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A Year After Chelyabinsk, NASA Readying Asteroid Response Mission
An anonymous reader sends this NASA report: "One year ago, on Feb. 15, 2013, the world was witness to the dangers presented by near-Earth Objects (NEOs) when a relatively small asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere, exploding over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and releasing more energy than a large atomic bomb. ... NASA is now pursuing new partnerships and collaborations in an Asteroid Grand Challenge to accelerate NASA's existing planetary defense work, which will help find all asteroid threats to human population and know what to do about them. In parallel, NASA is developing an Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) — a first-ever mission to identify, capture and redirect an asteroid to a safe orbit of Earth's moon for future exploration by astronauts in the 2020s. ... NASA is assessing two concepts to robotically capture and redirect an asteroid mass into a stable orbit around the moon. In the first proposed concept, NASA would capture and redirect an entire very small asteroid. In the alternative concept, NASA would retrieve a large, boulder-like mass from a larger asteroid and return it to this same lunar orbit. In both cases, astronauts aboard an Orion spacecraft would then study the redirected asteroid mass in the vicinity of the moon and bring back samples."
That will be interesting for amateur astronomers as well. I know I would love to check that out
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
that almost everybody can agree deserves full funding
We've all been spelling it wrong, even the dictionaries, because that one in Russia last year certainly made an ass of itself. I guess in Britain the correct spelling is arseteroid.
Seriously, though, this is the kind of stuff I could only dream of as a kid. Incredibly cool!
Free Martian Whores!
Soon you can experiance the difficulty and possible mayhem for yourself in Kerbal Space Program. NASA is working with Squad to bring an official
DLC to KSP highlighting this mission.
Should be an absolute blast....and a huge feather in the cap for an indie game companys first foray into gaming. Especially since it is still in development (kind of an alpha game with an entire community of beta testers (and one place where beta doesn't suck!) If you have an interest, it is a truly unique game and well worth the pittance they are charging for it.
http://forum.kerbalspaceprogram.com/content/252-To-The-Mun-and-Back
Donald Trump, on a crusade to make Nixon look respectable
Thinking all Americans would be given a chance to get a car cam to record such things.
A feeling of having made the same mistake before: Deja Foobar
Armageddon/Deep Impact 2: NASA mission accidentally brings killer asteroid into collision course with earth. Or maybe a documentary on how NASA is using asteroid winter to cancel out global warming. Carefully done, we can kill only a few million poor folks every once in a while to preserve our precious beach front property.
Strange things are afoot at the Circle-K.
even if true....so?
have you seen my sig? there are many others like it but none that are the same
Only a year after Chelyabinsk
but 65 million years after chicxulub
Donald Rumsfeld called the most difficult problems requiring dealing with the unknown, unknowns.
When you have an asteroid you detect with a long approach or known orbit, you have a manageable task in understanding what you can do.
When an asteroid approaches from the Earth's blind spot obscured by the Sun, we may have only weeks or months and there may be no way to exert enough energy quickly enough to modify its trajectory.
They refer to these situations as "extinction events" for a very good reason.
Its based on the SLS launcher and Orion vehicle - but political troubled projects. The mission seems technologically possible, but would likely be expensive and seems much larger and more complex than anything NASA has done recently.
I hope they do it - but I'm very skeptical that we have the political will for such a project.
"...capture and redirect an asteroid to a safe orbit of Earth's moon for future exploration by astronauts in the 2020s." Note that it's already 2014. At this point, we couldn't get a box kite in the air in six to fifteen years, let alone a mission like this. No budget, no sense of urgency, and no time to divvy up the contracts amongst the congressional districts.
Perhaps we've got a solution for the use of our nuclear arsenals!
The asteroids that pose a threat will fall into two classes: those already in solar orbit and those that come from outside the influence of the Sun. The ones orbiting the Sun have had billions of years to impact the earth (and other planets), and thus the probability of a harmful event is so close to zero that it isn't worth bothering about. Those coming from outside will not be seen until they are too close to the Earth to change their path. They'll look like a dim and brightening star, not really moving against the sky due to a lack of a transverse path. If an Eiffel Tower-sized object isn't detected until it hits, exactly how would we detect an object that is truly a threat to humanity?
In other words, this is a case of a real problem with no practical solution. It makes great politics, though, as lots of people are afraid of the unknown and are willing to throw money at government-sponsored flying saucer detectors.
Since when is 1/2 megaton large for an atomic bomb?
A 500 kiloton purely atomic device IS rather large.. Remember, the ones dropped on Japan were only about 20 kilotons.
Now, a thermonuclear device that was only 500KT would be quite small.
My hope with this asteroid capture plan is that, if there's a serious mistake and the object impacts Earth, it hits square in Washington, D.C. with no warning and wipes it out.
"...And nothing of value was lost..."
Strat
Progressivism (aka US 'Liberalism'): Ideas so good they need a police/surveillance-state to enforce.
what is your point?
One of the biggest reasons for war on earth, are resources. China is running around grabbing all that they can. The best thing for the west, if not the world, is to have mutliple sources of every element in use. That is far more likely to stop future wars.
I prefer the "u" in honour as it seems to be missing these days.
guess who is also going all in Asteroid Response? Russia. Not a mention of that in this thread. The Russians will probably far outspend the USA also. The USA is in a bad spot where Congress seems to think there is some virtue in reducing NASA's budget. The Russians intend to own this program which should create a lot of jobs.
500kt is large ever since people figured out how to actually *hit* anything with the darn things.
Back in the 50ies and 60ies you could easily be off by a mile and they'd still call it a bullseye. A few miles off wasn't unusual at all. That's not because they thought this is good, but because they knew it was the best they could do. Thus, in order to destroy a target you can't hit, you had to get a much bigger bomb in the general vicinity of your target. Because you didn't expect to be hit directly, people started building bunkered silos for their bombs and rockets. In order to destroy those, even if you couldn't expect to hit them, you needed even bigger bombs.
The better the targeting, the smaller the bombs became. Then bunker busters were developed that could not only hit a target the size of a few hundred meters size, they could also bury themselves in the ground by some 50m and explode there, with much greater effect in terms of shock waves. These days, a few 100kt is all you need to destroy anything you want.
In fact, for the most part, you don't need any nuclear weapons to destroy most things out there. Simply because of the accuracy of modern weaponry. Part of this is GPS, but since this is likely the first thing to be destroyed in a big war, people developed inertial guidance and other navigation systems that can do without it. Hence, 500kt is a big bomb these days and people are unlikely to build bigger ones for the foreseeable future. If only because it is much more effective hit several targets with a couple of warheads than just one or two with a big one.
I agree but there when the price of a resource drops a lot of mines close which reduces relatively common things to a very small number of sources. The other thing is local demand. When US manufacturing crashed (or was moved offshore) the local demand dried up and the Chinese had their own suppliers. That's left the US with a lot of abandoned mines that would still be viable if they could find someone to sell stuff too. They can't break into the complex connections of the Chinese market if there is already a Chinese connected company in that niche. Also what do you do when the competing mine is digging up copper, gold and silver with uranium as a byproduct (eg. Olympic Dam Mine) and you are only digging up uranium? They can afford to sell uranium at a low price because it's just gravy and not their main business. The "freedom fries" stupidity highlighted that there is a uranium mine in Niger that has been inactive for years due to the inability to compete in such a situation.
Noes. Don't destroy 7 billion of us! (Nov. 2, 2000 rules)
Has anyone considered that this tech can be weaponized ? Of course I'm all for a planetary wide protection against space debris, but it seems that the technology to intercept and redirect asteroids and such could be used to selectively wipe out entire nations without there ever being a radiological alert going off ..
"and releasing more energy than a large atomic bomb" in the first reports it was "a small atomic bomb".
I do not believe in karma. "Funny"=-6. Do good and forbid evil. Yours, Oft-Offtopic Flamebaiting Troll.
Nukes still have a role as big bunker busters, ship killers / sub, and deterrent.
That last one is the only one that requires big nukes. The best deterrent isn't "we will defeat you" it's "we will wipe you out".
For that, you need city-killer nukes to kill the "civilian" population.
*in quotes, because the line is blurred now.
I don't think the younger ones can appreciate just how fast tech is happening.(just as our generation did not)
To put it into a different perspective:
Sputnik had not even reached voting age(USA) when we landed on the moon...using tech based on 25 year old tech(NAZI V-2 rockets)
About the only thing I'd like to add to your list is:
3) development of better radiation shielding for both spacecraft and spacesuits.
4) coming up with ways to counteract physiological damage from long term micro-gravity exposure.
(I realize #3 could be included in your #2, but this is such a huge issue for long term space endeavors, that it needs more emphasis)
If you would plot a graph so that tech advances were plotted along a timeline, we are at the 'base' of a steep mountain(heading 'up') that would be represented by the graph...a 'hockey stick' if you will.
It boggles my mind when I try to fit the world I grew up into this modern world. Going to the moon was just sci-fi stuff of fantasy...now it's old history to the young ones.
*Old Geezer anecdote warning!*
I was a NASA brat, and I still remember all of the dinner parties held by NASA employees for the sole purpose of watching the pilot episode of "Star Trek", and the excitement surrounding that event, the engineer's discussions and their 'critic review' of the tech portrayed in that show.
For you kiddies, that's 'Star Trek:TOS' ;-)
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti
That explains why a lot of sci-fi has China and Russia as the two primary 'Space Powers', and the US on the sidelines.
When it comes to the whole 'space' thing, the Russians have always had the balls to stick to what was practical, and then 'just do it', while we seem to have lost our balls(politically, as far as NASA budgets go) on the moon somewhere.
The Russian's 'ownership of space' happened some years back. Their only upcoming competitor seems to be China, but they are not really breathing down Russia's neck yet.
Down With Slashdot BETA!!! I've been around the corner and seen the oliphant; you can only abuse me from your perspecti