NASA To Launch Tractor?
By Steve Robinson
A NASA astronaut has called for a mission to divert a potentially lethal asteroid from its present course using a 'Space Tractor'. The asteroid Apophis will pass within 20,000 miles of Earth on 13th April 2029, a very near miss by cosmological standards.
This tractor would be no ordinary tractor, however. Costing upwards of $200 million, the small probe would meet up with the target, position itself alongside, and exert enough gravitational pull on the celestial object to change its velocity ever so slightly.
Experts believe this would be sufficient to divert the asteroid's path, meaning that the chance of it swinging around and hitting us on the next pass in 2036 - which may well occur otherwise - will be avoided. So 'Gravity Tractor' would perhaps be a better - and certainly more sci-fi - name for the probe.
"It's going to come so close to the Earth in 2029 that its orbit will change and it might change enough so that it comes back and hits us in 2036," said astronomer David Tholen, who discovered Apophis.
Particles the size of sand grains strike the earth often and appear as shooting stars. However, the size of Apophis means that an impact similar in effect to the strike in Tunguska, Russia in 1908 - which flattened 60 million trees over a 830-square-mile area - is more likely. If this hit in a populated area, it would be disasterous. And if the asteroid were any larger, then it would have global implications.
Scientists are looking to use radar at the next close approach of the asteroid to study it in greater detail. They hope to do this using a new four-camera setup, to be located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This, researchers say, will provide enough information regarding any threat from the heavens to give decades warning.
NASA Astronaut Edward Lu says that to do nothing would be inviting the potential for disaster, hence the Gravity Tractor: "If we are wiped out by an asteroid, that will be our own fault at this point," he said.
Steve writes quite a lot of stuff for the Null. You should read it.
This tractor would be no ordinary tractor, however. Costing upwards of $200 million, the small probe would meet up with the target, position itself alongside, and exert enough gravitational pull on the celestial object to change its velocity ever so slightly.
Experts believe this would be sufficient to divert the asteroid's path, meaning that the chance of it swinging around and hitting us on the next pass in 2036 - which may well occur otherwise - will be avoided. So 'Gravity Tractor' would perhaps be a better - and certainly more sci-fi - name for the probe.
"It's going to come so close to the Earth in 2029 that its orbit will change and it might change enough so that it comes back and hits us in 2036," said astronomer David Tholen, who discovered Apophis.
Particles the size of sand grains strike the earth often and appear as shooting stars. However, the size of Apophis means that an impact similar in effect to the strike in Tunguska, Russia in 1908 - which flattened 60 million trees over a 830-square-mile area - is more likely. If this hit in a populated area, it would be disasterous. And if the asteroid were any larger, then it would have global implications.
Scientists are looking to use radar at the next close approach of the asteroid to study it in greater detail. They hope to do this using a new four-camera setup, to be located on Mauna Kea in Hawaii. This, researchers say, will provide enough information regarding any threat from the heavens to give decades warning.
NASA Astronaut Edward Lu says that to do nothing would be inviting the potential for disaster, hence the Gravity Tractor: "If we are wiped out by an asteroid, that will be our own fault at this point," he said.
Steve writes quite a lot of stuff for the Null. You should read it.
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