A decent-sized asteroid, the 1,100-foot-wide Apophis , will pass so close to Earth it'll be visible in the sky from certain places. Crucially, the giant rock will not strike our humble planet. But it will pass closer than 20,000 miles from the surface, which is closer than where some of the United States' most prized weather satellites orbit.
These stories aren't about real danger; many of the objects pass millions of miles away. Rather, the stories are about sensationalism.
NASA Advances Asteroid-Hunting Space Telescope After Years of Limbo
"I'm over the moon," Amy Mainzer, who leads the project, told Insider. "We are excited to do our part to help cross the asteroid-impact issue off the world's list of worries."
NEO Surveyor would help NASA catalogue nearby asteroids and chart their paths through the solar system, so that someday — if necessary — humanity may have a shot at destroying or deflecting any space rocks on a collision path with Earth.
At the Planetary Defense Conference, a group of 200 participants from about two dozen countries worked through a hypothetical scenario in which an asteroid was set to crash into Earth in six months. They determined that no existing technologies could stop the space rock, since the time frame was too short to launch a mission that could destroy or deflect an asteroid.
Asteroid 16 Psyche Might Not be a Solid Chunk of Metal After All, but Another Rubble Pile -
Asteroid 16 Psyche, often sensationally dubbed the 10,000 quadrillion dollar asteroid due to its composition of valuable metals, may not be entirely what it seems. A new paper out of the University of Arizona suggests that the asteroid is possibly more porous, and less metallic, than previous studies indicated. It still certainly has a mostly metallic structure, but its composition is more complex – and that’s good news.
The researchers based their work on previous observational data that showed the asteroid was mainly a mix of three ingredients: metal, low-iron pyroxene, and carbonaceous chondrite. In the laboratory, they then tried to recreate the visible and near-infrared spectra seen by the telescopic observations, using various mixtures of the three ingredients. This allowed them to determine with a higher degree of accuracy the percentages of each ingredient that make up 16 Psyche’s surface.
Asteroid 16 Psyche Thought to Be Worth $10,000 Quadrillion Could Be a 'Rubble Pile'
An asteroid that scientists have previously estimated to be worth a staggering $10,000 quadrillion due to the potential value of its resources could be a "rubble pile," the lead author of a new study has said.
The paper, published in The Planetary Science Journal , indicates that the 140-mile-wide space rock, dubbed 16 Psyche, might not be as metallic or dense as previous research has suggested.
According to the study, which was led by University of Arizona (UA) undergraduate student David Cantillo, the findings suggest that the asteroid's formation may have played out differently to what scientists had previously thought.
What the FAQ: What are asteroids? Which was the latest asteroid that passed by the Earth?
As Google celebrates the 99th birthday of Margherita Hacks, an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator, we try to dig out more information on what asteroids are and how they are formed
Last Updated: 12th June 2021 | A+ A A- |
We know that you have read about asteroids or meteors in your science textbooks. All these were formed from the leftovers of the solar system around 4.6 billion years ago. A lot of scientists, astrophysicists started discovering them one by one and studied the materials these objects are made of. As Google celebrates the 99th birthday of Margherita Hacks, an Italian astrophysicist and scientific disseminator, we try to dig out more information on what asteroids are and how they are formed.
The Chicxulub Impactor: Comet or Asteroid?
A recent paper by Siraj & Loeb (2021) entitled "Breakup of a long-period comet as the origin of the dinosaur extinction" attempts to revive the perennial debate about what type of body hit the Earth 66 million years ago, triggering the end-Cretaceous extinction. Here we critique the paper and assess the evidence it presents.
Palo Alto Teen's Asteroid Detection System Wins STEM Award | Palo Alto, CA Patch
PALO ALTO, CA — A Palo Alto teen's innovation received grand recognition last month at the Regeneron International Science and Engineering Fair, winning the $10,000 Peggy Scripps Award for Science Communication and another $5,000 first-place award in the physics and astronomy category.
Franklin Wang, a 17-year-old junior at Palo Alto High School, developed a neural network that detects small asteroids near Earth about twice as well as current methods. Wang used machine learning and synthetic data sets to uncover six objects that had never been seen before.
International competition on asteroid and space debris launched | University of Strathclyde
An international research network, exploring solutions to asteroids and space debris, has announced a competition for students and researchers around the world.
The EU H2020 MCSA ETN Stardust-Reloaded ( Stardust-R ) led by Prof Massimiliano Vasile at the University of Strathclyde, has launched the Andrea Milani Challenge in collaboration with the European Space Agency's Advanced Concepts Team (ESA ACT).
Professor Massimiliano Vasile, Director of the Aerospace Centre of Excellence in the Department of Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering and coordinator of Stardust-R, had a prominent role in conceiving the challenge. He said: "This challenge was conceived to stimulate research on space environment management and space sustainability, one of the cornerstones of the Stardust-R project.
No comments:
Post a Comment