quote:

Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid




MOSCOW – Russia's space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.

Anatoly Perminov told Golos Rossii radio the space agency would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1-in-37.

Further studies have ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) from Earth's surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000. In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path, the agency changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000.

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"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow us to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.

Scientists have long theorized about asteroid deflection strategies. Some have proposed sending a probe to circle around a dangerous asteroid to gradually change its trajectory. Others suggested sending a spacecraft to collide with the asteroid and alter its momentum, or hitting it with nuclear weapons.

Perminov wouldn't disclose any details of the project, saying they still need to be worked out. But he said the mission wouldn't require any nuclear explosions.


Full article at: http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230/ap_on_sc/eu_russia_asteroid_encounter

quote:

ORIGINAL: Sanity
I think I'll go with the crowd that says if it ain't broke don't fix it.

quote:



(2) Mitigation Mitigation was not specifically studied, but the team found small variations in the energy absorption and reflection properties of Apophis' surface are sufficient to cause enough trajectory change to obscure the difference between an impact and a miss in 2036. Changing the amount of energy Apophis absorbs by half a percent as late as 2018 - for example by covering a 40 x 40 meter (130 x 130 foot) patch with lightweight reflective materials (an 8 kg payload) - can change its position in 2036 by a minimum of one Earth radius.




Apophis Trajectory Change

A change somewhat greater than this minimum would be required to allow for prediction uncertainties. For Apophis, scaling up to distribute 250 kg (550 pounds) of a reflective or absorptive material (similar to the carbon fiber mesh being considered for solar sails) across the surface could use the existing radiation forces to produce a 6-sigma trajectory change, moving at least "99.9999998" percent of the statistically possible trajectories away from the Earth in just 18 years.

While no deflection is expected to be necessary, the team's research demonstrates that any deflection method must produce a change known in advance to be greater than all the error sources in the prediction, including some greater than those considered with the standard model.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/apophis/

quote:

ORIGINAL: Aneirin
The thought is though this asteroid is part of the natural balance of the universe, it's trajectory to come within 18k miles is that close enough for mankind to upset the balance, and there possibly setting off a chain of unknown quantity. Deflecting this one that comes near might very well lead to one that is not meant to come near, smacking into something else and setting off another chain of occurences that will affect this planet in a worse way. When we start interfering with these unknowns we may unwittingly be setting up more and greater disasters to come.

Science, as far as I am concerned needs to be proving the trajectory of this lump of rock, if it is to pass us by 18k miles, lets just marvel at the sight and treat it as a warning, that despite all our technologies, sticks and in this case stones can break more than bones and we , life on earth is not really that significant at all to the greater universe.

(Or something thinking, damn, they survived the flood, I will chuck a rock at them this time )