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Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses
Hugh Pickens sends us to Seed Magazine for an update on Earth's defenses against collisions with near-earth objects (NEOs). The bottom line is that government is moving slowly on cataloging NEOs but private bodies are picking up some of the slack. "In 2005, the US Congress directed NASA to catalog 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020 but NASA has yet to allot funds to the project. Increasingly, coordinated private efforts are working to fill the gap in Earth's NEO defenses. Earlier this year, Bill Gates and Charles Simonyi donated a combined $30 million to the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST), keeping it on track for first light in 2014. LSST will survey the entire visible sky deeply in multiple colors every week with its three-billion pixel digital camera, probing the mysteries of Dark Matter and Dark Energy and by opening a movie-like window on objects that change or move, the LSST will also detect and catalog NEOs."
Check out Orbital Debris Quarterly News at http://orbitaldebris.jsc.nasa.gov/newsletter/newsletter.html They have back issues in pdf
Keep Bruce Willis near by just in case
"Suppose you were an idiot...and suppose you were a member of Congress...but I repeat myself." Mark Twain
I thought we still had nukes!?
Seems like anything that's colliding with us would have to be pretty "near", doesn't it?
Still looking for a ride home.
Given that they don't seem to be able to afford $3mil to make a game (Link) it seems pretty funny in a not really funny sort of way that they don't seem to be able to allot funds to this project either.
Maybe someone is trying to make some money off interest. @_@
Moved to http://soylentnews.org/. You are invited to join us too!
When I was about 12 years old {1985 (+/- 2 years)} I was 'camping' in our back-yard with a friend. As this was during summer vacation were stayed up very late terrorizing the neighborhood pretending we were ninjas or army or whatever.
/. universe believe me?
It was full night, the moon was out and it was cloudless. My friend saw it first and pointed it to me. There was a large asteroid or meteor in the sky and it was bright orange in colour (as if an orange-coloured spotlight was trained on it) I have since learnt that this item was in the Earths shadow (causing the orange colour). I could see lots of impact craters on it.
It was the size of a grapefruit or softball held out at arms length. We watched it travel through the sky and the most amazing thing I have ever seen in my life happened.
It bounced off the atmosphere TWICE and then fell below the horizon. There were no flame-trails that we associate with atmosphere entry.
I lived in Chatham, Ontario (about 100km due-East of Detroit, MI) and the object originated in the South-East sky and traveled westerly. It was only visible for a short time (perhaps 10 seconds), but I still remember very clearly to this day.
I have often hoped that some expert would confirm or believe me, but I have been told that I "imagined it" and "that's impossible" buy the few I have told.
Can anybody in the
"The price good men pay for indifference to public affairs is to be ruled by evil men." ~Plato (427-347 BC)
Any serious private or public effort in funding Earth's defenses against asteroids should pay special attention to the Arecibo Observatory. Besides the fact the observatory is facing serious funding issues (funding was cut to less than half of the regular funding bringing the possibility of actually closing down the facility), Arecibo is one of the best (if not THE best) facilities in the world for tracking asteroids (as a matter of fact the Arecibo Observatory has the biggest, most sensible radio telescope in the world). It is just a shame the effects the war has brought upon ourselves.
How much coverage is there around our little sphere in terms of looking out and observing into space? ie. how much of the earth is currently blind due to lack of equipment?
"Thanks for all the money you paid to us. We've used it to buy off ISO among other things" -Microsoft
A term like asteroid defense, to me, always brings up the image of a battery of laser cannons or special nuclear silo's that actually -defend- us against asteroids. Wouldn't it be more appropriatly dull to call this asteroid observation?
+1 Funny Signature
I believe you, we are not alone!
Gov't: Well, what'll we do?
Private observers: It's very simple. We just need 240 dollars...
What?
Damn it! I thought we had a secret base on the dark side of the moon to handle THIS VERY THING !?!?!?
You mean we don't ? Seriously ?? Have we actually confirmed that ??
Thats the problem with secrets and myths these days...half of them turn out to be bogus...and the other half are SO secret that literally NOONE knows about them any more.
If everyone who knows we have a secret base on the dark side of the moon is dead..then its kinda useless as a defense mechanism isnt it !
For godsakes people! Its a catch-22, I know, but the only way to keep a secret is to tell others about it.
I would be surprised if we (United States) ever make it to the Mars/Moon on such a shoestring budget that we have today. Unless we have a dramatic budget shift towards the sciences (and away from wars *cough* *cough*), I see commercial/private interests as our next great funding source for space science and transport. Eventually we will probably have manned moon missions that are completely commercial and privately owned/funded. However NASA's technology right now is lightyears ahead of what any company can do (unless Lockheed Martin and Boeing join the commercial space race). I guess we'll be seeing more philanthropic donations to the space sciences in the future.
Gates only contributed the money to LSST so they would run vista on it
There must be a reason behind that number, any clue anyone? What was that.. RTFA? Pffffft. You're disgusting.
Nice city you have here. What a pity, 99942 Apophis going to wipe it out in decade. However for couple of billion we can change its course a little. What ? According to your date you are safe ? Believe me it's going to hit you. We have just installed propulsion system on it's surface.
Comment removed based on user account deletion
I'm of the thought that it doesn't really matter what sort of 'defenses' humanity sets up.
If a killer asteroid is headed our way, may as well accept fate.
If each mistake being made is a new one, then progress is being made.
From TFA: "...NASA has yet to allot funds to the project.
There's your problem right there. You've got bureaucrats in charge. Bureaucrats think differently about project funds. Their thought process runs something like:
"I'm a big muckety-muck because I'm in charge of this huge project allotment fund. Now, if I just went around willy-nilly *allotting it*, I wouldn't have this big fund to allot and be a big muckety-muck, now would I?".
I wonder how much he'll think being a big muckety-muck was worth as he's watching an Apophos-like object heading directly for him 2 minutes from impact?
Cheers!
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
connected via the net and run through BOINC? Could we make big telescopes this way?
Some daze I think I think way too much.!
In 2005, the US Congress directed NASA to catalog 90 percent of potentially hazardous NEOs greater than 140 meters in diameter by the year 2020
Now, if I were a NASA decision maker, I'd put that job off too. Considering there are still 12 years to go before the deadline, the likelihood that technology developments will make the job faster, easier and cheaper probably exceeds 100%.
With all the competition from the private sector, getting a telescope into space dedicated to imaging asteroids will almost certainly be cheaper. And a space telescope should be more effective than a ground based one, even with adaptive optics. CIGS image sensors were just announced recently, with superb low light performance, exactly what's needed for low albedo object discovery. Lightweight foamed metal and graphite materials that have potential uses in mirrors are making progress, as is computing power and artificial intelligence. So, in 5 years, chances are NASA would be able to put together a package that does the job better, faster and at a lower price than anything they could do today.
Assuming a pair of 2 meter telescopes on a single orbiting platform, with a 25 minute exposure time and 5 minute re-aiming time, and a 1.5 degree field of view. Each scope could image a 1 degree square every 30 minutes. Or 24 degrees per day. Or a 360 degree circle in 15 days. Or 5 degrees above and below the ecliptic plane twice in under a year. With overlap. 2 years for a more comprehensive +/- 10 degree survey.
So, yeah. With 12 years remaining to complete a job that'll take 2 years, and the longer you wait the cheaper it gets, no wonder NASA hasn't budgeted anything for it.
What about Meteors Or Rocks Presently Headed Earthwards Unless Stopped (MORPHEUS)?
I'm sure a couple of billion of us concentrating really, really hard could make it budge a bit off course.
there's a NEO in LEO!!!
This fine asteroid explosion was offered to you by Unilever for the viewing pleasure and the security of you and your children. Because at Unilever, we know what it feels like when you can't by our washing up liquid anymore. Or something.
Religion is what happens when nature strikes and groupthink goes wrong.
In 2005, Congress Directed NASA to go do the work. No, they didn't just sit on the money. As a part of this work, Congress sent a few million to the Air Force to manage the University of Hawaii's NEO detector project, PanSTARRS.
The planning kicked off at about the same time as the LSST, but being significantly cheaper and using off the shelf optics with custom gigapixel detectors, a testbed has already been deployed on Maui. When the full system is deployed atop Mauna Kea on the island of Hawaii, it'll include four scopes ganged together, putting 4 X 1.4GPix on a patch of sky. The redundant detectors allow for added error correction from bad pixels, cosmic ray strikes, and whatnot.
Now that the LSST has some significant seed money, we may soon be able to reap the benefits of two panoptic sky survey systems. That's going to be a hell of a lot of near-real time data processing.
Luke, help me take this mask off
"I saw that movie - it hits paris" -- Jack O'Neal
Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses
That's a funny way to phrase it. There are gaps in Earth's asteroid defences, yes, a bit like how there are gaps in the total surface area of the planet where there are no roads.
Why don't we start shooting nukes into space? No seriously hear me out on this. First, we may accidently divert a near earth object. and second, if aliens come around to suck out our atmosphere, they may just pass right on through to the next planet (They don't want none of this.)
That's like during a hearing regarding alkali runoff and the effect on the pH of lakes a scientist said that their goal was to get the pH down to 7 by next year. A politician says, "That's unacceptable - we want it down to 0 by next year!".
Tiller's Rule: Never use a word in written form that you've only heard and never read. You will end up looking foolish.
Cue joke about defending Earth from asteroids by batting them away with the invisible hand of the free market in 3 . . . 2 . . . 1 . . .
From studies in the European Space Agency a couple of years ago, I understood having a spacecraft (and a telescope) located closer to the Sun, in the inner solar system, would allow you to much better see the asteroids, because they are much better lit by the sun when seen from there. There have been very serious papers on this kind of topic, even plans for dedicated missions and spacecrafts, also passenger payloads on already planned spacecrafts (solar observers typically) but the ESA budget probably looks very much like NASA's one in this area...
Herve S.
I mean if we get enough mass to orbit an object for long enough won't it have an effect on it's trajectory (vector/velocity)? Say for example the recently discussed Apophis mass, it's due to fly by 2029 and potentially hit in 2036, wouldn't it at least make sense to get up close and personal with an object of that size that's potentially going to drop in for a visit.
This is something business could do couldn't it?
My ism, it's full of beliefs.
Why doesn't the government simply pay for finds? Private industry is usually more effective than government when its easy to measure "success". Finding asteroids is almost the perfect case of such a situation. The bigger the roid, the more the cash.
Although, I suppose there may be some ambiguity with regard to the known size. But an estimate may be good enough. Perhaps if it turns out to be significantly larger than expected after the first payment, then additional cash can be given. But, the other way around for smallness probably wouldn't work because its hard to get money back that's already spent. The Gov't would just have to factor that into the total payment accounting.
Table-ized A.I.
> The bottom line is that government is moving slowly on cataloging NEOs
NASA's NEO program catalogs bodies as soon as the data comes available.
There are 7 programs besides NASA searching and/or cataloging (they're listed on JPL's site: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/programs/ ). When one team gets data, they all share in it. The programs are only as slow as the data. As for US government, 5.5 of the 8 programs are US based (one in Italy, one in Japan, one joint US-Aussie).
> NASA has yet to allot funds to the project
The NASA NEO program is run from JPL.
JPL is managed by Caltech for NASA.
NASA pays JPL to do so.
The 8 people in the NEO program appear to be all NASA employees, or at least from Caltech or other universities, paid by NASA (directly via payroll or JPL funding, or indirectly via funding to their parent university) to work there. There is no need to have funding dedicated explicitly to the program if existing funding is available to operate the office under other funding headings.
The government is perhaps not moving as fast as it could in data collection if it funded a dedicated telescopy program directly, but that doesn't imply the cataloging is slow.
The bottom line is that the article is correct in that private concerns are providing funding for or operating search and/or cataloging operations, but that's all. The assertions regarding cataloging being slow and lack of funding are unfounded.
Of course any government funded program will tell you there's a "lack" in terms of not enough (as opposed to an absence), because they'll get their funding cut if they don't show the need. The output from this program indicates it's operating its cataloging project at the speed necessary to keep up with the data.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B
Oops, should have included this in my previous post.
> Private Efforts Fill Gaps In Earth's Asteroid Defenses [article title]
There are no "defenses". There is no program anywhere to protect Earth from a strike. There are government funded and private programs performing studies as to how it might be done, but that's all. The article is about search and/or cataloging projects, not defense projects.
"I may be synthetic, but I'm not stupid." -- Bishop 341-B