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Probe to 'Look Inside' Asteroids
bigjnsa500 writes "A new space mission concept by the European Space Agency called Deep Interior was unveiled at a Paris conference earlier this week, according to the BBC. Apparently: 'It aims to look inside asteroids to reveal how they are made. Deep Interior would use radar to probe the origin and evolution of two near-Earth objects less than 1km across. The mission, which could launch some time later this decade, would also give clues to how the planets evolved.' NASA also has a similar concept called Deep Impact."
Cue the uranus jokes:
wait for it...
GO!
everyone who think the scientists that created this probe have not heard enough "ass-teroid probe jokes"
actually I am happy to see you, however that is in fact a banana in my pocket.
They are launching a probe INTO the astroid? Are they crazy? jeez, what people will do for the name of science.
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Found a bunch of quarters.
Project Lord of the Rings (2012, Probe to check out the rings of Saturn)
Project Pluto Nash (2009, A giant probe/bomb to send to the planetoid Pluto in hopes of melting the ice)
Project Mercury Rising (2015, Mission to send an autistic austronaut to Mercury to see if it really is as hot as they think)
Come on people, what other movie names can fit in well with future NASA missions?
And I would hazard a guess that you be on the receiving end of said impact?
And one day in history class we will all learn about the day that NASA went out of business because they spent all of their money on pointless things like this. When they finally finish their research they will wonder what they will actually do with the information and wonder what idiot came up with the idea in the first place.
I hope they step up the technolgy and use the latest nuclear warheads on teh asteroids. Come to think of it, we could detonate several of these every Fourth of July and have a video available for streaming. Would certainly be a fun way to use nuclear weapons. Although the cost is too great...:(
Or it could be privately funded and we could have real-life Asteroids (game). Mining asteroids...mmm.
Any body gotten the asteroids consent?
If somebody used a probe to look deep inside you... wouldn't you want them to have asked first?
Most people aren't thought about after they're gone. "I wonder where Rob got the plutonium" is better than most get.
If you're just getting your first deep impact 30 days *after* the child is born something tells me it ain't your kid. Wife hm?
(Just joking of course, seriously, congrats on fatherhood).
That must be a fun job. I can just picture all the people trying to look serious standing around at mission control going pchearrrrbooommm.
When are they going to send a probe to Uranus?
And I mean that in every nice way possible. There's actually a reason to study some of the moons there.
Nasa has a similar mission - Deep Impact - which will blow a hole in the comet Tempel 1 and measure the effects.
I'm pretty sure the NASA mission's title - Deep Impact - is partly a homage to the movie of the same name. For all of its flaws, the movie's producers did consult with NASA and make a sincere effort to get the science right.
Armageddon - the Bruce Willis/Ben Affleck flick that was the other asteroid picture that summer - spent zillions on special effects, but botched the science so badly that astronomers were seen choking on their popcorn. As I recall the plot and acting were equally wretched - but the movie was a success at the box office. There's no accounting for taste.
And send a rag-tag deep core drilling team to do the job?
There is a fine line between being a cultivated citizen and being someone else's crop. - A. J. Patrick Liszkie
but the comms system didn't survive the impact.
The sound of you failing it.
YFI
I wonder if asteroid is a delecacy on other planets...
I don't knw what kind of radar these guys are planning to send. But GPR (ground penetrating radar) only goes a few meters. I seriously doubt that they are going to launch an AGEIS system. All this proves- manned space flight (while possibly silly) is terribly better at geology. Why? We got shovels sukka.
Why is it that the American name is cheesy and inaccurate and the European name is cheesy and repetitive and both names are chock-full of sexual innuendo? Can nobody find good names these days?
I vote for renaming the project to "Looking In Rocks", just for the sake of simplicity.
How many grad students can fit in a Space Shuttle cargo bay?
In one message, we have:
Hilton and a deep interior probe.
And they're getting funding for this?
The problem with quotes on the internet, is that nobody bothers to check their veracity. -- Abraham Lincoln
They will find hunks of rock and crap inside. If they are lucky they might find some other crap, but if its valuable crap it will most likely be left alone for years as it would be far too expensive to mine it.
EOF
In all likelihood, more like "give clues to how the planets didn't evolve. Answers tend to lead to more questions that way.
It is a miracle that curiosity survives formal education. - Einstein
Just to clarefy - the mission that are talked about is an ESA mission.. y'know, those guys that ain't NASA, nor russkies or from Red China? Anyway, thats really beside the point here.
I judge from your comment, you seem to think that learning about space for the sake of knowledge is not worth it... well, the other option is to learn about space with an eye to make money out of it. It has quite often been proposed that it ought to be possible to mine astroids for raw materials to use in space (build spacestations, spaceships and whatnot in space) or on earth. In order to do this, we need a better understanding on how an astroid is put together - thus this mission.
As for the NASA mission briefly mentioned, thats a completly different mission; it seeks to learn more about comets and how they are made up. While less than ideal for mining, this is important also - not just for the pure science (a concept I think you may find hard to understand) but because we one day may need to alter the orbit / blow up a comet that are on a collisioncourse with earth. If we don't know how it is put together, we're in a worse situation to do just that.
Everything in the world is controlled by a small, evil group to which, unfortunately, no one you know belongs.
Project Take The Money And Run (1996-2001, the X-33 that went way over it's billion dollar budget but literally never got off the ground)
An anonymous coward writes: "NASA today announced that its latest space probe, Waste of Money IV, successfully impacted on the asteroid's surface, breaking into a million pieces, each worth approximately $50. The ESA probe with a similar goal, Disaster Waiting to Happen II, exploded two months earlier on the launchpad."
because robots and computers don't get drunk or make passes at each other. And because the film-makers wanted less wooden actors, possibly.
great sig, by the way!
Real stupidity beats artificial intelligence every time.
-- Terry Pratchett, Hogfather
I've been inside asteroids once, and the only thing worthwhile I found were some quarters...
Because by virtue of being Anonymous, you are by default a troll or flamer untill proven otherwise. And you logged onto slashdot and made that silly comment, it too might have gotten modded +5.
It's Slashdot for ya, live with it. heh
Life is not for the lazy.
Anyone else noticed that a lot of recent space project proposals state the purpose is to learn more about how planets or even the entire solar system was formed?
Is this just fashionable or a ploy to get funding?
Actually, Deep Impact (NASA came up with the name before the movie, by the way) is quite different. Half of the Deep Impact spacecraft will actually ram into a comet (not an asteroid) in an attempt to churn up material from inside the comet. This is so the other half of the spacecraft, as well as telescopes on Earth, can see what is the composition, density, etc. of comets.
Have you guys noticed all of these agencies suddenly not just planning to make craft that can detonate an asteroid, but that are making one right now. Yea, like right now. I count 3 G7 governments and 1 UN so far over the world.
Can somebody tell us when this fat bitch is going to ram a hole through the earth? Just in case my 2012-2014 calculation is off?
Seriously folks. This isn't academic anymore. People that don't spend money on shit for space travel are building these ships to kill an asteroid. A complete exercise is fulitiy at our current tech level, which is making me wonder- what/when the fuck is it gonna hit us?
"Well, we've managed to get the probe on the asteroid. This 1.2billion dollar mining probe has worked flawlessly. After 6 months of drilling some 300meters into the surface of the asteroid we can finally report that the asteriod core is made up of the same rock that it's crust is made of. Thank you."
My understanding is that Euro-space just recently buried a probe into the asteriod 'Mars'. Aren't they still waiting to get data back from that one?
You are checking your backups, aren't you?
...several smaller asteroids. And inside those? You guessed it: more, smaller, asteroids.
ascii art
...to Paris (Hilton)
why go to just 2 of the rocks?
seeing that the ESA is still in a 'planning' mode. what would the impact be to just orbit outside the belt and map ALL of the rocks locations, rotations, orbits, and xray each one for compisition?
i think that the results of the above type of survey would be more informational than just sampling 2 far away boulders.
The original BBC article was poorly written, but from it we learn something closer to the truth: "A proposal for the project, described here at the Committee on Space Research (Cospar) scientific assembly, was submitted to Nasa two weeks ago." It's a NASA mission, not an ESA mission.
NASA also has a similar concept called Deep Impact
Wrong. The article was comparing an ESA mission called Don Quijote to Deep Impact. Deep Interior and Deep Impact are very different. One will try to blast an enormous crater in an asteroid, and the other will passively scan an asteroid with radar.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
this.
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Putting the ass in asteroid since 1996
Ever wonder what the two other holes are for?
on that common-denominator-humor option: I'm glad to see that the Human Rights Commission is finally taking an interest in ... oh, nevermind.
Intelligent Design: because MATH is HARD.
If you have a project invoving looking inside a floating rock in space by means of penetration, that will be ASSteroid probing!
check this or pdf version out.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show
a nickel is 5 cents.
Judging from the fact that they rejected the corrected story I submitted, the slashdot editors are more interested in covering their own behinds than they are in true and accurate news. I'd be far more impressed if somebody 'fessed up to not properly reading the article.
"I'm so moist I'm sticking to the leather." -Kermit the Frog on The Late Late Show