might even be able to deflect or destroy incoming bogies.
This is only ideas off the top of my head. I am sure the bright boys at NASA could figure a viable method for a fraction of the stimulus package.
Sooner or later, we must own our orbit in space.
For those going on about CO2, etc., here’s a recent study by a couple of actual physicists, from Germany:
http://arxiv.org/pdf/0707.1161v4 (pdf).
Not only is CO2 totally irrelevant, the whole concept of a “greenhouse atmosphere” is demolished. There is no physics basis for the comparison, or for the effect it pushes. The naive intuition that 1/3000 of the atmosphere can’t really heat it up is spot on, it turns out.
Even a glass greenhouse doesn’t work the way the popular and IPCC model says. It has nothing to do with blocking IR rays. A greenhouse is warm because it’s closed in and hot air from the warmed surface has nowhere to go. Simple. And nothing whatsoever to do with a planetary atmosphere.
They have the Hubble telescope that can see light years away and they can’t see something that is only 9,000 miles away?????
Everyone who has taken Science 101 and those with an I.Q. over 30, KNOW that this “man-made global warming a.k.a. climate change” Climate change?? Duh! Is a total load of B.S.! It is simply a scare tactic by our bloated Government, to extract money from a lergely Science-illiterate Public!!
This seemingly serene Little Blue Planet is actually profoundly more dangerous to us, than we are to it. Millions of humans have died from Earth’s NATURAL disasters in just my lifetime of 72 years.
Science Fact: As soon as a Planet, or a Star is formed in our Universe, it begins the process of cooling. The surrounding outer space of the Universe ranges from 250 degrees below zero, to 459 degrees below zero [absolute zero] We live in a huge deep-freezer! It’s COLD out there!
Each year, over 300 objects intersect Earth’s orbital trajectory. They range in size from a soccer ball, to the size of Manhattan. It is only a matter of time, before we arrive at the wrong place at the wrong time! Goodbye Planet Earth.
Venus Owner (05:34:28) Very good posts. All cogent points, especially the last post, as to why we need to “own” near space ( as G. Karst so succinctly put it).
An incredible video as a “Meteor Explodes Above South Africa”:
http://www.break.com/index/meteor-explodes-above-south-africa.html