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Earth Acquires a Quasi-Moon
richard_za writes "Earth has acquired a so called quasi-moon, an asteroid: 2003 YN1, which will encircle us for the next couple of years while it orbits the sun on a horse-shoe shaped path. Full story on News24. It was found by team led by Paul Chodas, an asteroid specialist at Nasa's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in California. An orbit simulation can be seen in this Java applet."
Despite the warnings about only 2-body maths being used in the applet, it's too tempting not to run it forwards and backwards a bit just to see... It turns out the closest approach would have been roughly a week before it was noticed on Dec 8th 2003, at 0.0455 AU or ~6,807,000 km. A fair old distance :-)
:-)
I guess it's not too often you get your own asteroid orbiting, but this is still going to be a looong way away for a lot of the time. Maybe when it does get close though, we can send something up to it - beats the hell out of going out to the Oort cloud, even if you do find a few planets along the way
Simon
Physicists get Hadrons!
What sort of eclipse can we expect from this? To experience a solar eclipse from a temporary sattelite would be a once-in-a-lifetime experience.
The Cheese Stands Alone.
An 'ear' is shorthand for an earful. It is a rather subjective form of measurement. In other words, they are saying that scientists will bore more than a few people to death before the meteor drifts off. This phenomena is similar to what happened over hale-bop, where those scientists bored that entire cult to death!
"Hex, Bugs, and Rockn'Roll"
"...it orbits the sun on a horse-shoe shaped path."
It sticks itself in reverse to avoid making a complete loop.
But how can this be a moon of Earth if it orbits THE SUN?
No sig for you!!
I wanted to call it "George" but the teenager in the house has christened it "Foof." (Two o's, like "moon". Her 1st draft was naturally scatological.) C'mon /.ers, let's come up with a name!
Also the first thing I thought of. Why the Hell not? How much delta-v would it take to push it into a stable orbit. Sounds like a better use of $$ than a lunar base. At least a lunar base as a jumping off point for Mars. This thing (or Cruithne) seem destined to become space stations at some point - why not now?
-- your Web browser is Ronald Reagan
The Discovery article says that New Scientist magazine reported it Saturday, making it sound like a new discovery. But then it goes on to say it's been around since 1996. So how is this news?
Hey, let's change orbit of that thing and have another space station
Interesting idea, but we have no idea of what the consequences are of rearranging the momenta of the solar system, or any other "environmental" impacts. How would you make such a decision without adequate knowledge of the impacts?
(Turns out that this body is scheduled to intercept an Asteroid, but because we messed with it, Bruce Willis dies in Armageddon).
to the Engineer, the glass is neither half full nor half empty. Its just two times too big.
What's up is that our telescopes are getting good enough to see those tiny rocks.
Be faithful to your obsessions. Identify them and be faithful to them, let them guide you like a sleepwalker. JG Ballard
What I want to know, is why isn't anyone pushing to steer these NEO rocks into one of the Lagrange points [http://www.physics.montana.edu/faculty/cornish/la grange.html] and construct a REAL space habitat instead of sending a man to Mars or establishing a "permanent" lunar base? It would be pretty cheap to do so, as the technology to build robots to do the grunt work is pretty much within our grasp now. Having sufficient bulk would make for a decent radiation shield, and even a micro-gravity environment is preferable to the zero-G of the ISS, as dust+debris are more readily managed.
There are at least 3 known small (a few kilometers in diameter) rocks that are close enough to send out a robot "tug" with a large amount of propellant, some good-sized solar arrays (or a nuclear battery) to power an ion drive. All the tug needs to do is match orbits with the asteroid, position itself, make contact and gently push it in the right direction. It would take a long time to put the asteroid into one of the L4/L5 points, but as tugs expire, new ones can be sent (or send additional tugs to speed up the process) at a very minimal cost, with a very simple trade-off of time vs money.
I would expect that by the time we get multiple asteroids in close proximity to each other in one of the stable Lagrange points, we would be able to send much more capable robotic workers to either tie the asteroids together with titanium I-beams, or better yet, tether them together with carbon fiber cables and put some spin on the assemblage to keep them under tension. Initially, we could construct living spaces inside the rocks, but as capabilities increase, and more material is placed into the mix, it would be possible to create a poor man's RingWorld with considerable acreage. It's a great place to harvest solar power, base elaborate interplanetary communications facilities and astronomical observatories.
The costs of maintaining an effort like this are very small, and it has the benefit of collecting wandering rocks that might one day drop in on us and put them to good use. Far better than programs to blow them up with nukes, and Bruce Willis won't be around to save us forever.
IANARS (I Am Not A Rocket Scientist), but from playing with the Java applet, it appears that 2003YN1 is going to come surprisingly close to Earth within the next decade.
In January of 2007, for instance, the asteroid will be trailing Earth by about 0.5 AU. In November of 2020, Earth will be trailing the asteroid by a hair's breadth (in cosmic terms) of 0.1 AU.
Now, four light-minutes (or even 0.75 light-minutes) isn't exactly spitting distance, but how often do we have asteroids within such close proximity to Earth, in such convenient orbits? I imagine it would be fairly cheap to launch a probe to match orbits with the asteroid, rendezvous with it and do some science. A return mission in 2020 would be a distinct possibility (if it were useful, which I'm not sure it would be).
Now, the budgetary and planning requirements for a 2007 mission are probably unmanageable at this late date, especially given NASA's (or ESA's) current budgets. But we've got 16 years to plan for a 2020 mission. What manner of experiments might we be able to devise in the intervening years? What possibilities can you think of?
1) Establish an unmanned observatory on the asteroid
2) Land a power source and construct a propulsion system (using a linear accelerator to eject the asteroid's own mass?) and try to change the asteroid's orbit. Depending on the composition of that baby, it might be worth a pretty penny if we could put it into near Earth orbit for mining.
3) Same as #2, only turn the asteroid into a long-term habitat. Free giant space station, anyone?
OK, so these ideas are a bit far-fetched, possibly venturing into the realm of science fiction. But dreams have to start somewhere...