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ESA Selects Targets for Asteroid Deflection Test
Vandil X writes "The European Space Agency has announced that it has selected two candidate asteroid targets for a planned mission to impact an asteroid in an attempt to deflect the asteroid off course by a measurable amount. The mission, dubbed "Don Quijote," will send two spacecraft to their final choice asteroid. One craft will impact the asteroid while the other will observe the asteroid before and after the collision. The mission craft and target selection are expected to be finalized sometime in 2007."
What's wrong with the good old p=mv (momentum)?
let's hope these rockets don't inherit our fellow gentleman's sense of direction... ;D
I hope Bruce Willis in onboard.
:wq
Can't we just drill 20 miles into it and blow the fucker up with a nuke?
...when that big one comes flying by to send us up, the ESA will be there to save. Armageddon (the movie) anyone?
An old-timer with old-timey ideas.
Is this simply a kamikazee run? I did not read anything to make me think otherwise. I seriously question the science of this... being able to calculate the change in direction should only be complicate by not knowing the exact mass of the asteroid.
I would think something like white paint (using the reflective properties to move the asteroid) would be more interesting. Slower, for sure, but much more effective over a period of months or years.
Is there something to this mission that I am missing?
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
...if they blow it off course in the wrong direction?
What if the asteroid is the size of texas? Is the rocket strong enough to knock something that large off it's course?
sending two amadillos with nukes like in armagedon.
I'll go if Liv Tyler is waiting upon my return (although when I get back she will be a bit old).
FTA: On 19 December 2004 MN4, an asteroid of about 400 m, lost since its discovery six months earlier, was observed again and its orbit was computed. It immediately became clear that the chances that it could hit the Earth during a close encounter in 2029 were unusually high. As the days passed the probability did not decrease and the asteroid became notorious for surpassing all previous records in the Torino and Palermo impact risk scales - scales that measure the risk of an asteroid impact just as the Richter scale quantifies the size of an earthquake.
It is funny what we never think of- every night while we sleep there are so many people keeping us safe- Call me a geek, but astronomers are unsung heroes. I am glad someone is worried about destruction of the Earth...
And All I Ask is a Tall Ship And a Star to Steer Her By
... but can only watch it in black and white vector graphics, and have to pay $0.25 to view it.
...are located here. Looks kind of odd.
In other news, the asteroid deflected in 2008 by the European Space Agency has been confirmed as hitting Earth in December this year, with an expected impact point near Switzerland.
It's been nice knowing you folks.
my horoscope... this could immeasurably ruin my life!! Don't these insensitive rock-et science clods know they could end up making it so I never meet a woman?
Support NYCountryLawyer RIAA vs People
we can't even project to Moon without gravitation force guiding our way, how are we to know which way the detered astroid will head toward after?
Are we that competent already?
Doesn't sound like a brilight idea to push rocks around in the space...
"Don't let fools fool you. They are the clever ones."
I just hope they don't shoot back.
Have something interesting to target... a sattelite packed with explosives.
Fire up the lazers! (and yes, our hunter killer lazer sattelites are code named doplin 1, and dolphin 2.) We are not without a deadly sense of humor!
There's nothing Intelligent about Intelligent Design.
For another crackpot astrologer to sue for this 'celestial vandalism'..
I couldn't think of a sig.
Surely they should have chosen a name that implied success rather than invoke the name of a hopeless romantic who is known for fighting the inevitable.
And they could have spelled it correctly: Don Quixote.
Jesus saved me from my past. He can save you as well.
Coz all my govt cares about is blowing other people's nukes out of the sky.
The Doormat
If you're not outraged, then you're not paying attention.
The two target candidates are:
1. 2002 AT4
2. France
...except she might marry some freakin' king by the time I return from my journey. Damn men, always cockblocking us elves!
You can hold down the "B" button for continuous firing.
What if we "deflect" it straight into the Earth? ;-)
... to that crazy Russian lady who claims that stuff like this will mess up her horoscope?
FTA: People might wonder whether performing a deflection test, such as that planned for Don Quijote, represents any risk to our planet. What if things go wrong? Could we create a problem, rather than learn how to avoid one?
Experts world-wide say the answer is no. Even a very dramatic impact of a heavy spacecraft on a small asteroid would only result in a minuscule modification of the object's orbit.
Target objects can also be selected so that all possible concerns are avoided altogether, by looking into the way the distance between the asteroid's and the Earth's orbits changes with time. If the target asteroid is not an 'Earth crosser', as is the case with NEOs in the 'Amor' class (which have orbits with perihelion distance well in excess of 1 AU), testing a deflection manoeuvre represents no risk to the Earth. So in other words, no need to worry. Go along with your daily routine as usual.
"Plans are for fools! Oglethorpe, the plutonian (Aqua Teen Hunger Force)
The scientists figured that the solar system is too stable - in order to justify a space program, they have to engineer some collisions with earth.
Oh well, what the hell...
I often wonder where they get these names for missions from. There are some mission acronyms out there that are so ridiculous, they make you wonder if they didn't start with the abbreviated word first and then fill things in from there.
In this case, they've decided to name this mission after an old man off his rocker who thought he was a chivalrous knight of old. One of his more famous skirmishes was against a windmill he thought was a giant. Amazingly enough, he only damaged himself when he charged it. Perhaps that is where they have derived their inspiration. Let us hope they have a little more luck.
Try R'ingTFA.
See my journal for slashdot ID's by year. Mine created in 2005. http://slashdot.org/journal/289875/slashdot-ids-by-year
*whew*
...Wouldn't the cost of such a test be well into millions of dollars? That sounds expensive for something that is just a test... But I could be wrong.
Also, never has the quote at the bottom of the screen been so appropriate.
Oh, wow! Look at the moon!
What we don't want to hear after a successful deflection....
If you could reason with religious people, there would be no religious people
Brace for another lawsuit from that kooky Russian astrologer.
"It's the height of ridiculousness to say for those 9 lines you get hundreds of millions."
If you're interested in asteroid deflection, Jay Melosh has a few ideas.
Including: "Deploying a giant parabolic mirror to concentrate the sun's rays and vaporize rock on the surface of the asteroid. The vaporized material flies off at high speed and generates a re-coil action that pushes the asteroid, slowly but surely, in the opposite direction."
Which is great, because the parabolic mirror can double as a way for Bruce Willis to cook and refrigerate his food while he's there.
BTW, I was thinking something along the same lines regarding fighting windmills. I guess they think deflecting an asteroid is a pretty insurmountable task.
Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a soportar Si la vida me da palo, yo la voy a espabilar
Great! No really, we need to test out the ability to do this so when we need to do this we can. I hear China also has a planned mission very similar to this. They intent do attempt to change the course of a comet. And we've already demonstrated that we could do such a thing, with Deep Impact (what prompted the Chinese, and likely the ESA as well). True, we didn't change it's course, but if the "object" has been a nuke instead...
If it were to impact a landmass, we could consider ourselves lucky. Given the high proportion of water to land on the planet, the odds are overwhelmingly against a land impact. Sure, it happens. Sure, it would suck. A land impact would undoubtedly render complete destruction over a large area, alter local climate, cause all fault-lines to shatter, and reduce the affected area to glowing slag. However, that IS the good news. Now the bad news: Models of an ocean impact suggest the global climate would be upset for decades - if not longer. It would impose near ice-age conditions due to solar energy reflected by the planet-wide clouds caused by the vaporization of several trillion tons of seawater. Muddy, salty rain would destroy the world's breadbaskets. Sunlight might not reach the surface for tens of years.
..The implications are enormous, and need not be enumerated; surely the point is made.
Actions such as these aimed at researching the feasibility of deflection should be supported, not something due scorn. The odds of such a cataclysm occurring in our lifetime are indeed negligible...but surely, being prepared is better than being caught with our pants down.
Alarmist? Maybe; the course of history will judge.
If they volunteer to be stuffed in a cannon and shot at the asteroid to deflect its path, then i'd call them heroes.
I wouldn't, because that would just be stupid of them.
Fuck Bruce, send Steve Ballmer, ass first, with a chair as an advance probe, God help the asteroid.
Man, my job is so boring compared to those guys at the ESA.
Proverbs 21:19
It would truly be ironic of the test actually put the asteroid on a collision course for earth. Wouldn't that be great...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
Or, rather, I sure as hell hope there's no irony! I'm gonna be pissed if fifty years from now, the comet they pushed ends up smashing into Earth. That sorta shit can just ruin a fellow's day.
--
Don't like it? Respond with words, not karma.
Wouldn't it be ironic if the test actually put the asteroid on a collision course with Earth. That would be great...
We're all hypocrites. We all have hidden parts, it's the contrast between them that make us more a hypocrite than others
I want a filter that removes posts about Armageddon in any thread that mentions the word "asteroid"
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What about a nuclear WMD inside the deflector ship? What are the effects of a nuclear explosion in space? Wouldn't it have a more desirable effect? (Also the pictures of it would be much cooler...) :)
the ESA for showing forethought in a time of chaos. This is the kind of productive stuff that needs to happen.
We waste so much money on boondoggles (won't even go into that) but so little effort now goes into research into the human condition. We are a smart group, us humans, when we really HAVE to be. Why not try to make it a little more often, just for flip sake, eh?
Wouldn't it be kind of ironic if they test this with an asteroid or similar object that is not on a collision path with our planet, it messes up, then it IS on course torwards Earth?
That would kind of suck, atleast I think so anyways.
$fortune
Tomorrow has been canceled due to lack of interest.
(p1 + p2)[)[initial]=(p1 + p2)[final]
. html
Uh, we know the first two p(momentum, vector) values(and that's if we know the mass of the asteroid, which isn't necessarily true), but not the second two. In my math classes, we learned that was 1 equation (vector valued) and two unknown vectors. I don't think anyone can solve that, and no, conservation of kinetic energy won't work because the internal energy changes big time in most non-particle scale collisions. In Mechanics, many of our college educated comrades learned of a way to resolve this textbook documented issue with the simple aide of a constant e, which details the elasticity of the interaction. Unfortunately, e is not easy to determine through theory, and is also just a model (and a bad one at that), and therefore an experiment is usually called for (and usually a lot of them). 'Nuff said.
http://scienceworld.wolfram.com/physics/Collision
Wouldn't it be really funny if they changed its course to Earth? Someone has to lose their job for that one.
"If you are a dreamer, a wisher, a liar, A hope-er, a pray-er, a magic bean buyer
training simulator program they are using.
http://www.springfrog.com/games/asteroids/
Not to mention, I am currently more worried about missiles than I am asteroids. An asteroid is going to hit us? We're dead anyway. As numerous posts have questioned before this one, how can the ESA be so sure that we will not knock this INTO us?
hope they make sure that the deflected asteriod won't come towards earth :)
why is EA Sports in charge again?
This sounds a lot like something that's been tried before. Why don't they draw a conclusion from the existing data from Tempel-1? Or, while they're at it, why not try a new concept?
For instance, how about landing on the asteroid and attaching an anchor to it? Drop anchor (unreel) and wait for the closest approach to the moon. Then, use an ion drive on the anchor to bring it as close to the moon as possible. If the cable is long enough, the anchor will be pulled down into the gravity well of the moon with much greater force than otherwise. It won't capture the asteroid in lunar orbit, but the trajectory of the asteroid will be changed in a far more predictable and adjustable way than with impacts and explosions.
An extra bonus is that communicating with the anchor, you will always know the exact location of the asteroid.
The only catch is that you need a very long cable, and that will raise the launch costs.
that just getting our results from "good old p=mv" doesn't let us spend our budget blowing up crap in space by smashing it into giant space rocks. Bring on the explosions!
If you think about this even semi rationally, look at the data from the Deep Impact mission. The trajectory of the rock prior to impact was quite well known, well enough, an intercept course could be plotted and executed. Does anybody think that nobody at nasa thought to measure trajectory AFTER the impact, and possibly calculate trajectory changes of the target rock? This is a mission that cost hundreds of millions of dollars, and that's extremely valuable information, available for the taking after the impact. I'm quite sure that while the primary investigators on Deep Impact are all wrapped up in analyzing ejecta data, there are secondary investigators measuring and calculating trajectory changes.
The proposed ESA mission is basically Deep Impact Version 2.0, a more refined variant than version 1. Version 1 (executed by Nasa) intended to hit the target rock, and studying ejecta was labelled as the 'primary' objective. In Version 2, the objective is to hit the target rock much more precisely, relabel the 'primary data' as that of the trajectory change, and re-label the ejecta data as 'secondary'. The end result is, a mission plan that hits more political hot buttons (reference the data collection re-labelling), its easier to get grants for impactor related investigation today.
The reality is, this mission is a logical follow on which builds on the success of Deep Impact. The re-labelling of primary mission goals is just an artifact of the political process required to procure funding, the 'grants game'. The data regarding target object composition will still be collected in various forms, and it'll still get analyzed, just as trajectory data is still being collected and analyzed from the Deep Impact mission.
I'm starting to get worried here. Most of the space programs in the world are trying to hit asteroids, perhaps deflect them. Even the military is now looking at anti-satellite weapons. So I'm beginning to wonder, what's with this sudden surge of interest in defense against things hitting us from space? Do they know something (troubling) that I don't?
We will deflect an Asteroid. Within a few 1000 years it will hit another world. The few aliens that 'went underground' will figure out why that happend and they will launch an attact om earth...
One spacecraft (Hidalgo) will impact an asteroid, the other (Sancho) will arrive earlier at the target asteroid, rendezvous and orbit the asteroid for several months, observing it before and after the impact to detect any changes in its orbit.
Obviously a second probe would be useful for taking pictures and measurements of the impact, but how does being near the asteroid provide better measurements of its orbit than simply watching it from Earth? I don't get that part.
"Minimum expenditure fucking - How to get laid on a budget."
I mean, dude, you can get laid without spending a lot of money. Hell, you can get it for free some nights.
HBI's Law: Frequency of calling others Nazis is directly correlated with the likelihood of the accuser being Communist.
That makes more sense if you remember this story.
This is sqrt(not) a sig.
Dateline May 11 2496
Airstrip One was totally destroyed today by a rogue asteroid.
The 5km wide object score a direct hit on the George W Bush Ministry of Truth
building at 09:94 local time.
Experts say samples from the giant rock are consistent with material found in the Asteroid belt (now the Halliburton Offworld Nickel Mines).
In a quote, Prof Kermit von Pimple said "this object came in under our defense grid from a direction we never anticipated. Our calculations suggest it escaped the asteroid belt around 500 years ago but how it escaped is unclear".
Historical records are sketchy because of the digital degeneration effect.
The one remaining archive that scholars have managed to recovered from that era, simply said:
"Dude! No way! l33t 45t3r01d5 rule".
Academics are still trying to decipher what it means.
The character of Don Quixote is a classic symbol of the most noble human values--self-sacrifice, duty, heroism, perseverance against incredible odds. Rather than being seen as someone hopelessly fighting the inevitable, the literary and cultural significane of Don Quixote for Western culture has been as a symbol of inspiring greatness. After all, the most noble kind of heroism in the classic European ideal of chivalry is the kind that fights on in spite of all the odds.
A second reason why the ESA probably chose this name is that Don Quixote is considered by many to be the greatest work of literature ever produced by a Western author, certainly it is among the greatest works of European culture. Because the European institutions seek to promote European cultural heritage, and Don Quixote is a symbol of that heritage, it makes sense that the ESA would have chosen it.
Finally I suspect it was done with some humour in mind. After all, this can be seen as a somewhat quixotic mission--to crash a tiny spacecraft into a giant asteroid in an attempt to deflect its course. A heroic mission against great odds.
It seems a quite appropriate, and appropriately humble name to me.
I'm sorry, the Dolphin 1 and 2 just have nothing on the new Shark series with their Fast Response Irradiation Kannon (FRIK) lasers.
There's a Beagle 2 joke here somewhere, but I can't place it.
If I'm not entirely mistaken, the upcoming Serenity movie (and the TV series Firefly it's based on) tends to show space scenes with a deafening silence, which actually works very well for dramatic impact.
One spacecraft (Hidalgo) will impact an asteroid, the other (Sancho) will arrive earlier at the target asteroid, rendezvous and orbit the asteroid for several months, observing it before and after the impact to detect any changes in its orbit.
...
Presumably Sancho gets to hold the spare lance, and the Ariane 5 rocket will hail to "Rocinante"
Rocín means "nag" (a low-grade horse)
(From "Rocinante").
just use the frickin laser
So you want the US to send more soldiers to die in a foreign country? Korea, Vietnam, Iraq and now in space? Oh, well, it's not like it's a loss for humanity if a few million Americans die. I say go for it!
New Orleans was sold to the US, Haiti was the first country to leave French control, goes to show that it never pays to leave French control. You might as well just sell the Louisiana territory back to the French - maybe they can make it work!? You assholes certainly cannot. [Picture thousands of poor black people dying in New Orleans]
Let them attack us, then. _WE_ know how to fling asteroids at them, after all.
...who live in the asteroid? I wonder if they have the technology to build a rocket to deflect the two metal asteroids in crash-route with them.
What, do I need a sig now?
This same "hero" nonsense started with 9/11. Firefighters and policemen are suddenly the great American heros. Policemen and firefighters are simply doing their jobs. They get paid for doing what they did. A hero is someone who goes far above and beyond the call of duty to help out in some way. Although, I'd say that those that assisted in the cleanup of 9/11 are far closer to being heroes than some astronomers. Billions of dollars are wasted on space exploration that has absolutely no value other than making scientists think they're smart because now they have proof that the world is round. One incident where they claim that in 25 years an asteroid may or may not hit the earth and that they are going to rescue us, certainly does not justify calling them heroes in my mind. They fabricate a problem and fabricate a solution and now they're heroes? What a joke!
You think he'll get fired?
Shit. Give the man a medal and thank him for ending poverty and world hunger.
[Fuck Beta]
o0t!
Refresh my memory-- 1AU --isn't that EXACTLY the earth's path?
Gosh, more than 1 AU.. hmm.. 50 feet more?
every day http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Special:Random
there is no force that can make them collapse back
There is one, namely gravity. Gas clouds collapsing due to gravity are actually the first step in star formation.
Then again, I have to admit that some TIE Fighter debris is more likely to crash into some other object before it re-collapses gravitationally.
617B3B7F7E7C7D7F00EOF
Asteroids are not billiard balls. Sure, they both obey the same physical laws. But billiard balls are manufactured to have specific physical properties. They should leave the billiard ball factory if they are out of range.
Asteroids could act brittle. Or they could act like big loose piles of gravel. They are probably not homogeneous. Unlike billiard balls.
We should play pool with lots of asteroid, to see how different they can be from pool balls.
You never read Samuel Pepys diary did you?
In he youth, he lived in London, when it was slept by the plague. People were dying like flies. It was, in many ways, like the end of the world.
He found that, with no consequences, lots of women were ready to engage in sexual relations with random strangers. He made out like gang-busters.
Slashdotters need to be able to predict the end of the world! It might be our only chance to get laid! We better make the most of it.
So, if the police and firemen who showed up and climbed the WTC were not heroes, would that mean the 249 New Orleans Police Officers who didn't bother to show up for work weren't cowards?
My take, every opportunity to be a hero is a new event. Yesterday's hero could be today's coward. Or vice versa. Cops who spend their career fillout traffic tickets aren't heroes. But they have chosen an occupation where opportunities to test their heroism are more likely. They still might fold, might fail,
When I worked at a University there was a bomb threat that caused the administration to evacuate the entire campus. It took hours because the University wasn't set up for evacuation. Classes that were in a different room, to write their midterms, didn't get found and told to clear out.
Yes, it was mid-term season. One clue the bomb threat would turn out to be a hoax.
Well, when the time when the anonymous tipster said the bombs would go off had passed the campus police were sent to check out all the buildings before the civilians were let back in.
If there really were bombs, or booby traps, to do a proper job of clearing the campus probably would have taken a battalian of combat engineers. The campus police had no bomb training, or bomb demolition equipment.
Within the next two weeks have the members of the campus police had resigned.
All the posts about deflecting the rock to hit the earth are backwards. We should WANT it to hit. If we are impacted (think about that phrase a bit...) then all the governments will realize that we do need to ba able to do stuff in space. Instant space program!!! The only problem is drawing straws to see who gets nailed. Everone will volunteer somebody else.
I think you're absolutely correct. And because I think you're correct, I also think this experiment is very important. It seems that, given so many unknowns, several of which you touched on in your post, the first time we try to deflect an asteroid ought not to be when it's bearing down on us and the rest of life on Earth.
I think the chances of trying to deflect the asteroid and having it somehow end up hitting the planet, when the asteroid is (assumedly) chosen specifically to prevent this, would certainly be outweighed by the risk of someday being in the path of an asteroid and not having any idea how our attempts to move it are going to change its path.
All experiments have risk. I could go up onto the roof to drop some rocks and baseballs off to test gravity, and by some freak accident end up falling off and dying. Therefore I stay off the roof, mostly because I don't need to do that experiment to know how it's going to work out. However if the results of that experiment might someday save the planet, I'd probably reconsider the risk. Likewise, I'm sure the people planning this experiment will pick an asteroid sufficiently distant from our planet in terms of orbital path that the risk of it coming around and hitting us is outweighed by the knowledge gained.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
Actually, I've always been suspicious of this. Not the firecracker-in-the-hand thing, that one I believe you on.
But this theory that it would be better to blow an asteroid into chunks than it would be to deflect it. If you split an asteroid, most of your energy would go just into the act of splitting, and I doubt you'd have much of a net effect on the path of the resulting components' center of momentum. So if it was going to hit the planet before, the average position of the resulting chunks still would. It becomes a question of whether the pieces are going to do as much damage than the whole thing would.
The analogy I'm thinking of is like splitting a log. If you take the axe and use it like you normally would, straight into the top of the log, it splits into two pieces, which just fall away from each other. They don't go far. But if you take the same axe, and swing it like a baseball bat horizontally, and hit the log with the reverse of the head, it's going to fly away. Same energy, dramatically different results.
It seems that a much better plan (and I think what this whole experiment is going to test) is to use some sort of surface detonation in order to change the object's orbital path. That way the entire thing would be moved onto a less dangerous path, rather than playing russian roulette with the chunks you'd get from breaking it up.
I always thought the "Armageddon strategy" was flawed in this regard: without some really intimate knowledge of the asteroid, I certainly wouldn't want to bet my planet's survival on how the thing is going to break up after being blown apart from the center. There are just a ton of things that could happen. It could separate on a plane that's perpendicular to the path of motion, making two objects following the same path, one with slightly less velocity than the other. It seems like the odds of it breaking up and having all the resulting significant bits miss, or breaking into insignificant chunks, is a long shot.
Anyway, I just thought I would bring that up for people to think about. It seems like applying a whole lot of energy to the single object as a whole and trying to deflect it, even when you factor in all the myriad variables like outgassing and rotational stability, you'd still be getting involved in less of a craps-shoot than you would trying to break it up.
"Ladies and gentlemen, my killbot features Lotus Notes and a machine gun. It is the finest available."
After hearing Europe's plan to make airlines trade air to reduce pollution, it felt like these Europeans just sat around all day thinking of things to take issue with. But that was just the beginning.
Now the Europeans want to copy Deep Impact right down to having a second probe observing the impact because it "would only result in a miniscule modification". Whatever.
To avoid sounding like immitators, they say its to "rehearse" deflecting an asteroid, but only an asteroid with a specific orbit, specific delta V, shape, density, size, and center of mass.
With such a massive number of selection parameters, it isn't much of a rehearsal for anything is it. If you can't observe the miniscule modification from Earth, how would you know if the asteroid was heading for Earth to begin with?
Hopefully Hillary Clinton won't make u.s. pay for these European grand standings.
This was discussed on Usenet years&years ago.
The total kinetic energy remains the same if you break the asteroid into two pieces or a million gazillion pieces (dust, for example)
When that dust impacts the earth's atmosphere, it will slow down and release the energy as heat basically broiling the land & water below it.