Asteroid flies within 0.85 Earth radii

[george7378]

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news170.html

The 4-metre space rock flew within 5480KM of Earth, skimming over the Pacific ocean. The rock was only discovered a few days ago, and was originally predicted to fly within about 28,000KM - the approach was so close that the gravity of Earth altered the asteroid's orbit by 60 degrees!

 

[Quick_Nick]

That's pretty cool. Scary but cool.
And the link says it's a 1m asteroid (?) not that it makes much difference.

 

[Linguofreak]

4 meter isn't "scary". 1 meter even less so.

I'm also not quite sure 5480 km above the surface quite qualifies as "skimming". It's a close approach, sure, but not quite "skimming".

 

[Quick_Nick]

It's scary if you're a satellite. Or if you can detect something unstoppable

 

[george7378]

Sorry about the size - yes, it's 1 metre. Oops

I know that a collision with a 1m asteroid would not be scary, but the fact that we only knew it existed on the same day it nearly hit Earth is quite scary. Any asteroid larger than 1KM would be a devastating impact, and although we would see a 1KM asteroid earlier than a 1M one, would we have time to do anything about it?

 

[tblaxland]

the fact that we only knew it existed on the same day it nearly hit Earth is quite scary.

Au contraire, I think the fact that we knew about it at all is amazing

 

[N_Molson]

I know that a collision with a 1m asteroid would not be scary, but the fact that we only knew it existed on the same day it nearly hit Earth is quite scary. Any asteroid larger than 1KM would be a devastating impact, and although we would see a 1KM asteroid earlier than a 1M one, would we have time to do anything about it?

That's the big problem, any trajectory deviation attempt would require at least several months of planning to be efficient...

 

[jinglesassy]

That's the big problem, any trajectory deviation attempt would require at least several months of planning to be efficient...

Or just launch two space shuttles with a rover and a nuclear bomb aboard to the asteroid land on it and drill down a few thousand feet then detonate it.....Oh wait wrong reality.

 

[garyw]

the fact that we only knew it existed on the same day it nearly hit Earth is quite scary

It all depends. The hardest rocks to spot are those heading right towards us as it's very difficult to see any movement against the backdrop of stars so it takes a lot longer to identify these ones.

 

[wehaveaproblem]

I'm disappointed it didn't get closer... would have made for a pretty light show...

 

[cmunoz80]

Could not free my mind from a relevant issue, 99942 Apophis. What do you guys think about this asteroid that is said to hit the earth in 25 years, which is on 2036. Do you think this will happen? NASA said they would be preparing for measures to prevent, if ever it will really happen and i hope not, it from hitting the surface. Some say that it will disintegrate before it makes landfall but i hope they get ready as i don’t want to experience transformers in 6 senses.

 

[Wishbone]

It has been discussed extensively in this forum, and as far as I can see there are two camps (tongue in cheek) vehemently opposing each other - pro-nuke and anti-nuke. The anti-nuke camp includes gravity tug people, solar pressure people, ion thruster folks, giant bulldozer crowd, and space-qualified asteroid-eating bacteria proponents...

 

[tblaxland]

Discussion on that topic in other threads:
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=9512
http://www.orbiter-forum.com/showthread.php?t=20299