Mars Asteroid Impact Effectively Ruled Out

An anonymous reader writes with a followup to previous news noting the possibility that an asteroid would collide with Mars: "Further observations have reduced the odds of asteroid 2007 WD5 impacting Mars to approximately 1 in 10,000. According to NASA this asteroid followed the same pattern of increasing in probability, then finally being ruled out as a threat."

Comments

NEO prediction needs more funding

[QuantumG]

Well, actually what it needs is a comp-sci department of a major university to take it on as a research project and apply for many many government grants for super-computer time. Simulating a chaotic system is never easy, but failure to calculate the orbit of a large NEO could be catastrophic.

What a shame!

[techno-vampire]

I guess there's not going to be a Mars-Shattering KABOOM! And I was so looking forward to it.

Re:What a shame!

[gEvil (beta)]

Quite funny... but I still can't believe that nobody has come out with the "big-ass asteroid hitting Uranus" joke yet...

I'd be more concerned about the ejecta matter leaving Uranus.

This sucks.

[Grishnakh]

A big-ass asteroid hitting our nearest planetary neighbor and causing massive damage would have been a good wake-up call to humanity. The only thing that would have been better would have been a big-ass asteroid smacking the Moon, leaving a crater large enough to see with the naked eye from Earth.

Re:This sucks.

[QuantumG]

Nah, that'd be worse. At least one astrophysicist would say that this is what the he Moon is for and you'd have the media repeating it and eventually everyone would believe the earth is immune to NEO.s.

Re:This sucks.

[Grishnakh]

Sorry, but you're the dumbass here.

If a Tunguska-sized asteroid (or worse, a Yucatan-sized one) is en route for earth, and we have 20 years' notice, it wouldn't be that hard to launch some nukes up there to nudge it into a safe orbit in time. We went from Sputnik to landing on the moon in less time than that, and all we have to do is make launch systems capable of taking our already-existing nuclear warheads and planting them on or near an asteroid some distance from earth (but probably less distance than Mars, which we have no trouble sending probes to). The only thing that's actually preventing us from deflecting asteroids is the fact that we don't have any prior warning of them, simply because we don't bother to look for them very hard.

You talk about correcting the orbital patterns of an asteroid as if it's an impossible feat, but as I've already shown, it's quite realistic. The problem is just knowing about the asteroid in time to do something. A nuclear weapon can move an asteroid only slightly. With 10 years' notice, that's all you need. But if the thing is going to hit the earth in 1 day, the amount of power needed to move that rock would be astronomical. So who's the dumbass?

As for "infinitesimal", as if an asteroid strike is unlikely, there are craters all over our planet from large asteroid strikes. I live a short distance away from one, in fact, located at "Meteor Crater, Arizona" (it's on Google Maps; it's where the final scene of Starman was shot incidentally). There's a much, much bigger one on the Yucatan peninsula in Mexico which was an extinction event. And in recent history, a comet came down in Tunguska, Siberia in the early 1900s, wiping out a huge amount of forest. If that had been a populated area, instead of a remote frozen tundra that even now is mostly unexplored, the devastation would have been greater than any natural disaster in history most likely. Another asteroid (or comet, not much difference really) striking the earth in the next few hundred years isn't as unlikely as you suggest, and certainly a much bigger worry than the Sun reaching the end of its lifespan, which we're fairly certain will take several billion years, which is more than enough time to deal with that problem.

Re:This sucks.

[QuantumG]

People who actually have any experience with these things know that there is something we could do, if we detect a collision early enough. The problem is that we don't yet have a program to do that.. because getting money for these things is all politics.

So yes, just like the environment or poverty or (formally) disease, whether or not an extinction event is allowed to occur is entirely up to the politicians. A wake-up call is needed for them to justify the expense.

Re:This sucks.

[crankyspice]

A wake-up call to a 1 in a 1000000000000000000000000000000 chance of a piece of rock hitting us? I couldn't care less, and even if I did care, there is nothing I can do about it.

Two words: Bruce Willis.

Re:This sucks.

[cdrguru]

I'm going to try really hard not to use a lot of adjectives to describe your thinking on this.

Are you nuts? Nuclear warheads? That is probably the absolute very last thing you would want to try to deflect a large body with. It might fracture, which would make problems much much worse.

You see, the problem with lots of little rocks entering the atmosphere is a little detail called "atmospheric heating". Rocks get warm, transfer their heat to the air. A few rocks, no problem. Lots and lots of little rocks, big problem. Which is why the ending of the movie Deep Impact would have resulted in the end of all life on the planet, not a nice speech by the President.

All it takes is a little push, or as previously alluded to, some paint to absorb solar radiation differently. No nuclear warheads. Maybe an Orion-type or NERVA propulsion system to get out that far.

Re:This sucks.

[canadian_right]

Moving an asteroid is MUCH easier than solving poverty, crime or homelessness. If you have enough lead time it takes a relatively small rocket attached to the asteroid to steer it clear of the earth. A paper on moving asteroid, with 10N of force! Another simple proposal.

On the other hand, there is already enough food for everyone on the whole planet, but human greed, for both wealth and power, prevents a huge number of people from enjoying peace and prosperity. And no amount of technical or political knowledge is going to help.

In short, it is a very low chance event with very bad results that we CAN do something about.

Re:This sucks.

[hcdejong]

A paper on moving asteroid, with 10N of force!

Paper beats rock, then? We already knew that.

What if they caused it to happen?

[CrazyJim1]

What if they did the opposite of what everyone thinks they'll do if a sizeable object is going to hit Earth? What if they detonate a nuke and reroute the asteroid to hit Mars? I think they wouldn't do it because the newspapers would say,"The government is aiming asteroids at planets, are they going to use them as weapons in the future?"

Re:What if they caused it to happen?

[Megane]

At this point, even with favorable orbits, and a payload already loaded and ready for launch, you still couldn't get there in time. The fast orbit to Mars still takes six months. The slow orbit takes two years. I don't think they even knew about this event six months ago.

Re:earth

[Cassius Corodes]

It means the asteroid will have a breakdown due to comically improper set-up before it reaches mars.

Re:earth

[jamstar7]

It's running Vista?????????????