Write your abstract here. Code Yellow: MITs Radical
Asteroid Impact Prevention Plan
In a report that reads as
if it was a first draft for the next
Armageddon blockbuster, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of
Technology have announced to the world their plan to save earth from
impending doom; if necessary that is. The plan is not necessarily to directly destroy or
impair an
asteroids path towards collision with earth, it is possibly
one of the coolest things you’ll ever see.
The plan is described as “the least violent and complex of all”, and
involves a long strand of tough polymer ribbon (yellow by preference).
An un-manned space vehicle would make two passes of the
asteroid,
stringing along the ribbon in two long and separate lines, attached to
the asteroid and held six feet apart. The purpose of the ribbon is to allow an astronaut to land safely on
the asteroid to gather samples, and run diagnostic tests to determine what method would be most appropriate for
saving mankind. For a planet with over 150 impact craters caused by asteroids and
their fragments, and scientific theories of mass extinctions as a
result, such research and plans are unavoidable, and thank goodness for
that. In fact, NASA is already on track to launch their spacecraft Dawn to
meet with asteroids Vesta and Ceres in 2011 and 2015 respectively. NASA
is considering plans to land a man on an asteroid in
the future. All comes a week after British scientists devised a plan to
send a probe to study the asteroid named Apophis which is feared will
be diverted in to a planetary collision course with Earth on April 13,
2036. Tthough the science is sketchy behind this precise
calculation, and the likelihood of impact then, later, or not at all,
is simply unknown, the plans being readied by space organizations and
scientists across the planet are reassuring, if nothing else. If the past is prelude, there''s bound to be a massive collision
event from a rogue asteroid at some point in the near future unless we
successfully intervene. The impact map above shows most of the 160
impact craters that have been identified since 1950. The bulk of the
terrestrial impact craters that were ever formed, however, have been
obliterated by eons of geological processes. Study the map at a
glance you''ll see major impacts in the major population centers of the
U.S., Europe, Africa, and Australia. Keep in mind that 65 million
years ago (a wink of the eye in geological time) there was a mass
extinction of the dinosaurs that was linked to global effects caused by
a massive impact. A NASA program, the Spaceguard Survey to
track the largest potentially hazardous objects of the 20,000 asteroids
and comets orbiting relatively close to our planet greater than 3,300
feet in diameter that could devastate most life if they hit. Donald
K. Yeomans, director of the Spaceguard program, said there were
believed to be 1,100 of these larger objects and that the survey had
cataloged about 73 percent of them. The initial goal of tracking 90
percent of them should be reached by 2010, more than a year later than
originally planned. In a note of cosmic irony, that which might
eventually destroy us may also have been responsible for the origins of
life on our planet. In 2011, NASA will launch the OSIRIS mission
to a menacing asteroid called RQ36 which would barely be noticed
"except" says Joseph Nuth of NASA''s Goddard Space Flight Center, "that
It''s a treasure trove of organic material, so it holds clues to how
Earth formed and life got started, and it regularly crosses Earth''s
orbit, so it might impact us someday." RQ36 is roughly about two-fifths
of a mile in diameter. It orbits between about 83 million and 126
million miles from the sun, swinging within about 280,000 miles of
Earth orbitly 40,000 miles more distant than the moon. "OSIRIS
of Egyptian mythology is the god of life and fertility who
taught Egyptians agriculture," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS Deputy
Principal Investigator. "There''s an analogy to the proposed 21st
century space mission. We''re looking at the kind of object that we
think brought life to Earth; objects that seeded Earth with
early biomolecules, the precursors of life." The mission will
also help to better track the orbits of asteroids that might hit Earth
by accurately measuring the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The
Yarkovsky effect is a small push on an asteroid that happens when the
asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits heat. The small push adds up over
time, and is uneven due to an asteroid''s various surface materials,
wobble, and rotation. There''s no sure way to predict an
Earth-approaching asteroid''s orbit unless you can factor in how the
Yarkovsky effect will change that orbit.
“The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly
being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by
humanity,” says Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton''s School
of Engineering Sciences team, who developed the identifying program. The
team used raw data from multiple impact simulations to rank each
country based on the number of times and how severely they would be
affected by each impact. The software, called NEOimpactor (from NASA''s
"NEO" or Near Earth Object program), has been specifically developed
for measuring the impact of ''small'' asteroids under one kilometer in
diameter. Early results indicate that in terms of population
lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the
greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada
and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the
infrastructure destroyed. “The consequences
for human populations and infrastructure as a result of an impact are
enormous,” says Bailey. Galaxy News Report September 7th, 2007.