The Asteroid Threat

[vector7]

Space rock found on collision course with Earth

• Updated 22:18 06 October 2008
• NewScientist.com news service
• Maggie McKee

For the first time, astronomers have found an object on a certain collision course with Earth. Fortunately, it is so small it is not expected to cause any damage, burning up in the atmosphere somewhere above northern Sudan in the wee hours of Tuesday morning. It may, however, produce a brilliant 'shooting star'.

The space rock, dubbed 2008 TC3, was first spotted on Monday in a survey by the Mt Lemmon Observatory near Tucson, Arizona.

Its brightness suggests it is no more than about 5 metres across – so small it will likely be destroyed in the atmosphere, says Andrea Milani Comparetti of the University of Pisa in Italy.

Rocks of such size are thought to hit the atmosphere every few months, says Steve Chesley, an astronomer at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
"The event is not unusual – what is unique is that it's been predicted beforehand," Milani told New Scientist. "This is the first time we see something arriving, compute that it's going to impact, and announce it is going to impact before it happens."

The rock is due to hit the atmosphere above northern Sudan on Tuesday at 0246 GMT. It will be travelling from west to east, and may be visible from a few hundred kilometres away.

Long trail
The meteor it produces is likely to be spectacular. The rock will release about 1 kiloton of energy in the atmosphere – the equivalent of a low-energy nuclear bomb, says Milani. But it's not clear whether it will do so all at once or over a longer period, perhaps lasting a minute or so.

It will hit the atmosphere at an angle of 20°, so "it will make a long trail in the atmosphere", says Milani. "But we cannot honestly predict how long it will be. [The rock] might end up quite far – above the Red Sea or Saudi Arabia – or it might explode and disappear sooner."

If it disintegrates all at once, it would produce a bright flash of light and a loud sonic boom, says Chesley.

This space rock is so small it is unlikely to cause any damage. "The only concern is that [the explosions] might be interpreted as something else, that is man-made explosions. Thus in this case, the earlier the public worldwide is aware that this is a natural phenomenon, which involves no risk, the better," Milani's team wrote in a popular astronomy listserv.

Impact probability
The object's discovery is a reminder that larger and potentially more dangerous rocks might also be on a collision course with Earth.

Milani and Chesley are members of the only two groups in the world that calculate the probability that a given space rock will hit the Earth. They both say that they are delighted at how quickly this meteorite was determined to be on a collision course with Earth – since it was only discovered at about 0630 GMT on Monday.

"For us, [we feel] satisfaction because our computation worked and because this kind of accident – which is without any risk that anybody [would be] hurt – will make people more aware of the fact that something has to be done about asteroids in case a bigger one arrives," Milani told New Scientist.

"The fact that we're able to make this prediction proves the system's working," says Chesley. "These sized objects are not the ones we're most concerned about – there are tens of thousands of much larger objects that could cause real damage on the ground that are still yet to be found."

Despite the advanced warning, there is probably too little time to mount a mission to observe the atmospheric impact from an aeroplane, as sometimes happens during known meteor showers, says Milani. "But now that this is out in the public, anybody who has a telescope is going to be pointing it in that direction," Chesley says.

http://space.newscientist.com/articl...ith-earth.html

[American Patriot]

Close calls: A history of asteroid encounters that almost happened

10/7/2008 11:47:56 AM

If your corner of the Earth were about to be hit by a relatively large asteroid - say the size of a large city - you wouldn't know it until a second before impact. At that point, you and everything around you would crinkle and vapourize, like plastic wrap in a fire.

The ultra-supersonic ball of rock and ore would do this without touching you by superheating the air in front of it as it races to its final destination.

Finally, the asteroid would slam into the Earth: If it slammed into water, watch out for tsunamis that would make the Boxing Day event of 2004 look like high tide...If it scored a direct hit on land (less likely, when you consider how much of Earth is covered by water) watch out for some of the most violent planet-wide Earth quakes our world has seen in a while, worldwide volcanic erruptions, and a cloud of ash that would block out enough sunlight to kill a staggaring number of our world's plants and animals.

So how close have we come to death from the skies? Today's encounter with a three-metre-wide asteroid provides the best confirmation in a while that objects larger than harmless little "shooting star" particles can score a direct hit on Earth. Though

[American Patriot]

http://www.timesonline.co.uk/tol/new...cle4902427.ece

October 8, 2008

Weather Eye: Nasa spots asteroid before annihilation
Paul Simons

In the early hours of yesterday morning a fireball exploded with the equivalent of a thousand tonnes of TNT over northern Sudan. The light was so intense that it lit up the sky like a full moon and an airliner 1,400km (870 miles) away reported seeing the bright flash.

The explosion was caused by an asteroid the size of a boulder roughly three metres (10ft) across. It sounds catastrophic, but the rock was totally annihilated as it smashed into the atmosphere, and there was no chance of it hitting the ground. In fact, asteroids this size hit the Earth’s atmosphere every few months or so. But this particular event was special because the asteroid was spotted before it blew up, the first time this has been achieved. The asteroid was seen by astronomers on Sunday at an observatory in Arizona, as part of a Nasa project to scan for approaching space rocks.

There are 5,681 such near-Earth objects, but only 757 of them are considered large enough to cause any damage if they hit Earth. If a dangerously large object were spotted in time the hope is to give enough warning to evacuate any people living in the likely crash zone, although the logistics involved would be mind-boggling.

However, it would be difficult to escape a 300m space rock. These strike every 60,000 years or so, and could trigger a monster-sized tsunami if they hit the sea. And an asteroid measuring more than a kilometre in diameter strikes Earth roughly every few hundred thousand years. This would obliterate everything in and around the impact zone and send the world’s climate into such turmoil that civilisation as we know it would collapse.

[vector7]

NASA Is Running Out of Money to Monitor Earth-Destroying Asteroids (Part 1 of 2)

Michio Kaku on September 7, 2010, 11:14 PM



NASA is in a catch 22 situation. Five years ago, Congress mandated by law that NASA should track 90% of all of the dangerous asteroids and comets that may threaten the Earth by 2020. Just last month, though, the National Academy of Sciences announced that NASA may be out of money to meet this mandate. I think it would be short sighted and unwise not to fund NASA's continued monitoring of extraterrestrial objects that could potentially destroy all life on Earth.

I go back to the perception that Hollywood has gave us all these years in the movies. Anyone who has watched films like Armageddon gets the impression that there are all kinds of tracking stations and professional astronomers combing the skies looking for these dangerous objects.

Well, not so fast; in reality, most researchers are in fact amateurs who do the thankless job of hauling out their telescopes on a cold night and taking pictures of the sky and comparing it to the previous days photographs.

On July 19th, an impact mark on Jupiter was spotted by an amateur astronomer in Australia which “drew the attention of scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory to the change in Jupiter’s south polar region."

NASA posted both images and explanations on their website, and stated: “Following up on a tip by an amateur astronomer, Anthony Wesley of Australia, that a new dark 'scar' had suddenly appeared on Jupiter, this morning between 3 and 9 a.m. PDT (6 a.m. and noon EDT) scientists at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., using NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility at the summit of Mauna Kea, Hawaii, gathered evidence indicating an impact.“



This just goes to show that incidents like these have in fact caught us off guard where no one necessarily knew that it was going to happen. If you compare this incident to the Shoemaker-Levy comet, for example, there was warning, and it was tracked by both professional astronomers and amateurs alike.

This time, the astronomical community was in a sense caught with its pants down because we only saw the end result (the point of impact) and we still don’t know if it was a comet or a meteor. The object that hit Jupiter is probably less than a mile across (if it’s similar to the Shoemaker-Levy comet). However, the fireball the was created by the impact was nearly the size of the Earth—or it least the size of the Pacific Ocean—and so it’s humbling to realize that even small objects can create enormous destruction.

For example, the Meteor Crater in Arizona was formed about 50,000 years ago and is about 4,000 ft in diameter with some areas reaching 570 feet deep and is surrounded by a rim that rises over 100 feet above the surrounding plains. Based on recent research, the impact was substantially slower than originally thought (about 28,000 mph) and itis believed that about half of the impact’s 330,000 short tons bulk was vaporized during descent before it actually hit the ground.



To be continued later this week...

[Ryan Ruck]

Well, in the spirit of the "new" NASA, if an asteroid hits us it is Allah's will!

[American Patriot]

Well, in the spirit of the "new" NASA, if an asteroid hits us it is Allah's will!

Yup....

And the author is correct.

Amateurs DO THE WORK.

Amateur ASTRONOMERS discover more comets than pros.

Amateur radio operators pass more message traffic than Western Union (who doesn't anymore).

AMATEURS are laughed at, scoffed at, and told "you've got no credentials".

I've been in a similar position most of my life. As a professional communicator - I've had to deal with the bullshit when doing my "Amateur" job... as if I have no clue what goes on in the world.

In astronomy, I have probably as much class time and real time on the ground with my eye and camera to the telescope as ANY professional. I've studied stars and stellar physics. But, you know, I don't know shit.

When it comes to Earth Sciences I have years of study in college and private study. It's OBVIOUS to me that there is no such thing as "global warming".

But, what do *I* know?

This is why I have been so frustrated lately.

The professionals don't have or aren't given the money that COMES OUT OF MY POCKET to continue space programs, and yet these asswipes in Congress want to take MORE of my money to give to losers, to ACORN, to "social programs"....

And asteroids (which granted have been out there in space for eons and have so far missed us) could hit us. Without warning.

No Warning... we go the way of the dinosaur. With warning... well, we have a chance to save ourselves, to do something to prevent it from happening or at least put our affairs in order.

[American Patriot]

I was sitting here a little bored at work doing some research on knives. Something led me to a site and something on the site caught my eye. I opened the link in a new tab and promptly forgot about it until I was closing tabs.

This is what I found. This place, the Asteroid Threat is absolutely the best place I could think of to place this extremely short, interesting and perhaps prophetic story.

Enjoy.... while you have time.

Everything2

Standing on a mountaintop in northern Siberia under the rapidly descending bulk of asteroid McAlmont, with a calculating expression and a baseball bat



Twenty-five years ago they spotted it, fifteen years ago they plotted it, and five years ago they tried to stop it, but the nukes weren't enough. And there was no time or technology to try anything else. Two years ago the spot in the Urals where the asteroid 17045-2003AF is going to hit was narrowed to a hundred-metre square, and the evacuation began. Now humanity, huddling far below the horizons around me as the red glow overhead slowly grows, is a few minutes away from almost total incineration. The hammer of God is coming.


I have known I wanted to come here from the minute I heard the nuclear missiles had failed to divert the rock sufficiently from its course. I knew I wanted to take a shot, the one-in-a-billion shot. I used to play professionally, after all, and I know that humanity, except for a lucky twelve thousand, is going to be extinct after this whatever happens. I have no close friends, no family. I have nothing to lose.


I turn my eyes from the bitter wind and stare upwards. I'm hoping that nobody knows I'm here. I wouldn't want them all to be pinning their hopes on me, because I honestly have no idea what will happen next. All of humanity is going to be annihilated today. I'm just going to be the first. Unless there's a miracle.


The redness high above me is a glowing, growing glare now, occupying more sky than anything I've ever seen. I'm not used to this angle. I can see distant cloud formations being torn apart as it descends, cutting a swathe over the Pole directly towards this mountaintop. Size - we've all known since '03 that it had half the diameter of the Moon, but I never realised how small I had mentally interpreted that as up until now, and I see it, filling an entire hemisphere of my consciousness with hellish orange flame. It's not a thing in the sky anymore, the sky itself is on fire, and it's falling. Nothing that big should be airborne, and in a minute, it won't be. Wind is starting to pick up. It's getting warmer. I can't make this hit. There's still ten seconds until it reaches me. Gravity's getting ever so slightly weaker.


I'm gonna be toast before it even gets close. This was an insane idea. Only God Himself could make this hit. This is it, this the end of the world. I'm no saviour. I'm just a nut with a baseball bat.


Closing my eyes against the howling wind and whipping dust, attempting to block my ears against the ascending roar, and bracing my feet against the slippery mud and melting snow, I keep my stance. I count down the last few seconds from my wristwatch, and swing blindly. The bat connects....

http://everything2.com/title/Standin...a+baseball+bat


The site is rather strange, interconnecting things vaguely and and disjointedly.

[American Patriot]

Russian Meteor: Member of an Asteroid Gang?

Aug 6, 2013 03:01 PM ET // by Ian O'Neill







On Feb. 15, when a 10,000 ton space rock slammed into the atmosphere over the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring over 1,500 people and causing millions of dollars in property damage, the world suddenly became aware that our planet lives in a cosmic shooting gallery. We had suffered a planetary flesh wound. Almost immediately after the event, the question on everyone’s mind was: When will the next asteroid hit?


Now, according to some complex orbital dynamics modeling, scientists have come up with a rather unsettling hypothesis — what if the Chelyabinsk asteroid wasn’t alone?


PHOTOS: Russian Meteor Strike Aftermath
In a paper accepted for publication in the journal Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society: Letters, brothers Carlos and Raúl de la Fuente Marcos at the Complutense University of Madrid have run exhaustive computer simulations of the Chelyabinsk asteroid orbit before it hit us and tried to deduce where it came from. In doing so, they may have identified similar objects that pose a risk.


“More objects with the same orbital signature may encounter our planet in the future,” Carlos de la Fuente Marcos told Nature News.


The problem with the Chelyabinsk meteor is that it wasn’t spotted before it hit. The asteroid was masked by the glare of the sun — an obvious weak spot exploited by WWII fighter pilots and hazardous asteroids alike. So in an effort to not be caught off guard again, the de la Fuente Marcos brothers matched their “best fit” orbital models and compared them with known asteroid orbits from NASA databases. From this work, they suspect the Chelyabinsk asteroid originated from another shattered asteroid where its pieces are still out there orbiting in a cluster — a gang of space rocks they collectively call the “Chelyabinsk cluster.”


PHOTOS: Top 10 Ways to Stop an Asteroid
“We find reliable statistical evidence on the existence of the Chelyabinsk cluster,” the researchers write in the arXiv preprint of their publication. “It appears to include multiple small asteroids and two relatively large members: 2007 BD7 and 2011 EO40. The most probable parent body for the Chelyabinsk superbolide is 2011 EO40.”


In other words, the Russian meteor may not have been alone when it was an asteroid orbiting the sun. The largest asteroid in the candidate cluster, asteroid 2011 EO40, is thought to measure approximately 200 meters across. The Chelyabinsk meteor may have been a fragment from this larger parent asteroid, suggestive that the larger asteroid fragmented at some point in its orbit.


However, the orbit of 2011 EO40 is, by its nature, rather precarious — it passes close to Venus Earth and Mars and will therefore experience gravitational perturbations, gradually scattering other asteroids in the cluster. It is for this reason that the researchers point out that for the Chelyabinsk cluster to be in existence today, the asteroid breakup likely occurred less than 40,000 years ago.


ANALYSIS: Russian Meteor Shock Rippled Around Earth, Twice
Although interesting, other astronomers suspect that the projected orbit of the Chelyabinsk asteroid and its similarity to other known near-Earth asteroids is more of a coincidence rather than the smoking gun.


“I think that the resemblance of orbits is coincidental,” said David Nesvorny, of the Southwest Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado. “It is not obvious to me why (the Chelyabinsk meteor) cannot be a fragment that was produced by a collision in the main asteroid belt, and evolved to its impact orbit by a few planetary encounters.”


The de la Fuente Marcos brothers admit that further observations of asteroids in the candidate cluster are needed to refine their orbits, but the ideal method to confirm the nature of the Chelyabinsk meteor would be to compare samples of fragments of the Russian “superbolide” and compare it with samples returned from 2011 EO40. A cheaper, though less accurate, method would be to gather high-resolution spectra of reflected light off those objects in the hope of understanding their composition. Only then will the true nature of the destructive Chelyabinsk meteor be identified.


Source: Nature



ArXiv preprint: “The Chelyabinsk superbolide: a fragment of asteroid 2011 EO40?”, C. de la Fuente Marcos, R. de la Fuente Marcos, 2013. arXiv:1307.7918 [astro-ph.EP]
Image credit: The incoming meteor captured on the Russian vehicle’s dashcam. Source: YouTube

[American Patriot]

Over 1,000 asteroids currently circling earth could destroy it

NASA is tracking 1,400 asteroids orbiting earth which could provide a mortal blow to humanity.

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Enlarge In a handout from NASA, the giant asteroid Vesta is seen in an image taken from the NASA Dawn spacecraft about 3,200 miles above the surface July 24, 2011 in Space. NASA is currently tracking 1,400 asteroids orbiting earth which could destroy it. (NASA/JPL-Caltec/Getty Images)

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There are more than 1,400 potentially dangerous asteroids orbiting alongside the Earth, and any one of them is big enough to end humanity.
Fortunately, NASA keeps an eye on them for us — and they've mapped them all out here in this image from NASA and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, made using data from the Near-Earth Orbits List.
To make this list an asteroid has to be "relatively large and close" — at least 460 feet in diameter, and within 4.7 million miles of us — to get NASA's attention. As you can see in the diagram, there are plenty of space rocks hurtling through the solar system that fit those criteria.
The Near-Earth Object Project Office at Caltech's Jet Propulsion Laboratory has been monitoring them since 1998, and publishes information about these and other asteroids and their "impact risk."
It may sound like they are on top of this Earth-ending asteroid thing, but really, not so much. NASA notes that there is no "government agency, national or international" tasked with stepping in should an asteroid decide that Earth is in its way.
That's probably because we haven't found one that's going to end us yet. "None of these PHAs is a worrisome threat over the next hundred years," NASA said.
We know that apocalyptic asteroids have hit in the past — paleontologists believe an asteroid that struck Mexico's Yucatan Peninsula was at least in part responsible for the mass extinction during the late Cretaceous that killed off 50% of the world's species, dinosaurs among them.
An asteroid about the size of a basketball hits and burns up in Earth's atmosphere about once a day. Larger ones about the size of a car do the same a few times a year, disintegrating into stunning fireballs.
We saw recently how frighting and destructive these near-earth objects can be when a meteor exploded over the Chelyabinsk region of Russia on February 15. An Earth-ending Asteroid would be much, much worse.
But such events only occur once every several million years, and a meteorite the size of Chicxulub, the one that hit the Yucatan in the late Cretaceous, occur only once every 100 million years.
But, eventually, one will strike. Scientists are already aware of the asteroid RQ36, which has a 1/1000 chance of destroying life on Earth in 2182.

[American Patriot]

Over three billion years ago, the Earth was struck by an asteroid so large it shook the planet for half an hour. Now we know more about the meteor that caused the event.
(Photo : American Geophysical Union)

An asteroid that struck the Earth between 3.25 and 3.5 billion years ago created an earthquake that shook the entire planet for half an hour.


Stanford researchers have measured the size of the asteroid at about 30 miles across, roughly as wide as the state of Rhode Island. The massive asteroid impacted the planet at 42,000 miles per hour. The sky burned red-hot following the impact. Oceans boiled, much of it streaming into the atmosphere. Tidal waves hundreds of feet high formed in much of the water that remained.


"[W]aves from the impact greatly exceeded the amplitudes of typical earthquake waves," researchers wrote in their research article published in journal G3.


Norman Sleep of Stanford University created the most detailed model ever created of the ancient impact.


The Barberton Greenstone Belt is one of the oldest rock formations on Earth. The feature is located in South Africa. Tiny spherules created in the impact were found in the layer corresponding to the ancient rock bed. Also present in the layer is the element iridium, which is common in meteorites, but extremely rare on Earth.


Geologists believe the impact occurred thousands of miles from the greenstone belt. The impact was so great it deformed the seabed and affected continental plates. As hot rocks thrown into the air and cooled in the atmosphere, it formed spheres of rocks that rained back to Earth, producing the spherules found in South Africa.


"There's widespread evidence that the asteroid's impact caused the ground to fail from earthquakes everywhere around the world," Sleep told the press.


Erosion has worn away most of the evidence from this ancient collision, hiding much of the evidence, geologists need to piece together information about the event.


Greenstone belts are found in various places around the world, including Canada, Australia and Madagascar. They are named for the distinctive green color of chlorite minerals that mark the features.


The Late Heavy Bombardment was a period in the history of ancient Earth when our planet was frequently bombarded by large asteroids. This era ended not long before this tremendous impact took place. Astronomers believe numerous other similar-sized objects also struck our home world during that period. Based on lunar craters, the Earth may have been struck by several objects capable of making craters as large as the United States. Around 22,000 objects struck our planet during that time, each large enough to completely destroy a city.


The asteroid that struck earth over three billion years ago is estimated to measure between 23 and 36 miles in diameter.

[American Patriot]

Asteroids Strike Earth More Often Than We Think

April 22, 2014 by American Patriot
SEATTLE — Hurtling space rocks like the one that traced a blazing streak across the Russian sky last year slam through Earth’s atmosphere on a regular basis, according to data from a system used to detect nuclear weapons explosions. And there’s no way to tell when the next one is coming.


The bright flare of the Russian meteor was hard to miss, and left 1,200 people injured in February 2013. What the human eye missed was two separate high-altitude explosions that occurred over Argentina and the North Atlantic Ocean just months later. That’s according to data from an infrasound network used to track nuke tests, released Tuesday by the B612 Foundation.


Right now, we can only know about these incoming asteroids after the fact, the foundation said.


“Because we don’t know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’-sized asteroid has been blind luck,” said B612 co-founder and CEO Ed Lu, a former NASA astronaut.


The two blasts are among 26 explosions attributed to incoming asteroids since 2000, based on an analysis of data from the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization’s sensor network.


None of the asteroids was detected in advance, and in most cases the explosions occurred too high up to have any impact on Earth. Nevertheless, their characteristic signals were registered by the CTBTO’s network and analyzed by Peter Brown, a meteor researcher at Western University of Ontario.


Lu said that the statistical analysis was the subject of a paper published in the journal Nature last November, but that the specifics for asteroid impacts between 2000 and 2013 were laid out for the first time in a video visualization released Tuesday. Brown is continuing to analyze the impact data for a forthcoming scientific paper, Lu said.


The B612 Foundation released Brown’s list to support its campaign to build and launch an asteroid-hunting Sentinel Space Telescope. Lu was due to join Apollo 8 astronaut Bill Anders and former shuttle astronaut Tom Jones to discuss the project later Tuesday at Seattle’s Museum of Flight.


Blasts attracted attention


Each of the 26 explosions listed Tuesday gave off enough energy to equal the detonation of 1 kiloton or more of TNT. The Chelyabinsk blast was the biggest, at roughly 600 kilotons. In comparison, the nuclear blast that devastated Hiroshima in 1945 was 12 kilotons.


Three other explosions were recorded with an estimated energy release greater than 20 kilotons: over the Mediterranean Sea in 2002, the Southern Ocean in 2004, and Indonesia in 2009. Witnesses marveled at the 50-kiloton Indonesian meteor blast, and at the time, some experts said it was the biggest object to hit Earth in more than a decade.


The 2002 Mediterranean blast occurred during a face-off between India and Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir region. U.S. military officials said that if the asteroid had entered Earth’s atmosphere a few hours earlier, it might have touched off a nuclear war.


Yet another explosion on the B612 list attracted attention in 2012, when a meteor streaked through the skies over Nevada and California. That asteroid breakup released 5 kilotons of energy, experts said.


Although the Chelyabinsk meteor was the only one on the list to cause damage, Lu said the infrasound data suggested that asteroid impacts were at least three times more common than previously thought. Asteroids capable of wiping out a city, in the range of 130 feet (40 meters) in diameter, might blast Earth every century rather than every few hundred years, he said.


How big is the problem?

The most recent example of an asteroid impact capable of wiping out a city is the Tunguska blast of 1908, which released on the order of 5,000 to 20,000 kilotons of energy (5 to 20 megatons). Fortunately, that asteroid blew up over Siberian forest land instead of a populated area, flattening 500,000 acres of trees but causing no known injuries.


Lu acknowledged that not every “city-killer” will kill a city. “The question is, really, what are we going to do about it?” he told NBC News. “Is this something where we want to sit here and just go, ‘Well, we hope we’re going to continue to get lucky’? … One of the things we should be spending our effort on is protecting our own planet.”


Experts say nearly all of the near-Earth asteroids big enough to wipe out civilization have been detected and are being tracked — but they add that they’ve spotted only a small percentage of an estimated million smaller asteroids that are nevertheless capable of causing damage. B612 is seeking to raise several hundred million dollars to put the Sentinel Space Telescope into an orbit that would detect far more such asteroids. Launch is currently planned for 2018.


NASA budgets about $40 million annually for asteroid detection, and in advance of Tuesday’s news briefing, some scientists have been debating how much more money needs to be spent.


“We are doing plenty, spending more money to do more is silly, and usually justified by fear mongering. … Once-a-century events with no more consequence than the worst hurricane each year seem unworthy of our worry or investment,” Caltech astronomer Michael Brown said Monday in a series of Twitter updates.

[American Patriot]

Powerful Asteroids Strike Earth with Surprising Frequency (Video)

By Megan Gannon, News Editor | April 22, 2014 10:53am ET


Since the start of the 21st century, dozens of incoming asteroids have slammed into Earth, some of them packing far more energy than a city-destroying atomic bomb, a new animation illustrates.


The visualization was released in honor of Earth Day by the B612 Foundation — an asteroid-hunting non-profit organization founded by former NASA astronauts — to highlight the alarming frequency of these extraterrestrial collisions.


The video is based on new data from a network of sensors around the globe that is designed to detect nuclear detonations and is operated by the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization. Between 2000 and 2013, these instruments detected 26 explosions on the planet ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons, all caused by asteroid impacts, B612 Foundation officials said. For comparison, the nuclear bomb that flattened Hiroshima in 1945 burst with the energy of 15 kilotons. [Watch the animation of Earth's asteroid impacts]




Many of these asteroid collisions go unnoticed because they explode too high up in the atmosphere to cause damage on the ground. What's more, these impacts often occur above remote parts of the ocean. But as the new animation shows, sometimes a powerful collision occurs over an area heavily populated by humans. A throbbing red dot over Chelyabinsk, Russia, marks the spot where a 600-kiloton meteor impact occurred in February 2013, damaging hundreds of buildings and injuring more than 1,000 people.
With the video, the B612 Foundation hopes to raise awareness about why Earthlings need asteroid-hunting systems.


"While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories," former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, who started the B612 Foundation in 2002 with fellow astronaut Rusty Schweickart and colleagues, said in a statement. "Because we don't know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid has been blind luck."









The video will be presented at a press conference Tuesday (April 22) at Seattle's Museum of Flight by Lu and two of his fellow former astronauts supporting the B612 Foundation: Tom Jones, President of the Association of Space Explorers, and Bill Anders, an Apollo 8 spaceflyer who was the first chairman of the Nuclear Regulatory Commission. B612 will broadcast the press conference at 11:30 a.m. PST (2:30 p.m. EDT), and you can watch it live on Space.com.
The B612 Foundation is trying to build a privately funded infrared space telescope to find dangerous asteroids when they are still millions of miles away. This Sentinel Space Telescope mission would ideally give humans years to devise a plan to deflect killer space rocks, officials with the non-profit say. The organization is aiming for a 2018 launch.

[American Patriot]

Video at the link: http://www.theregister.co.uk/2014/04...ry_six_months/


Asteroids as powerful as NUCLEAR BOMBS hit Earth TWICE YEARLY

Cold War tech detects worldwide strike rate

By Iain Thomson, 22 Apr 2014

A study using data from monitoring stations designed to enforce a nuclear test ban treaty shows that the Earth is enduring far more dangerous asteroid impacts than previously thought.






Between 2000 and 2013, the Earth was hit by 26 asteroids that exploded with a force of between one and 600 kilotons – an average of one every six months. Even more concerning is that in all cases the asteroids themselves weren't detected in space and only came to light when they detonated in Earth's atmosphere.
The study was carried out by the B612 Foundation, a group set up by three former astronauts who are worried about the threat of asteroids to life on Earth. The foundation's CEO (and former shuttle pilot) Dr. Ed Lu presented the report's findings at a press conference in Seattle's Museum of Flight on Tuesday.
"While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories," said Lu.
"Because we don't know where or when the next major impact will occur, the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a 'city-killer' sized asteroid has been blind luck," he concluded.
The study notes that four of this century's collisions have been larger than the atomic bombs that took out Hiroshima and Nagasaki. In 2013, over a thousand people were injured when an asteroid exploded over Chelyabinsk, and 20 kiloton impacts were recorded over Indonesia, the Southern Ocean, and the Mediterranean.
All of these are dwarfed by the 1908 Tunguska impact, when the earth wandered into the path of a comet or large asteroid that exploded with a force of around 10 megatons – an explosion that leveled the surrounding forests and blasted down trees for 2,150 square kilometers (830 sq miles.)
NASA's Spaceguard project, named after the fictional asteroid-watching body described by Arthur C. Clarke, has done a good job at finding larger clumps of space junk that could seriously threaten human life on Earth, but it is missing a lot of the smaller debris that could just wipe out a city or cause a tsunami.
To spot this material, the B612 Foundation wants to build and launch a privately funded orbital asteroid detector, dubbed the Sentinel Space Telescope Mission. The designs have already been completed and the team estimates it could find 200,000 smaller asteroids a year after its planned 2018 launch.
The study shows that most of the kiloton-range explosions recorded this century resulted in very little debris striking the planet's surface. Asteroids are ablated by the earth's thick atmosphere and heat up to the point of explosion – most of the time – but sooner or later, probability suggests, one will hit and cause major damage. ®
Bootnote

The curious name of the B612 Foundation stems from the popular French book The Little Prince, by Antoine de Saint-Exupéry.
In the fable, the author meets a small man after crash-landing his plane in the desert, who explained he lived on an asteroid named B612. The foundation used this name because, it says, the moral of the prince's tale was that what is essential in life is often invisible to the human eye.

[American Patriot]

NASA Plans to Reenact “Armageddon” in Real Life

Posted by: Jessica May 13, 2014



NASA is planning to send astronauts into space to land on an asteroid just like the scenes from the movie “Armageddon”.

The agency assured that there is no danger of asteroid hitting on Earth at present, and plan will take place in the future or not until 2020s. Just the same, astronauts are still doing asteroid landing simulation in the Johnson Space Center’s 40-foot deep swimming pool in Houston.

Astronaut Stan Love, one of those participating in the tests, said they are currently working on the techniques, tools, and even the type of spacesuit that might suited for asteroid landing and exploration. He said all of these might be useful to NASA in the future to capture a small asteroid, bring it back to orbit around the moon using a robotic spacecraft, and explore it.

NASA said the approach is another way to advance a number of technologies that will be needed for their long-term plans such as sending humans to Mars in the 2030′s.

[American Patriot]

I've gotta ask... with what space ships?

[American Patriot]

And for those who thought Apophis was no big deal... think again.

The agency assured that there is no danger of asteroid hitting on Earth at present, and plan will take place in the future or not until 2020s.

I'll also note that NOTHING in America is covering Apophis any more. Almost all news coverage is Spanish and French. Anyone wanna guess why?


The following is from a much, much earlier post in this thread. Long before NASA went out of the space business, before we started counting on Russians, before we canned the shuttle program and shut down the other two space rocket programs.

Giant asteroid headed for earth in 2036 raises questions about NASA's resources:

Straight out of movies like "Armageddon" or "Deep Impact," an asteroid named "Apophis" is coming dangerously close to earth and could strike on April 13th, in 2036. Eerily enough, that's Friday the 13th.

BEFORE 2036..... we have 2029. http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/

... a possibility remained that during the 2029 close encounter with Earth, Apophis would pass through a gravitational keyhole, a small region no more than about 800 m (half a mile) wide..

A gravitational keyhole is a tiny region of space where a planet's gravity would alter the orbit of a passing asteroid such that the asteroid would collide with that planet on a given future orbital pass. The word "keyhole" contrasts the large uncertainty of trajectory calculations (between the time of the observations of the asteroid and the first encounter with the planet) with the relatively narrow bundle(s) of critical trajectories. The term was coined by P. W. Chodas in 1999. It gained some public interest when it became clear, in January 2005, that the Asteroid (99942) Apophis would miss the Earth in 2029 but may go through one or another keyhole leading to impacts in 2036 or 2037. Further research has since been done, however, which revealed the probability of the asteroid passing through the keyhole was extremely insignificant.

[American Patriot]

So... in the 2020s... there will be an attempt to land on an asteroid. I would bet dollars to doughnuts it will be Apophis, because it will come so close to the Earth during that time period.

If its NOT going to hit us, like the "authorities" keep assuring us, then WHY wait until the 2020s? If not that one way wait until then 2020s? If it's not a danger then why are we bothering to waste money on such a project that the US Government keeps ASSURING US isn't an issue.

This is 2014.

2020 is six years away. So, in say, eight years, they will be able to launch a rocket with astronauts to go to this asteroid whose name we can only guess at right now, to examine it for an "Armageddon type disaster" (movie script) at which time they will test the theory they can do something about such a fictional thing.

Folks... I surmise there is vastly more involved in this project than an experiment.

IF we have the opportunity to do something about that asteroid it will be AT the time of it's first close crossing, before it hits the left corner pocket of the gravity keyhole.

Therefore, this project is to get people there to move it before it comes back in 2036.

[American Patriot]

99942 Apophis Asteroid

99942 Apophis (previously better known by its provisional designation 2004 MN4) is a Near-Earth asteroid that caused a brief period of concern in December 2004 because initial observations indicated a relatively large probability that it would strike the Earth in 2029. However, additional observations provided improved predictions that eliminated the possibility of an impact on Earth or the Moon in 2029. A future impact on April 13, 2036, is still possible, keeping the asteroid at level 1 on the Torino impact hazard scale as of September 2005, with an estimated impact-probability of 1 in 5,560.

Apophis is expected to come close enough that on April 13, 2029 (Friday the 13th) it will become as bright as magnitude 3.3 (easily visible to the naked eye). This close approach will be visible from Europe, Africa, and western Asia. Throughout recorded history, no other closely-approaching objects of this size have been visible to the naked eye. As a result of its close passage, it will move from the Aten (see below) to the Apollo class.

(Close approach of Apophis on April 13th, 2029)

Apophis remains at level one on the Torino scale because of a very low but non-zero probability of impact in 2036. However, the approach in 2029 will substantially alter the object's orbit, making predictions uncertain without more data. "If we get radar ranging in 2013 [the next good opportunity], we should be able to predict the location of 2004 MN4 out to at least 2070." said Jon Giorgini of JPL

In July 2005, former Apollo astronaut Rusty Schweickart, as chairman of the B612 Foundation, formally asked NASA to investigate the possibility that the asteroid's post-2029 orbit could be in orbital resonance with the Earth, which would increase the probability of future impacts. For this to happen, Apophis would have to pass precisely through a certain very narrow region of space during the 2029 close approach, a "gravitational keyhole" no more than about 600 m across. Schweickart asked for an investigation of the necessity of placing a transponder on the asteroid for more accurate tracking of how its orbit is affected by the Yarkovsky effect. Naming

When first discovered, the object received the provisional designation 2004 MN4 (sometimes written 2004 MN4), and news and scientific articles about it referred to it by that name. When its orbit was sufficiently well calculated it received the permanent number 99942 (on June 24, 2005), the first numbered asteroid with Earth-impact solutions. Receiving a permanent number made it eligible for naming, and it promptly received the name "Apophis" as of July 19, 2005. Apophis is the Greek name of the Ancient Egyptian god Apep, "the Destroyer", who dwells in the eternal darkness of the Duat (underworld) and tries to destroy the Sun during its nightly passage.

Although the mythical Greek god may be appropriate, Tholen and Tucker (two of the co-discovers of the asteroid) are reportedly fans of the TV series Stargate: SG-1. In the first several seasons the show's main antagonist was an alien named Apophis who took the name for the Egyptian god and sought to destroy earth. (see "Asteroid Apophis set for a makeover" by Bill Cooke, Astronomy Magazine, August 18, 2005
Basic data

Apophis belongs to a group called the "Aten asteroids", asteroids with an orbital semi-major axis less than one astronomical unit. This particular one has an orbital period about the Sun of 323 days, and its path brings it across Earth's orbit twice on each passage around the Sun.

Based upon the observed brightness, Apophis's length was estimated at 415 m (1350 ft); a more refined estimate based on spectroscopic observations at NASA's Infrared Telescope Facility in Hawaii by Binzel, Rivkin, Bus, and Tokunaga (2005) is 320 m (1050 ft). Its mass is estimated to be 4.6×1010 kg.

As of February 2005 it is predicted that the asteroid will pass about 36,350 km (22,600 mi) from the Earth's surface on April 13, 2029, slightly higher than the altitude of geosynchronous satellites, which is 35,786 km (22,300 mi). Its brightness will be about magnitude 3.3, with a peak angular speed of 42° per hour. Such a close approach by an asteroid of this size is expected to occur only every 1,300 years or so. The maximum apparent angular diameter will be only 2 arcseconds, which means it will be a starlike point of light in all but the very largest telescopes

(The white bar indicates uncertainty in the range of possible positions.)
Discovery

Apophis was discovered on June 19, 2004, by Roy A. Tucker, David J. Tholen, and Fabrizio Bernardi of the NASA-funded University of Hawaii Asteroid Survey from Kitt Peak National Observatory in Arizona. This group observed for two nights. The new object received the provisional designation 2004 MN4, and naturally did not yet have its current name.

On December 18, the object was rediscovered from Australia by Gordon Garradd of the Siding Spring Survey, another NASA-funded NEA survey. Further observations from around the globe over the next several days allowed the Minor Planet Center to confirm the connection to the June discovery.

At this point the possibility of impact on April 13, 2029 was computed by the automatic Sentry system of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office. NEODyS, a similar automatic system at the University of Pisa, Italy and the University of Valladolid, Spain also detected the impact possibility and provided similar predictions.

Over the next several days, additional observations allowed for astronomers to narrow the cone of error. As they did, the probability of an impact event climbed, peaking at 2.7 percent (1 in 37). Combined with its size, this caused Apophis to be assessed at level four out of ten on the Torino Impact Hazard Scale and 1.10 on the Palermo scale, scales scientists use to represent the danger of an asteroid hitting Earth. These are the highest values for which any object has been rated on either scale.

Precovery observations from March 15, 2004 were identified on December 27, and an improved orbit was computed. The 2029 pass will actually be much closer than the first predictions (as close as a geosynchronous satellite), but the uncertainty is so much smaller that the risk of impact then went away. A pass on April 13, 2036 still carry some risk. As of September 2005, the odds of impact on that date is 0.018 percent (1 in 5,560) and the Palermo scale rating for Apophis is −1.35 and the Torino scale rating is 1.
History of estimates

• The original NASA report on December 24 mentioned impact chances of "around 1 in 300", which was widely reported in the media. The actual NASA estimates at the time were 1 in 233; they resulted in the Torino scale rating of 2, the first time any asteroid had received a rating above 1.
• Later that day, based on a total of 64 observations, the estimates were changed to 1 in 62 (1.6 percent), resulting in an update to the initial report and an upgrade to a Torino scale rating of 4.
• On December 25, the chances were first reported as 1 in 42 (2.4 percent) and later that day (based on 101 observations) as 1 in 45 (2.2 percent). At the same time, the asteroid's estimated diameter was lowered from 440 m to 390 m and its mass from 1.2×1011 kg to 8.3×1010 kg.
• On December 26 (based on a total of 169 observations), the impact probability was still estimated as 1 in 45 (2.2 percent), the estimates for diameter and mass were lowered to 380 m and 7.5×1010 kg, respectively.
• On December 27 (based on a total of 176 observations), the impact probability was raised to 1 in 37 (2.7 percent); diameter was increased to 390 m, and mass to 7.9×1010 kg.
• On December 27 in the afternoon, a precovery increased the span of observations to 287 days and allowed more accurate calculations to re-rate the asteroid's 2029 approach as level zero on the Torino scale (no threat). The cumulative impact probability was estimated to be around 0.004 percent, a lower risk than asteroid 2004 VD17, which once again became the greatest risk object (a position it had held since late November 2004). A 2053 approach to the earth still poses a minor risk of impact, and Apophis was still rated at level one on the Torino scale for this orbit.
• On December 28 at 12:23 GMT and (based on a total of 139 observations), produced a value of one on the Torino scale for 2044-04-13.29 and 2053-04-13.51.
• By 01:10 GMT on December 29 the only pass rated 1 on the Torino scale was for 2053-04-13.51 based on 139 observations spanning 287.71 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2004-Dec-27.8243).
• By 19:18 GMT on December 29 this was still the case based upon 147 observations spanning 288.92 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2004-Dec-29.02821), though the close encounters have changed and been reduced to 4 in total.
• By 13:46 GMT on December 30 no passes were rated above 0, based upon 157 observations spanning 289.33 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2004-Dec-29.44434). The most dangerous pass was rated at 1 in 7,143,000.
• By 22:34 GMT on December 30, 157 observations spanning 289.33 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2004-Dec-29.44434). One pass at 1 (Torino Scale) 3 other passes.
• By 03:57 GMT on January 2, 182 observations spanning 290.97 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2004-Dec-31.07992) One pass at 1 (Torino Scale) 19 other passes.
• By 14:49 GMT on January 3, 204 observations spanning 292.72 days (2004-Mar-15.1104 to 2005-Jan-01.82787) One pass at 1 (Torino Scale) 15 other passes.
• Extremely precise radar observations at Arecibo Observatory on January 27, 28, and 30 refine the orbit further and show that the April, 2029 close approach will occur at only 5.6 Earth radii, approximately one-half the distance previously estimated.
• A radar observation on August 7 refines the orbit further and eliminates the possibility of an impact in 2035. Only the pass in 2036 remains at Torino Scale

Possible impact effects

It must be stressed that the odds of impact are now known to be very low. Hence, the possible effects of an impact are largely irrelevant.

However, the initial reports resulted in widespread discussion on many Internet forums, including armchair speculation about exactly where Apophis (then known only as 2004 MN4) would hit and what would happen when it did.

NASA initially estimated the energy that Apophis would have released if it impacted Earth as the equivalent of 1480 megatons of TNT (114,000 times the energy from the nuclear bomb Little Boy, dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan). A more refined later estimate was 850 megatons. The impacts which created the Barringer Crater or caused the Tunguska event are estimated to be in the 10-20 megaton range. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons.

The exact effects of any impact would have varied based on the asteroid's composition, and the location and angle of impact. Any impact would have been extremely detrimental to an area of thousands of square kilometres, but would have been unlikely to have long-lasting global effects, such as the precipitation of an impact winter.

Based on the predicted time of impact (0.89 of a day, or about 21:20 UTC) and the fact that the asteroid would be approaching the Earth from outside of its orbit, the impact was likely to occur in the Eastern Hemisphere (time zones UTC +3 to UTC +10).

Any potential impact would have occurred at a velocity of 12.59 km/s.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/99942_Apophis
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wikipedia:Copyrights

Armageddon Online

[American Patriot]

Based on the predicted time of impact (0.89 of a day, or about 21:20 UTC) and the fact that the asteroid would be approaching the Earth from outside of its orbit, the impact was likely to occur in the Eastern Hemisphere (time zones UTC +3 to UTC +10).

Based on this information, this is an impact that would hit somewhere in the Atlantic all the way inland to as far as Russia, or even China to the Eastern side of Eurasia.

NASA initially estimated the energy that Apophis would have released if it impacted Earth as the equivalent of 1480 megatons of TNT (114,000 times the energy from the nuclear bomb Little Boy, dropped by the United States on Hiroshima, Japan). A more refined later estimate was 850 megatons. The impacts which created the Barringer Crater or caused the Tunguska event are estimated to be in the 10-20 megaton range. The 1883 eruption of Krakatoa was the equivalent of roughly 200 megatons.

850 megatons would be the same as 42.5 20 mt hydrogen bombs hitting in one spot at the same time. The land for many miles in all directions would be vaporized. The impact would crack the crust of the planet under the impact point. Land mass on the opposite side of the planet will be affected by a massive quake generated through a form of "hydro-shock" (some of you know what that means, but I'll explain what I mean, I don't remember the precise term). If a body is hit with a ballistic object, the object will dissipate energy in the body, shoving a shockwave through the body at near ballistic speeds, even if the ballistic object doesnt penetrate all the way.

Some evidence that asteroid strikes in the past have caused such damage to the opposite side of the planet. (Anyway, I don't remember the right scientific name off hand for this but I've seen evidence for it before).

If this hit the ocean, tsunamis would be generated on the order of hundreds of feet high and would travel inland on all continents on either side of the impact zone for dozens of miles (in some cases, hundreds because of terrain - or lack of terrain features like mountains). Cities will be destroyed.

The planet surface consists of 70.8% water. That means, roughly speaking, there's a 70% chance such an asteroid will randomly hit water and not land. Only a 29.2% chance of hitting land. The damage done to land will be significantly MORE if the asteroid hits the ocean than if it hits land.

The rest of that article talks us into believing they have determined beyond doubt this thing is going to miss us completely.

I for one won't fall for the re-writing of facts. They have had a chance to re-calculate the exact path, and I believe the ephemeris is in error, or there's a deliberate introduction of error into the ephemeris. People like Phil Platt (for whom I used to have some respect before he because a Leftist idiot and global warming advocate) are trying to calm the public. So is NASA. So are other government scientists.

We all know for a fact the government has been lying consistently to us about almost everything. What makes this any different?

You know... "Nothing to see here, keep working... we need your tax returns in on time..."

[American Patriot]

A radar observation on August 7 refines the orbit further and eliminates the possibility of an impact in 2035. Only the pass in 2036 remains at Torino Scale

I still think there is something significant in this "space trek" to land on an unnamed asteroid in the "2020s".

I don't think they know. I don't think they much care about humans. I don't think they really want to let us know.