Slashdot Mirror
Tiny Satellite Set To Hunt Asteroids
coondoggie writes "Canadian scientists are developing a 143-lb microsatellite to detect and track near-earth asteroids and comets, as well as satellites and space junk. The suitcase-sized Near Earth Object Surveillance Satellite includes a 6-inch diameter telescope, smaller than most amateur astronomers' scopes, that by being located 435 miles above the Earth's atmosphere will be able to detect moving asteroids delivering as few as 50 photons of light in a 100-second exposure. The NEOSSat will twist and turn hundreds of times each day, orbiting from pole to pole every 50 minutes, almost always in sunlight. The telescope has a sunshade that allows searching the sky to within 45 degrees of the Sun, in order to detect near-Earth asteroids whose orbits are entirely inside Earth's." The probe was announced a few days before the 100th anniversary of the Tunguska blast.
Once the satellite is equipped with a gun, it can shoot the big asteroids into two smaller ones, and each of those asteroids into two even smaller ones. Hitting the smallest ones will make them disappear.
More Twoson than Cupertino
I'm sorry, I can't morally support any government project that leaves Bruce Willis in space but allows Ben Affleck to return.
SJW: Someone who has run out of real oppression, and has to fake it.
http://ucalgary.ca/news/june2008/NEOSSat
From what I understand, NASA already tracks a large number of these objects from earth so they can avoid the debris. You don't want a launch a satellite or the Space Shuttle just to have it collide with Ed White's glove or Michael Collin's camera. The bigger problem is there are thousands of very small particles that came from explosions. Much of that debris has fallen back into the atmosphere and burnt up, but there is quite a bit still up there.
The bigger question is: How do we clean it up?