Near Earth Objects

[Turtle]

I am aware of the asteroid landing plans. But I like quantity. Take one or two samples and you may develop a false impression of what is the norm. I want these mini-probes to be numbered in the scores, or even hundreds!

Given the anti-science and anti-government spending attitude from the conservatives in the US, we should count ourselves lucky to get even one probe from NASA. There's another effort IIRC by a private group whose interest is in mining; I'll have to look around for that info.

 

EDit: Here ya go:

 

Private Asteroid-Mining Project Launching Tiny Satellites in 2014

 

A billionaire-backed asteroid-mining company aims to start putting its big plans into action soon, launching its first hardware into space by this time next year.

 

Planetary Resources, which counts Google execs Larry Page and Eric Schmidt among its investors, plans to loft a set of tiny "cubesats" to Earth orbit in early 2014, to test out gear for its first line of asteroid-prospecting spacecraft.

 

"Our belief and our philosophy is that the best testbed is space itself," Chris Voorhees, Planetary Resources' vice president of spacecraft development, said Wednesday (April 24) during a Google+ Hangout event. ...

Edited May 13, 2014 by Turtle

[Eclogite]

There's another effort IIRC by a private group whose interest is in mining; I'll have to look around for that info.

 

EDit: Here ya go:

 

Private Asteroid-Mining Project Launching Tiny Satellites in 2014

 

Damn! The bastards stole my idea several years before I thought of it. Unconscionable behaviour!

[Ehropa]

I think people are messing with things they don't fully understand. You don't mine asteroids and there's nothing you can do about an NEO if it wants to become more than just neart.

[Eclogite]

Well, if we hadn't messed with things we don't fully understand we would still be sititing in dank caves without the benefit of fire. What makes us human is messing with things we don't fully understand. That's how we get to understand them. (I'll bet you don't know what a J-K flip flop is, yet you are happily messing with your computer. :))

 

Now why do you think we shouldn't mine asteroids? What do you think the downsides are?

 

And, not surprsingly, there are things we shall be able to do with NEOs in the future to prevent them impacting the Earth. However, to advance our technology to that point we shall have to "mess with things we don't fully understand".

 

I summary, I can't understand why you would want us to avoid investigating what will ultimately rain death and destruction down on our heads, because there is a small possibility that such investigation might rain down minor death and middling destruction. Could you explain your logic please?

[Turtle]

I think people are messing with things they don't fully understand. You don't mine asteroids and there's nothing you can do about an NEO if it wants to become more than just neart.

I think it's you who doesn't understand what is known about asteroids. Do you have some supporting references for your assertions, or are you just exhibiting troll behavior? Have you read this entire thread? If not, then please do. If so, then the onus is on you to give evidence or reference to refute specifics.

[LaurieAG]

Here are two separate articles printed in the newspapers today, Saturday the 17th May 2014.   

 

"Satellite has state in spin", BRISBANE: Queenslanders have had a visit from space, and it's given them a thrill. People in various parts of the state have reported seeing a very large, flaming ball of light, with a blue and orange tail, tear through the night sky before crashing to earth in Townsville on Thursday night. Experts said the colour in the object's tail would suggest it was a satellite, with the plastics and metals letting off different colours when they burn.

 

"Russian rocket falls back to Earth", A Russian Proton rocket carrying a European built satellite has fallen back to Earth.shortly after lift-off in the latest accident to hit the country's once-proud space industry. Russian space officials said the rockets control engine failed 545 seconds after it took off from the Bailkonur space center that Moscow leases in Kazakhstan. State television showed the rocket and its express-AM4P communication satellite, reported to be worth $US29 billion, burning up in the upper layers of the atmosphere above the Pacific Ocean. "The flight is over", the commentator said.

[Eclogite]

US$29 billion? I don't think so. $2.9 billion? No way. $290 million. Most likely.

 

(It was so much easier in the old days when you only had to report the successful launches.)

[Turtle]

Here's an infographic from NASA that illustrates their plan to use a robot spacecraft to capture an asteroid and bring it to a stable orbit around the Moon for study by astronauts. :moon:

 

How to Catch an Asteroid: NASA Mission Explained (Infographic) 

[Deepwater6]

I think this is the thread Turtle transferred to the new platform. I thought it had a new/different name, but this is the only one I could find.

 

Sunday a piece described by Space.com as being the size of a house will whiz by. There is also an article about a comet that will be visible with small telescopes or binoculars. If you go to the website (Space.com) you can get details if you want to try and catch a view. I would attach the articles, but since the switch I am unable to bring attachments into my posts. With or without the use of the clipboard they just won't go. Something may need to be disabled on my computer or I may be doing something wrong. Any ideas would be appreciated.

[Turtle]

I think this is the thread Turtle transferred to the new platform. I thought it had a new/different name, but this is the only one I could find.

 

Sunday a piece described by Space.com as being the size of a house will whiz by. There is also an article about a comet that will be visible with small telescopes or binoculars. If you go to the website (Space.com) you can get details if you want to try and catch a view. I would attach the articles, but since the switch I am unable to bring attachments into my posts. With or without the use of the clipboard they just won't go. Something may need to be disabled on my computer or I may be doing something wrong. Any ideas would be appreciated.

It's coming right for us!! :lol: Not really. Good catch Deepwater. Here's some info and then I'll give you some help on the formatting of urls and quotes.

 

Spaceweather.com Sept. 5, 2014

WEEKEND ASTEROID FLYBY: This Sunday, a house-sized asteroid named "2014 RC" will fly through the Earth-Moon system almost inside the orbit of geosynchronous satellites. At closest approach, Sept. 7th at 18:18 UTC, the 20-meter-wide space rock will pass just 40,000 km over New Zealand.

...

There is no danger of a collision with Earth.

 

Asteroid 2014 RC was discovered on the night of August 31 by the Catalina Sky Survey near Tucson, Arizona, and independently detected the next night by the Pan-STARRS 1 telescope, located on the summit of Haleakalā on Maui, Hawaii. Follow-up observations quickly confirmed the orbit of 2014 RC: it comes from just beyond the orbit of Mars.

...

OK, now to the posting. This seems to be a problem between IE & the forum software and while no one seems to have a 'fix', there is a work-around. When you click Reply there is a little Toggle Switch icon in the upper left of the editing box; flip it so all the editing tools gray out. Now you can click on Quote in a post you want to quote and it will appear in text format in the editing box.

To add other quotes or urls you need to type in manually the BB codes. So for example, to get the above url to show, I typed

[url=http://www.spaceweather.com/]Spaceweather.com Sept. 5, 2014[/url]

Your clipboard will also work and you can paste in material you have copied. To get an image from a url to display in a post, type the img BB code tags. (Put the brackets around img and /img)

 

img image url here /img

[Deepwater6]

That worked, thank you.

[Eclogite]

I sometimes feel we need one of these to make land fall, not an airburst, a few minutes of Earth revolution away from a major center of population, so that governments wake up and invest some real money in detection resources and in diversion techniques.

[Deepwater6]

Whoooa, Luckily this landed in a good spot for us. A crater this size hitting a metropolitan area would wake up a few people I suspect. Something like this created in the middle of Times Square would likely get someone's attention. 

 

When I see these craters I always think of how many strikes that weren't recorded because they fell in the oceans or other uninhabited spots on Earth. Thus masking the issue and adding to some governments acting indifferent to the events.

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29106843

[Turtle]

Whoooa, Luckily this landed in a good spot for us. A crater this size hitting a metropolitan area would wake up a few people I suspect. Something like this created in the middle of Times Square would likely get someone's attention. 

 

When I see these craters I always think of how many strikes that weren't recorded because they fell in the oceans or other uninhabited spots on Earth. Thus masking the issue and adding to some governments acting indifferent to the events.

 

http://www.bbc.com/news/world-latin-america-29106843

Way to spot an impactor Deep. :omg: I suspect those who argue against spending money on detecting, warning, or defending against impactors will point to the 'remote' possibility and when a strike does do attention-getting damage they won't change their mind. Either they will claim it's already happened so won't happen again or that the damage was a fluke or some such a matter.

 

All-in-all I think there's quite a bit being done and I point to all the stories in this thread as evidence.

[Deepwater6]

http://www.space.com/35494-car-sized-space-rock-gives-earth-real-close-shave-video.html

 

Well it's been awhile since I've seen one of these. Although I'm sure they are still coming in/by with the same regularity, I've just been too busy lately.

 

I don't get as much time to surf the space sites as I used to anymore. Maybe it's because I waste too much of my time reading up on the insanity that is modern day American politics.

 

Never the less it was a nice sized NEO that shaved us  and most humans will survive to fight another day. :shade:  
 

Edited January 30, 2017 by Deepwater6

[Turtle]

http://www.space.com/35494-car-sized-space-rock-gives-earth-real-close-shave-video.html

 

Well it's been awhile since I've seen one of these. Although I'm sure they are still coming in/by with the same regularity, I've just been too busy lately.

 

I don't get as much time to surf the space sites as I used to anymore. Maybe it's because I waste too much of my time reading up on the insanity that is modern day American politics.

 

Never the less it was a nice sized NEO that shaved us  and most humans will survive to fight another day. :shade:

Bless your heart for the diversion of a nice sized NEO shave. :thumbs_up

 

I haven't been keeping up either; some see, some say, some saw. Not sure of your regular sources, and I have probably recommended this before, but SpaceWeather.com has daily data on hits.

All Sky Fireball Network

Every night, a network of NASA all-sky cameras scans the skies above the United States for meteoritic fireballs. Automated software maintained by NASA's Meteoroid Environment Office calculates their orbits, velocity, penetration depth in Earth's atmosphere and many other characteristics. Daily results are presented here on Spaceweather.com.

On Jan. 30, 2017, the network reported 17 fireballs.

(17 sporadics)

In this diagram of the inner solar system, all of the fireball orbits intersect at a single point--Earth. The orbits are color-coded by velocity, from slow (red) to fast (blue). [Larger image] movies

[OceanBreeze]

Looking at this picture of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids, it seems a wonder we don’t get hit more often by a big one.

 

 

Explanation:  Are asteroids dangerous? Some are, but the likelihood of a dangerous asteroid striking the Earth during any given year is low. Because some past mass extinction events have been linked to asteroid impacts, however, humanity has made it a priority to find and catalog those asteroids that may one day affect life on Earth. Pictured above are the orbits of the over 1,000 known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs). These documented tumbling boulders of rock and ice are over 140 meters across and will pass within 7.5 million kilometers of Earth -- about 20 times the distance to the Moon. Although none of them will strike the Earth in the next 100 years -- not all PHAs have been discovered, and past 100 years, many orbits become hard to predict. Were an asteroid of this size to impact the Earth, it could raise dangerous tsunamis, for example. Of course rocks and ice bits of much smaller size strike the Earth every day, usually pose no danger, and sometimes creating memorable fireball and meteor displays.