Asteroid about to make a close shave with earth … but how close?

[rooster59]

Asteroid about to make a close shave with earth … but how close?



An asteroid thought to be up to 50 metres in diameter is expected to make a close shave with our planet on Saturday, although scientists are not sure just how close.

However, it is thought to be unlikely that “2013 TX68”, as it is known, will collide with the earth.

Euronews’ Jeremy Wilks spoke to a scientist at the European Space Agency, Michael Khan, an expert in asteroids and space debris.

Wilks: “To what extent does this asteroid pose a threat now?”

Khan: “The problem with this asteroid is that we don’t know much about it. We know approximately what its orbit is. We don’t even know how big it is, we know it’s somewhere between 20 and 50 metres in diameter. But we know the orbit to the extent that it allows us to say that it won’t hit the earth in March 2016 and we will have two encounters in this century and there it probably won’t hit the earth either.”

Wilks: “What would happen if an asteroid of that kind of size hit the earth?”

Khan: “This is kind of ‘iffy’. It’s likely – if it’s on the smaller end of this range of diameters – that it would just explode in the atmosphere, like the one in Chelyabinsk a few years back, over Chelyabinsk, that exploded and caused some damage but luckily no casualties. But it might conceivably hit the surface and make a hole and then you would be looking at really a real problem, damage and possibly also lots of people killed.”

Wilks: “In general, to what extent are asteroids a threat to us now?”

Khan: “Asteroids have always been a threat to the earth. If you look at the surface of the earth, it’s pockmarked with impacts. But luckily the larger the impacts are, the more damage they incurred, the less frequently they happen. So it’s not a very likely thing to happen but if a big impact happens it might have consequences that entail the end of civilisation as we know it. But that’s not a likely thing to happen. Everything depends on the size of the asteroid. So if you’re talking about something that has a kilometre in diameter then that would have global consequences.”

Wilks: “What are we doing about it?”

Khan: “You can do two things about it. The first thing you should always do is to understand how big the problem is and try to track, understand your enemy basically. So we should, and we do, track asteroids. We have telescopes staring into the sky for that purpose and when they see something that looks like an asteroid – so it’s moving – then the data is gathered from all of these computers and it goes into a database and that database is kept up to date, so we know where it is now, where it will be in a century from now. But there are limits to that. We cannot observe the smaller ones. So the smaller they get – because they’re dark, and then some of them come from the direction of the sun, like this one we’re talking about – the problem is you can’t observe them and there’s always a risk that you cannot mitigate.”

Wilks: “Yes, because the Chelyabinsk one indeed came from the direction of the sun. We didn’t see it coming. There’s nothing we can do?”

Khan: “This is really a grey zone, and probably for some time there won’t be anything we can do. Perhaps 50 years from now there will be.”

Wilks: “What would that be?”

Khan: “We might have telescopes positioned in orbit, orbiting the sun, and at different positions, and they would be able to observe. So we would have different telescopes looking at the same region of the sky and then we would see objects, or we could have radar scouring the interplanetary space, and detecting even smaller objects, like 10 metres in diameter or smaller.”

-- (c) Copyright Euronews 2016-03-05

[canathai8]

Never mind. Donald Trump's so-called hands will scare it away..

[godden]

will it be close enough to cut my lawn ?

[Srikcir]

"NASA is developing a first-ever robotic mission to visit a large near-Earth asteroid, collect a multi-ton boulder from its surface, and use it in an enhanced gravity tractor asteroid deflection demonstration.The spacecraft will then redirect the multi-ton boulder into a stable orbit around the moon, where astronauts will explore it and return with samples in the mid-2020s."

Maybe NASA can redirect this small asteroid now to lunar orbit - save costs and refine its gravity tractor deflection rechnology.

[i claudius]

They reckon 15000 miles ,maybe next time eh?

[goatfarmer]

50 meters is big enough to wipe out a small city. Shouldn't the 'precautionary principle' apply, as it apparently does with climate change?

"... the famous Tunguska Event in 1908 was a 50 meter stony meteor which evaporated about 20 kilometers above the Earth, and still flattened trees in a 30 kilometer area. Its yield was about 10 Megatons of TNT, and the frequency tables predict that such strikes should happen every 100 years or so. The next one could happen any day between now and 200 years from now!"

Size Yield Crater Effect
(Megatons) (km)
......................................................
75 m 100 1.5 Land impacts destroy area
the size of Washington or Paris)

160 m 500 3.0 Destroys large urban areas

350 m 5000 6.0 Destroys area the size of a
small state. Ocean impacts produce
tsunamis.

700 m 15,000 12 Land impact destroys Virginia,
Tiawan and ocean impact causes
major tsunami.

1.7 km 200,000 30 Land impacts affect climate,
global destruction of ozone,
tsunamis destroy coastal communities.

3.0 km 1 million 60 Large nations destroyed, widespread
fires from ejecta, climate change.

7.0 km 50 million 125 Mass extinction, global conflagration,
long term climate change.

16 km 200 million 250 Large mass extinction.

http://www.astronomycafe.net/qadir/q975.html

[Gulfsailor]

They reckon 15000 miles ,maybe next time eh?

They reckon anywhere between 15,000 miles and 40 times the distance to the moon (10,000,000 miles). Plus they are not even sure when it actually arrives, anywhere between Saturday and Tuesday. Basically they haven't got a clue about this asteroid :-)

[SOTIRIOS]

....Khan.....thanks for nothing......

...and after extensive tracking...to pretend....'we do not know'......is not reassuring at all....

...they would know exactly....and its exact trajectory....and point of impact as well......

...God Help us......

[arjunadawn]

These threats are the most under appreciated in modern history. Ancient history appreciated them. Thats what our monoliths speak to. Modern minds think they have it down- the solar cycle, the orbit, the debris fields, the yearly showers... but this misses a very important fact: The solar system as a whole of its parts also moves in an orbit through the galactic arm on a 24,000+ year cycle- age after age after age. The appearance of this being the precession of the equinoxes. It is to this cycle that the earth variously enters not earlier detectable debris fields over and over throughout history pock-mocking the planet, wiping out species, or in the case of the younger dryas, dissolving the ice caps and flooding the world.

(In fact, this was known to happen twice roughly 10-12,000 years ago ending the ice age violently- twice, within a few thousand years. None of the space crap was from the local solar system. IMO).

[Grouse]

They reckon 15000 miles ,maybe next time eh?

Less than 2 diameters? Way too close!

[Grouse]

Where's Bruce Willis when you need him

cue ZZ Top ( was it La Grange or Tush?)

[Grouse]

You don't want the president's scientific advisor who got a C in astrophysics.

I'm Right!

(I loved that bit)

[tukkytuktuk]

100ft asteroid 203 TX68 could pass just 15,000 miles from Earth on Sunday

[Shot]

AAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAAHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHHH