Asteroid security

Asteroid Impact In The Ocean Will Cause High Death Toll, Scientist Warns

A scientist warned that a major asteroid impact in the Atlantic Ocean would result in very high death tolls. The scientist also described what would happen to the coastal regions if a massive asteroid breaches Earth’s atmosphere and hits the ocean.

According to NASA, hundreds to thousands of small asteroids buzz near Earth on a daily basis. Since many of these space rocks are too small, they usually just burn up and disintegrate in the atmosphere before reaching the ground.

However, the agency admitted that there are massive space rocks that are in danger of hitting Earth. Some of these asteroids are so big that they can easily wipe out entire cities or even states. For cosmochemist Natalie Starkey, necessary steps should be taken in order to ensure Earth’s safety against these kinds of asteroids.

“If we fail in the future to protect the planet from space threats, then we could expect a large asteroid or comet impact to wreak havoc on the Earth’s surface, resulting in major global changed and high death tolls,” she said according to Express.

Asteroid security

NASA Is Going to Knock an Asteroid Out of Orbit in First-Ever Planetary Defense Test

As over-the-top as movies like Armageddon and Deep Impact may be, they do get across a very non-fictional message: you definitely don't want to be around if and when an actual big honkin' asteroid smacks into Earth. Even the tiny interlopers that crash into our planet every now and then can do some crazy and violent damage to entire cities. Fortunately, the folks at NASA are on the case, and they're preparing to launch a mission to test new tech designed to deflect life-threatening asteroids. 

In what's being touted as the first-ever test of a true planetary defense system, NASA has teamed up with the European Space Agency (ESA) to try and knock an asteroid off course by slamming into it with a special probe traveling at roughly four miles per second.

Asteroid security

NASA will attempt to knock an asteroid out of orbit for the first time in 2022

If an asteroid were to head toward Earth, we would be quite defenseless, as we have not successfully developed a method that could reduce — or entirely avert — the impact of a devastating collision. However, that may be about to change. NASA has approved a project called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), the aim of which is to throw a "small" asteroid off course in October 2022. The asteroid in question, informally known as Didymoon, is a moon asteroid about 150 meters tall. It's part of a double asteroid system — named after the Greek word for twins, Didymos — in which it orbits another 800-meter asteroid about a kilometer away.

Asteroid security

NASA asteroid WARNING: Space agency admits 'we can’t hide CATASTROPHIC event'

Some conspiracy theorists believe NASA is involved in a cover-up regarding a catastrophic event that could wipe out the human race. 

However, Dr Thaller has shut down those claims. 

She revealed there is no way the space agency would be able to hide such an occurrence. 

She told BigThink: “If scientists actually knew there was a catastrophic asteroid heading towards Earth, would we tell you?

“The answer is yes.

“We study the skies every night looking for objects that might be on a collision course towards Earth. 

“If we find anything that looks risky, we would inform lots of people.

“The other thing is the sky is available to everyone on Earth, no one governs it and there are telescopes all over the place. 

“There is no way anyone could hide the fact that a huge asteroid was on its way.”

Asteroid security

NASA to crash 13,500mph spacecraft into ASTEROID in mission to stop deadly strike on Earth

The US space agency is working on the most fiery and crucial stage of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test, DART.

The experiment will be the latest in NASA’s mission to protect Earth from deadly asteroid strikes.
Depending on the size of the rock, it could cause a mass extinction event – like the type that wiped out dinosaurs – by sparking a mini ice age.

The asteroid that NASA aims to hit is not actually a threat to Earth, but by smashing into it, the DART crew will be able to see if a similar deflection would work on future asteroids.

In the test, a NASA craft will slam into its target – asteroid Didymos – to see whether it can successfully change the direction of the rock.

Didymos is approximately 800m across and has a secondary orbiting body – known as a “moonlet” – that is 150m in size.

Using state-of-the-art technology, the spaceship will smash into the smaller satellite at a distance of 11 million km from Earth.

Asteroid security

Air Force remains silent after huge meteor hits near US military base

A meteor hit the earth and exploded with 2.1 kilotons of force last month, but the US Air Force has made no mention of the event.

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory confirmed an object of unspecified size travelling at 24.4 kilometres per second struck earth in Greenland, just 43 kilometres north of an early missile warning Thule Air Base on the 25th of July, 2018.

Director of the Nuclear Information Project for the Federation of American Scientists, Hans Kristensen, tweeted about the impact, but America’s Air Force has not reported the event.

Asteroid security

America Isn't Ready to Handle a Catastrophic Asteroid Impact, New Report Warns

We’ve long said that humans generally worry about the wrong asteroids. Tabloids love to publish headlines about “potentially hazardous asteroids,” a category created by NASA that can be a bit misleading. The truly worrisome rocks are the smaller ones that we aren’t tracking.

The US National Science and Technology Council knows about this problem—and thankfully, it plans to do something about it, according to a report the council released yesterday.

A 2005 congressional mandate stated that NASA would try to keep track of 90 percent of the near-Earth objects larger than 460 feet (140 meters). We’re only a third of the way there, reports Quartz, and even then, our existing catalogue might be flawed, according to a recent paper. But before something can be tracked, it must be documented, and even that effort is behind scheduled, according to the new report:

Since 2005, the number of NEOs catalogued in this range has almost tripled, while the total number of catalogued NEOs has increased by almost five times. Nevertheless, according to a 2017 report from NASA’s NEO Science Definition Team, current observational capabilities are suited to only finding less than half of all 140 meter objects by 2033, and planned improvements will still fall short of the timeline that Congress directed.

Asteroid security

'Lost' asteroid the size of the Statue of Liberty to buzz by Earth Tuesday

An asteroid the size of New York City's Statue of Liberty is expected to buzz by Earth Tuesday, and this time, scientists are ready and waiting.

At its closest point, the asteroid – called 2010 WC9 – will be roughly 126,000 miles from earth, about half the distance between Earth and the moon at approximately 6:05 ET, according to NASA's Center for Near Earth Object Studies (CNEOS).

The estimated diameter of the asteroid ranges from 197 to 427 feet, making this "pass one of the closest approaches ever observed of an asteroid of this size," EarthSky reports.

That's nothing compared to asteroids that make up the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, which can measure to about 580 miles across, NASA explains on its website. Those asteroids, however, pose no threat to Earth.

Asteroid security

Threat assessment: NASA’s asteroid hunter reveals scariest, Earth-bound objects (VIDEO)

Hundreds of cosmic objects swarming unnervingly close to Earth come to life in an intimidating new NASA visualization, based on the latest data from its asteroid-hunting mission.

NEOWISE has charted almost 30,000 objects since it resumed its work in 2013, including 788 near-Earth objects and 136 comets. Ten of the objects discovered by NEOWISE in the past year alone have been classified as potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs).

NASA’s latest animation is based on detections made by the telescope over its last four years of surveying the solar system. The green dots represent near-Earth asteroids while the yellow dots stand for comets.

A ‘near-Earth object’ is defined as an asteroid or comet whose orbit intersects with the Earth's and therefore may pose a threat. They can range in length from meters to tens of kilometers. Near-Earth objects are classified as potentially hazardous based on their size and how closely they approach Earth's orbit.

More than 2.5 million infrared images of the sky were collected last year by the survey and have been added to previous years of data to complete an archive of 10.3 million sets of images. The project has scanned the sky nearly eight times over the four-year period. It is currently three-quarters of the way through its ninth run and will continue through to June of this year.

Asteroid security

30-metre asteroid skimming past Earth in October will test Nasa's doomsday 'planetary defence system'

On October 12, a 30-metre is set to make a 'close' flyby of Earth.

The asteroid, named 2012 TC4, will pass just 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometres) from Earth for the first time since it went out of range in 2012.

Nasa is using this opportunity to test it's 'planetary defence system' put in place to protect Earth from a doomsday asteroid threat. 

Asteroid 2012 TC4 is estimated to be between 10 and 30 metres in size.

Michael Kelley, a scientist working on the Nasa TC4 observation campaign, said: 'Scientists have always appreciated knowing when an asteroid will make a close approach to and safely pass the Earth because they can make preparations to collect data to characterise and learn as much as possible about it.

Asteroid security

White House Releases Strategy in Case of 'Killer Asteroid'

The report was written by the Interagency Working Group (IWG) for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN). The document's purpose is to "seek to improve our Nation's preparedness to address the hazard of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration of existing national and international assets and adding important capabilities that are currently lacking."

It outlined seven strategic goals, including to improve the detection and characterization of NEO's, to improve modeling and predictions of their behavior, to develop methods to deflect and disturb them, to develop emergency procedures in an impact scenario, to establish impact response and recovery procedures, to leverage and support international cooperation in the event of a potential NEO impact, as well as to coordinate communications of related US government agencies and establish a series of procedures if a potential NEO impact is detected.

The report comes in the wake of December 2016 comments from NASA senior scientist Joseph Nuth saying there is "not a hell of a lot we can do about" an asteroid strike. Nuth claimed that if a NEO of significant size is found to be on a collision course with Earth, there would not be ample time to construct a deflection device.

Asteroid security

NASA scientist warns Earth is due for 'extinction-level' event

Joseph Nuth, an award-winning scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, told attendees during Monday’s annual American Geophysical Union meeting in San Francisco that policymakers should start preparing for such a possible cataclysmic strike, despite the extremely long odds of it happening.

“But on the other hand, they are the extinction-level events, things like dinosaur killers, they’re 50 to 60 million years apart, essentially,” Nuth said. “You could say, of course, we’re due, but it’s a random course at that point.”

Making matters even worse is Nuth’s claim that humanity isn’t close to being prepared for such a threat, The Guardian reported.

“The biggest problem, basically, is there’s not a hell of a lot we can do about it at the moment,” Nuth said.

Asteroid security

NASA to land on asteroid that could have once seeded life, but may now destroy Earth

NASA is about to launch a $1 billion 7-year mission to probe asteroid Bennu, which may carry the building blocks of organic life, but also has a chance of hitting Earth late in the next century.

“It may be destined to cause immense suffering and death,” Dante Lauretta, professor of planetary science at Arizona University and the lead researcher on the OSIRIS-REx mission, told the Sunday Times.

Its trajectory is unpredictable due to what is known as the Yarkovsky effect, in which the asteroid absorbs the energy of sunlight and then gives it off as heat, which serves as a thruster that constantly makes slight shifts to its path.

Asteroid security

How Big Are Those Killer Asteroids? A Critic Says NASA Doesn’t Know.

More than 14,000 known asteroids zip through Earth’s neighborhood. They will all miss Earth in the coming decades.

But hundreds of thousands more have not yet been discovered, and whether any of those are on course to slam into our planet, no one knows. So finding and tracking all the asteroids that could cross Earth’s path would allow officials to issue warnings and potentially provide time to deflect dangerous ones.

The community of scientists contemplating such doomsday possibilities is small and usually cordial — at least until Nathan P. Myhrvold barged in. Once the chief technologist at Microsoft, Dr. Myhrvold moved on to other endeavors like a six-volume, 2,438-page compendium of cooking knowledge that has been celebrated by chefs. (A sequel, about baking, is in the works.)

Asteroid security

Watch scientists fire up laser weapon that could blast asteroids away from Earth and make interstellar travel a reality

Researchers have unveiled the ultimate sci-fi laser weapon.

DE-STAR, or Directed Energy System for Targeting of Asteroids and exploRation, uses a massive array of laser beams to intercept and deflect asteroids - and could also be used as a photon drive for insterstellar travel.

Researchers have revealed the system working in the lab - albeit on a smaller scale.It is the brainchild of UC Santa Barbara physicist Philip Lubin and Gary B. Hughes, a researcher and professor at California Polytechnic State University, San Luis Obispo. 

To simulate a laser's ability to deflect an asteroid, Travis Brashears led a group of students in tests that simulate space conditions. 

Asteroid security 

Asteroid Day tries to save life as we know it

It would be the end of the world as we know it. A relatively small lump of rock – a small asteroid, perhaps only a few hundred metres across – plunging to Earth would devastate a continent or trigger tsunamis. Civilisation would be set back several centuries.

It is a real risk, say a group of astronauts and astronomers who are to highlight the threat facing humanity by marking 30 June as Asteroid Day.