The closest it will come to earth is 170,000 miles away. It's projected to be 200,000 miles away. Haven't heard of any satellites that far out from earth.
The closest it will come to earth is 170,000 miles away. It's projected to be 200,000 miles away. Haven't heard of any satellites that far out from earth.
MY X/Y POKEMON FRIEND CODE: 1418-7279-9541 In Game Name: Michael__
That impact scenario for Apophis has been ruled out.
Detecting and monitoring asteroids and near-Earth objects is a collaborative effort involving a slew of institutions, and it's not like NASA somehow has a monopoly on facilities or observations. There's no keeping this information from the public, no matter how you choose to define "they".
---------- Post added 2013-02-09 at 05:24 PM ----------
You must be thinking of a different asteroid. 2012 DA 14 will pass within 28,500 km (18,000 miles) of the surface, which is inside the orbits of geosynchronous satellites.
Asteroid will plough through with a grin on it's face saying "Deal with it", and piss off. It won't even slightly change its trajectory.
Agreed although not every plan that could stop asteroids is NASAs.
Ignore the URL I swear I first saw and heard about this somewhere else, this was just the easiest link to find for some reason.
Basically it's like they're making a giant catchers mitt for asteroids.
Oh of course -- many of the possibilities being explored come from university groups and private organizations (like the B612 Foundation and the program I linked at The Planetary Society). In the end I don't think it really matters who develops the best mitigation techniques (and those will vary depending on the size and proximity of the target asteroids), we just need to pick up the pace and implement these systems well in advance instead of putting it off.
My biggest concern would be facing an impact scenario for which we're not suitably prepared. This will be magnified in coming years as new observatories and detection systems go into service. We're going to find a lot more space rocks and we'd better be in good shape to deal with them should the need arise.
Out of pure coincidence I guess this video just popped up in my youtube feed. Very relevant
It seem I'm going to get the best view of this asteroid!
I've got to say, I've always been a bit of an optimist but I think we are. These technologies are of course not built yet but I think if we were to discover an asteroid coming to earth, they'd really kick it into gear and get the proper funding and be ready by the time the asteroid does get close
Any satellite in it's path will be scrapmetal and the asteroid will keep on plowing through our solarsystem. These things move at incredible speeds. But that really is too close for comfort. What may really affect it is our planets gravity and any other planets it may pass.
Not sure if this is the same one but, there is one they called Apophis that they thought was gonna get close or hit, but they had later calculated that to be incorrect.
This is a different asteroid. (I linked to the Apophis update a few posts back. ^)
---------- Post added 2013-02-10 at 12:14 AM ----------
Ah, bummer. Even with your favorable location for the fly-by it'll still be too dim to see without some sort of equipment. I wouldn't go out of your way to buy anything just for this though, the view will be far from impressive. One of the joys of backyard astronomy is going to all the trouble to locate these things when they pass through our neighborhood (geek factor), but this object will just appear as a faint dot in the eyepiece. You'll get better results with one of the live webcasts that'll be tracking the asteroid. (I posted a link to one earlier and will add more as they're announced.)
Should anyone be interested in trying to catch the fly-by online, here's an updated list of live coverage and broadcast times (thanks to Sky & Telescope):
• On February 15th, weather permitting, HD video of the asteroid crossing the stars will be streamed from the Clay Center Observatory in Brookline, Massachusetts, from 6 p.m. EST until 4 a.m. the next morning EST (23:00 UT Feb. 15 to 9:00 UT Feb. 16).
• Real-time video will be streamed by Slooh.com beginning at 9:00 p.m. EST February 15th (2:00 UT Feb. 16th).
• The Virtual Telescope Project in Europe plans live streaming starting earlier, at 5:00 p.m. EST (22:00 UT Feb. 15th).
• Bareket Observatory in Israel will track the asteroid on February 15th using a remote telescope coupled with a cooled CCD camera.
Its webcast is scheduled from 2:00 to 3:30 p.m. EST (19:00 to 20:30 UT) . This includes the time of closest approach.
“Do not lose time on daily trivialities. Do not dwell on petty detail. For all of these things melt away and drift apart within the obscure traffic of time. Live well and live broadly. You are alive and living now. Now is the envy of all of the dead.” ~ Emily3, World of Tomorrow
Words to live by.
JPL has a live feed going on Ustream, currently showing imagery from the Samford Valley Observatory in Brisbane.
You can see the asteroid right now but it's not super-exciting.
Now it's switched from Samford Valley to Murrumbateman.
(And for good measure, this is completely unrelated to the meteor over Russia earlier.)
Even when you cram almost two hours of footage into 19 seconds... it's still just a dot.
Impressive video, nonetheless.