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Two Space Missions Planned To Look For Killer Asteroids

Posted by samzenpus on from the extinction-level-event dept.

The Bad Astronomer writes "Today, the B612 Foundation announced it's seeking private funds to build Sentinel, a space mission to find Earth-threatening asteroids. Placed in a Venus-like orbit, it should find a large fraction of these potentially hazardous rocks. At the same time, the NEOCam (Near Earth Object camera) website went live today. This is a separate, publicly-funded space mission also designed to look for these asteroids. While Sentinel will concentrate on finding them and getting accurate positions and orbits, NEOCam will focus more on getting their physical characteristics. While not strictly competing with each other, they are more complementary; with both missions flying (in the 2017 time range) we will learn a huge amount about the asteroid threat from space."

2 of 60 comments (clear)

  1. Re:why is there so much hype about "killer asteroi by rubycodez · · Score: 3, Interesting

    no, people are being conditioned by mass media and government to be in a constant state of emergency and looking for something about which to panic. This provides opportunity for profiteering, for control, to maintain power.

  2. Naming rights by wisebabo · · Score: 3, Interesting

    I'm not sure about the rules involved but doesn't the IAAA (or something) allow the "discoverer" (which in this case I guess will be a corporation) to name minor bodies and maybe even other things like comets.

    So they should allow their sponsors to name these bodies in their stead. They're going to find thousands if not tens or even hundreds of thousands depending on the sensitivity of the instruments.

    I won't donate money to save the world but to have my own private Idaho, I mean asteroid, would be cool! Especially if I knew it would wipe out all life on earth! I'll be famous (for a short time at least).

    Even better would be a U.N. treaty saying that for objects up to say 1km in size, the first person to characterize a body's orbit would get to OWN IT! Not only would this make a lot of people into asteroid hunters but it would really promote the development of technology to exploit them, especially if such ownership would expire in say 20 years if no landings were achieved. It is been said that the best way to get undeveloped countries in like Africa to develop would be to get clear and effective (supported by government) title to land; this provides the incentive to invest. (I don't know what the current laws are, presumably there is something in place to allow the Google guys to profit from their asteroid venture).

    By the way, what's the LOWER limit for the size of a minor body (I think the upper limit are "dwarf planets"). 500 meters? 5 meters? 5 centimeters?