What are the current projects on asteroid defense?

Question

What are the current projects on asteroid defense?

Answer 1

There are a couple of groups working on cheap probes to orbit and possibly sample an asteroid, but nothing scheduled to launch in the near future.

The Planetary Society (a non-profit volunteer organization of space enthusiasts) has held an asteroid mission design competition.

The winners are here:

http://www.planetary.org/programs/projec...

However, as far as I am aware, no one in government has yet proposed funding or building any of these missions.

McCain has not said he'd do anything beyond what Bush has done spacewise, while Obama's platform is full of cuts to space exploration, so I wouldn't hold my breath.

ps Apophis's odds of hitting are 1 in 45,000, not 1 in 45.

Answer 2

99942 Apophis (see link below) is expected to pass exceptionally close to earth in 2029 with a 1 in 37 chance of hitting the earth and again in 2036 (although they do not know chances to hit then).  If it misses it will still pass so close that it will fly inside our outer ring of geosynchronous satellites.  If it hits it would have the explosive force of 880 megatons.  The largest nuclear weapon ever was the Tsar Bomba (not a misspelling...a Russian nuke) at 100 megatons (most are much smaller).  So such an impact would easily wipe any city it hit off the face of the earth.

As for defenses we have none currently.  People think we can shoot nukes at them but we cannot.  Current nuclear missiles cannot leave earth orbit.  They are just enough to get a bit into space and then fall back to earth.  The rockets are nowhere near powerful enough to launch them out of earth orbit.

Still, if an asteroid is spotted early enough as the one above is they could have time to fit nukes to a rocket that could reach it.  Even so you have to understand that many asteroids are far too large to be affected by a nuke.  These are not small rocks and have a huge mass and momentum to be easily deflected or vaporized.  Whether nuking them would work depends on many things.  You also run the potential risk of breaking it apart and putting earth in a shooting gallery of multiple inbound asteroids which may be as bad or worse (again depending on a number of variables).

There are other options such as putting rockets on them and pushing them or using lasers but they are all a bit far fetched and no one is working on them seriously.

Unfortunately it is a big sky and current efforts to track near earth objects cover only about 2%.  It is very possible one could sneak by.

Why don't we try harder on this?  Because it is expensive and the chances are low we will be hit by a serious impact any time soon (next 100 years).  Politicians want to spend money on other stuff.

Why should we try harder?  Because these impacts are potentially devastating and could do anything from kill millions of people and wipe out numerous cities (if it landed in the ocean it could spawn massive tidal waves that could wipe out whole coastlines) to literally killing all life on earth.

Decisions, decisions...

Answer 3

well, despite whats written above, the "very real" chance of that astroid hitting earth in 2029 is 1 in 45k (I have edited it Doom Shepherd, but not positive about it, was a while ago i read it, but i thught it was 1 in 45... will look it up later) currently acording to scientists who study astrophy!... thats not that great! Well its a better chance than winning the lottery, but i wouldnt start looting and pilaging now!

anyways, i think you will find the most likely defence plan is to shoot it out from a long way off, you would only need to deflect it by a small degree from a long distance off to ensure it doesnt hit us...

anyways, I would say they would probably nuke it if it was to late to defect it! nukes are perfect for this... and space battles... because space is already full of radiation!

Answer 4

If you haven't known that there is a asteroid comming towards us and it will reach us at 2029 but it will not hit us, ten years later it will revisit us this time it will want to know us more than a visit. So I think when a asteroid like this one comes we can be prepared by destroying it wiht a missile like we have done to a satalliet.( the asteroid that is comming is true according to science not according to the media)

Answer 5

u guys are wrong and by the way they canceld the project of using earths mass due to miss calulation

any way

the most recent one is finding so sort of miror or the energy of the sun to push the asteroid away and hope fully deflect it

2. planting some sort of propolison jets into the rocket to drice it away

Answer 6

Nobody is paying much attention to it, as the near-earth object survey shows no likely threat in the foreseeable future.

Answer 7

The current plan is to stop the asteroid using the mass of the earth.

Answer 8

why do we need to defend the asteroids?

i think we should spend money where it matters.

flying cars.

Answer 9

Ahh, what projects on asteroide defense?