Story Submitted by Mike Bromley
ASTEROID FLYBY: – Asteroid will pass 12, 000 Km (7,500 miles) from Earth
Newly-discovered asteroid 2011 MD will pass only 12,000 kilometers (7,500 miles) above Earth’s surface on Monday June 27 at about 9:30 a.m. EDT. NASA analysts say there is no chance the space rock will strike Earth. Nevertheless, the encounter is so close that Earth’s gravity will sharply alter the asteroid’s trajectory.
At closest approach, 2011 MD will pass in broad daylight over the southern Atlantic Ocean near the coast of Antarctica. As the asteroid recedes from Earth, it will pass through the zone of geosynchronous satellites. The chances of a collision with a satellite or manmade space junk are extremely small, albeit not zero.
Judging from the brightness of the asteroid, it measures only 5 to 20 meters in diameter. According to JPL’s Near Earth Object Program office, one would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average. For a brief time, it will be bright enough to be seen even with a medium-sized backyard telescope.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news172.html
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$7 billion a year shoveled into “climate change” grants — and almost nothing for an early warning system for very real threats like this. If a good sized meteorite even hit the ocean, the resulting tsunami would make Japan’s recent tsunami look minor by comparison. click
Only 5-20m, but still far more worrisome than global warming.
John Marshall says:
June 24, 2011 at 2:17 am
12,000Km is very close by astronomical standards. I hope, for once, NASA are right about its trajectory.
I ask:
I wonder if NASA has their miles and their kilometres sorted out correctly this time..!
Let’s hope that NASA can pry itself away from fishing for Climate data to pump up scare stories, and instead re-task a few birds and their ground based equipment to gather real data for use in the future for the inevitable too-close-to-call scenario.
Listen up NASA, if you want to survive as a taxpayer funded agency, you had better produce. That means photos and definitive telemetry about this object. Prove that you can still do space science. For starters we need to verify both this 4-day-out estimation of 5-20 meters in size and nearest distance of 7500 miles against real observations. Four days head start is a useful amount of time to get all-hands-on-deck for a data-gathering event.
I expect a little more detail than the tiny press release shows, and am unimpressed by things like “Monday June 27 at about 9:30 EDT”. Do I really need to ask, is that 09:30 or 21:30? Can you pull one of your Climate Science Fictionists off their seemingly 24/7/365 fantasy trip and re-assign them to proofreading?
It is stated that it lives in an orbit not unlike the Earth’s, but what is it’s orbital period? Also unmentioned is the likely perturbation of its current orbit during this approach and what can be expected on it’s next.
Finally a personal pet peeve, “One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average” is standard fare for pop-science reporting, but a professional would state the last time a similar sized object passed this close, how many times in total has it occurred (obviously they must have this data or else the 6-year chance is simply made up), and when is the next one that we know of.
This tendency to give gambler’s estimates is clearly mainstream news media style-sheet meme. At best it is actuarial statistical analysis, but not pure Science, and just sounds very juvenile IMHO. Yes, you normally see a Royal Flush once every 40,000 hands, or it can happen twice in one day. They must be aware that the broader public reads that 6-year thing as a schedule! Science needs to get away from the guesswork and fear-mongering and get back to the facts, Jack.
Get to work NASA!
Mike Borgelt says:
June 24, 2011 at 1:04 am
What’s really concerning is the lack of warning time. How much more for a bigger one?
That they saw it at all is amazing; 50 years ago even a mountain coming at us would be missed. Now back to the question: Are there now suddenly more of these little space pebbles, or can we just DETECT more of them? Sound, er, familiar?
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/ca/ NEO Earth Close Approaches
will get a tabular list of known past present and future (as far as they know so far)
eco-geek, are you really saying that there is a mile wide object which flies through the skies over or near London regularly, and has been seen by lots of people over the last ten years, but somehow has escaped publicity and government detection? And that is going to land on earth sometime in the next ten years, probably Thanet, UK, and make a Very Big Hole?
Really?
Two page list of related information 2nd page as interesting as the first.
http://search.nasa.gov/search/search.jsp?nasaInclude=near+earth+objects
Off-topic:[snip]
[reply] please repost on a thread where it isn’t. Thanks TB-mod
Blade said:
Finally a personal pet peeve, “One would expect an object of this size to come this close to Earth about every 6 years on average” is standard fare for pop-science reporting, but a professional would state the last time a similar sized object passed this close, how many times in total has it occurred (obviously they must have this data or else the 6-year chance is simply made up), and when is the next one that we know of.
This tendency to give gambler’s estimates is clearly mainstream news media style-sheet meme. At best it is actuarial statistical analysis, but not pure Science, and just sounds very juvenile IMHO. Yes, you normally see a Royal Flush once every 40,000 hands, or it can happen twice in one day. They must be aware that the broader public reads that 6-year thing as a schedule! Science needs to get away from the guesswork and fear-mongering and get back to the facts, Jack.
If you had everything you’re asking for, you might find that “6 years” was wrong, but you’d still have nothing more than the same kind of information, a result of “actuarial statistical analysis,” as you call it. Your complaint is nonsense.
jones says: June 24, 2011 at 2:05 am hit Al goreys largest beachfront, sea-level property? Would he hear it from the bottom of the garden?
There are Ferraris at the bottom of that garden.
………………….
More seriously, the NEO summary at
C:\Documents and Settings\Administrator\My Documents\gjs temp\Near Earth\JPL Small-Body Database Browser.mht
still seems to list VK 184 as the main large-sized candidate in year 2048.
Let’s hope NASA hasn’t made another metric to imperial error. ;O)
It’s something like this that’s more likely to cause abrupt climate change, but Warmists will say global warming expanded our atmosphere blah blah.
the worrisome part is that there are geometries under which even a large asteroid would be invisible almost to the end to passive reckoning – imagine one approaching from the general direction of the Sun, showing us its night side…we need radars not just telescopes or any day we can get a nasty surprise ..
Wait for it……next IPCC release…CO2 attracts meteorites and ateroids!
While this is an interesting article, I take issue with your headline; there is absolutely nothing worrisome about global warming. Nothing.
If it were to hit, it would be no doubt because of global warming… sarc /off
What’s really concerning is the lack of warning time. How much more for a bigger one?
President: “We didn’t see this thing coming?”
Truman: “Well, our object collison budget’s a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg’n your pardon sir, but it’s a big-ass sky.”
-The Armageddon Prophesy, 1998
I may be wrong, but it appears that this space rock is coming from outside of the solar system orbital plane. If that is the case, it will probably not come back since it will probably be thrown clear of the solar system (or be pulled into the sun). Kudos to those who spotted it since asteroids from this direction are rare compared to asteroids originating from the plane.
Mike Borgelt says:
June 24, 2011 at 1:04 am
What’s really concerning is the lack of warning time. How much more for a bigger one?
Check the link –
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news172.html
and go to the close approaches tab. They are projected out to October – sometimes 3 a day.
Most aren’t so close but many are much larger.
Mike
Given enough time there will be an ELE event which, again, will wipe most life off this rock. Can we do anything about it? Unlikely, IMO. Will alarmists blame human activity for any such events? Probably. That is until our star BURNS the rock which, all life as we know it, exists.
But we still have alarmists to deal with. I was responding to a post on the SMH website here in Australia. A commenter with a handle of “Vege” claimed that CO2 WAS killing the planet. I thought the post and handle were rather ironic, given the fact that CO2 is plant food, wasn’t sure if the peroson was being sarcastic or not. If not, then this person is seriously misinformed.
woodNfish says:
June 24, 2011 at 7:08 am
“While this is an interesting article, I take issue with your headline; there is absolutely nothing worrisome about global warming. Nothing”
Oh, contrare, potential and historical Impactors could, and have, had a great deal to do with the climate of this planet.
Eco-Geek, I too have seen what you have described re: “Wreathed in ruddy orange flame its surface features – ridges and hollows – were clearly visible. It had some rotation and was completely silent implying a height well in excess of 25 miles as there was no sonic boom”.
I was in the middle of a night watch on the STS Leeuwin (a “tall ship”) somewhere off Onslow of the coast of Western Australia and in calm seas (we had recently gone through a horror storm that lasted days and had ruined one of the main sails and nearly all of us had got sick so it was nice to be in quiet and calm again). 1993 I think. Everyone awake and on deck at that time saw it, a massive rolling ball of flame that pinwheeled its way slowly across the sky from horizon to horizon.
It wasn’t silent though … it sort of had a very low deep roar to it as it lumbered across the sky. It seemed so big and close that we expected it to splash down in sight of us but no, it must have been far bigger than we thought and far higher, for it really did disappear over the horizon.
I expect folk on boats and ships see this sort of thing all the time but it certainly was a real treat for us, especially after what we had recently been through with the “go home to port” weather that we had been trapped in going no where for days.
regarDS
If NASA got it wrong, this could a case of the news flash – “a bullet missed a man’s ear today by 3″, it went straight between his eyes!” 🙂 HAGWE
The Meteorite that I saw, when I was a kid, that streak across the evening sky before slamming into the desert between Phoenix and Tucson was probably 3 M before entering the atmosphere. I think the real story here is that this little thing was detected at all. That in itself is pretty awesome, especially considering its orbit!
You can’t say it’s not at all worrying. A 20 meter asteroid of unknown composition (which this one is) can either be a loose collection of dirt, or a highly dense fragment of an exploded planets core. We have no idea what kind of metal/density this thing has. We can only judge it by light reflected off of it. Now if someone picks up two pieces of earth and asks you which one you want to be hit with, are you going to be satisfied with just looking at those rocks in low illumination to tell you which one would hurt worse? No, you’ll generally want to touch/feel and get some idea of weight and sturdiness. Apollo survived re-entry every time, and it was far less than 20 meters in cross-section. 20 Meters of dense carbon or iron might as well be a nuclear bomb if it entered our atmosphere.
That said, no I’m not at all worried about this one.