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In 1895 French brothers Auguste and Louis Lumiere demonstrated a projector system in Paris. In 1907 they screened the first public movie. |
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Wanted: Man to land on killer asteroid
Posted on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (CST) by Thoth
 It is the stuff of nightmares and, until now, Hollywood thrillers. A huge asteroid is on a catastrophic collision course with Earth and mankind is poised to go the way of the dinosaurs.
To save the day, Nasa now plans to go where only Bruce Willis has gone before. The US space agency is drawing up plans to land an astronaut on an asteroid hurtling through space at more than 30,000 mph.
It wants to know whether humans could master techniques needed to deflect such a doomsday object when it is eventually identified. The proposals are at an early stage, and a spacecraft needed just to send an astronaut that far into space exists only on the drawing board, but they are deadly serious. A smallish asteroid called Apophis has already been identified as a possible threat to Earth in 2036.
Chris McKay
of the Nasa Johnson Space Centre in Houston told the website Space.com:
"There's a lot of public resonance with the notion that Nasa ought to
be doing something about killer asteroids ... to be able to send
serious equipment to an asteroid.
"The public wants us to
have mastered the problem of dealing with asteroids. So being able to
have astronauts go out there and sort of poke one with a stick would be
scientifically valuable as well as demonstrate human capabilities."
A 1bn tonne asteroid just
1km across striking the Earth at a 45 degree angle could generate the
equivalent of a 50,000 megatonne thermonuclear explosion. Attempting to
break it up with an atomic warhead might only generate thousands of
smaller objects on a similar course, which could have time to reform.
Scientists agree the best approach, given enough warning, would be to
gently nudge the object into a safer orbit.
"A human mission to a near
Earth asteroid would be scientifically worthwhile," Dr McKay said.
"There could be testing of various approaches. We don't know enough
about asteroids right now to know the best strategy for mitigation."
Matt Genge, a space
researcher at Imperial College, London, has calculated that something
with the mass, acceleration and thrust of a small car could push an
asteroid weighing a billion tonnes out of the path of Earth in just 75
days.
Gianmarco Radice, an
asteroid expert at Glasgow University, said the best approach would be
to land a device to dig into the object. "You could place something on
the surface to eject material that would push the asteroid in the other
direction."
Mirrors, lights and even
paint could change the way the object absorbed light and heat enough to
shift its direction over 20 years or so. With less notice, mankind
could be forced to take more drastic measures, such as setting off a
massive explosion on or near the object to change its course. In 2005,
Nasa's Deep Impact mission tested a different technique when it placed
an object into the path of a comet.
Dr Radice said robots could
do the job just as well, doing away with the need for a risky and
expensive manned mission. Last year Japan showed with its Hayabusa
probe that a remote spacecraft can land on an asteroid.
But with manned missions to
the moon and possibly Mars on its to-do list again, Nasa is keen to
extend the reach of its astronauts.
Dan Durda, a senior
research scientist in the Department of Space Studies at the Southwest
Research Institute in Boulder, Colorado said an asteroid landing
mission would be a good way test the new Constellation programme
spacecraft, the Apollo-style planned replacements for the space shuttle
with which Nasa hopes to return to the moon.
He told Space.com: "A very
natural, early extension of the exploration capabilities of this new
vehicle's architecture would be a "quick-dash" near-Earth asteroid
rendezvous mission."
Tom Jones, a former shuttle
astronaut, said: "After a lunar visit, we face a long interval in
Earth-Moon space while we build up experience and technology for a Mars
mission. An asteroid mission could take us immediately into deep space,
sustaining programme momentum, adding public excitement and reducing
the risk of a later Mars mission."
Europe has its own efforts
to tackle asteroids. Its planned Don Quijote mission will launch two
robot spacecraft, one to tilt at a harmless passing space rock, and a
second to film the collision and watch for any deviation in the
asteroid's path.
'Not if, but when...' Hits and near misses
At Nasa's Jet Propulsion
Laboratory, in California, scientists monitor all "potentially
hazardous asteroids" that might one day end up on a collision course
with Earth. So far they number 831. The next close-ish shave - at a
mere 17 times the distance from the Sun to the Earth - will be asteroid
2004QD14 on November 29.
The Earth has a long
history of asteroid strikes. Thirty five million years ago, a 5km-wide
asteroid ploughed into what is now Chesapeake Bay, in the US, leaving
an 80km crater. In 1908, an asteroid devastated swaths of Siberia when
it exploded mid-air with the force of 1,000 Hiroshimas. The theory that
the dinosaurs were wiped out by a huge asteroid striking Mexico 65m
years ago is controversial since scientists uncovered rocks from the
crater predating the extinction of the dinosaurs by 300,000 years.
A near miss, when asteroid
QW7 came within 4m km of Earth in September 2000, led Liberal Democrat
MP Lembit Opik to declare: "It's not a case of if we will be hit, it is
a question of when. Each of us is 750 times more likely to be killed by
an asteroid than to win this weekend's lottery."
In January 2002, the former
science minister, David Sainsbury, announced the government's response
to the threat from hurtling asteroids: a new information centre based
in Leicester.
Copyright: Guardian Unlimited
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Re: Wanted: Man to land on killer asteroid
by visionenhanced on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | this is all fine and good but let me share something a bit scarrier with the thoth crew. I went to a website a month or so ago and now i cant remember the site. at any rate i was using the provided possibility model of an asteroid and it actually comes to within less than half a lunar distance. if this is true it will happen in about 2011. now i dont know if earths gravity will pull it in but .4 of a lunar distance is just a bit to close for my comfort. i will see if i can find it s name etc.. brb. |
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Re: Wanted: Man to land on killer asteroid
by visionenhanced on Tuesday, November 21, 2006 (CST)
(User Info | Send a Message) | | found it. now the wierd thing is the simulation did not say the opening statement two months ago. asteroid (2006 qm111) .0477 au is it distance on jan 27 2011 http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/db?name=2006+QM111 thats the link have fun |
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