NASA sets schedule for handling asteroid threat...

[Royston]

Please find the news article here...

 

http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/9871982/

 

'NASA has outlined what it could do, and in what time frame, in case a quarter-mile-wide asteroid named Apophis is on a course to slam into Earth in the year 2036. The timetable was released by the B612 Foundation, a group that is pressing NASA and other government agencies to do more to head off threats from near-Earth objects.'

[CanadaAotS]

nuke it! lol, just kidding, interesting though. The fact that they predicted this as a possibility 31 years in advance makes yah feel pretty safe lol.

[ecoli]

I wonder how much force it would take to shift the asteroids orbit

[Douglas]

I wonder how much force it would take to shift the asteroids orbit

probably not much, if you could nudge it by 2026, but if you nudge in 2035, it would probably need a good nudge.

[ecoli]

I suddenly realize the stupidity of movies like Armegeddon. Why would an asteroid the size of texas just appear out of the blue with out NASA knowing or taking action before it's really close. That makes no sense.

[Royston]

Deep Impact is on TV at the moment...then I noticed this thread had appeared in the news forums

[JohnB]

Since there is now only one observatory looking at the Southern sky for possible impactors, it is quite possible that one could "appear out of the blue".

 

We have by no means a complete radar or visual early warning system in place. IIRC there was a fair sized one passed a few years ago and we only saw it on the way out. Passed closer than the moon I think.

 

I recall that the Deep Range Radar at Aricebo can now track objects out to Jupiter, but there is only one Aricebo and a whole lot of sky to search.

 

If an object had very low albedo, then it would only be detected by blocking starlight. It could indeed get quite close before we saw it.

[herpguy]

There was a national geographic tv special about this a few weeks ago. One interviewed scientist proposed simply grabbing the astroid with a giant claw. The astroid will fight against springs and will eventually be thrown in the opposite direction from the springs. There's obviously more to it than that, but that's the summary of his plan. If NASA had better funding, I believe this scientist's idea could work, and it may be better than the current plan.

[ffsjoe]

Atleast it won't hit in the southern hemisphere. Since asteroids always hit America

[ecoli]

Atleast it won't hit in the southern hemisphere. Since asteroids always hit America

 

Would you rather have someone like the "Columbian Space Agency" deal with the problem?

[ffsjoe]

I'm sure America would step in anyway, even if America isn't directly threatend, it knows how to do that pretty well. :P