Asteroids

nivek

As Above So Below
Giant pyramid-shaped asteroid to shoot past earth in hours

A 427-foot pyramid-shaped asteroid is due to fly by Earth on Sunday, scientists say.

According to the Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the object, called VH5 2019, will harmlessly fly past around 4.27 million miles from our planet at a speed of 6.1 miles per second.

At 187ft by 426.5ft, the asteroid is “pyramid-shaped" and almost as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The asteroid is one of five due to fly past Earth over the weekend, all at safe distances.


.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
Giant pyramid-shaped asteroid to shoot past earth in hours

A 427-foot pyramid-shaped asteroid is due to fly by Earth on Sunday, scientists say.

According to the Centre for Near-Earth Object Studies at Nasa’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the object, called VH5 2019, will harmlessly fly past around 4.27 million miles from our planet at a speed of 6.1 miles per second.

At 187ft by 426.5ft, the asteroid is “pyramid-shaped" and almost as large as the Great Pyramid of Giza.

The asteroid is one of five due to fly past Earth over the weekend, all at safe distances.


.
It looks like we have another system lord on the loose. :eek:
710x528_3125301_798943_1459315978.jpg
 

Kchoo

At Peace.
2000 years between Football field sized asteroids and we are due for a hit... Could wipe out a whole city instantly... unless we can deflect it.


What killed the dinosaurs wa a large asteroid or comet about 11 to 81 kilometers (6.8 to 50.3 miles) in diameter, the Chicxulub impactor, striking the Earth.

The closest known approach of Apophis comes on April 13, 2029, when the asteroid comes to within a distance of around 31,000 kilometers from Earth's surface. As of 2014, the diameter of Apophis is estimated to be approximately 370 metres (1,210 ft).

The largest known Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) is (53319) 1999 JM8 which is actually only 7 km in diameter. Its next closest approach in the 21st century will be in 2075 at 0.256 AU 0.256 au (38,300,000 km; 23,800,000 mi) and in August 2137 at 0.0764 au (11,430,000 km; 7,100,000 mi).[1] For comparison, the planet Venus is about 40 million km (25 million mi).
 

SOUL-DRIFTER

Life Long Researcher
Here is a site list some of the known NEO and estimated size and possible date of impact.

Sentry: Earth Impact Monitoring

All it would take is another asteroid to bump into another to change trajectory.

My gut tells me we are in for a surprise showing of game changer. Close in size to the one that hit 65 million years ago.

Somewhere I read we get hit by one of that size average every 50 million years.
That means we are over due for a big one.
 

nivek

As Above So Below
2 new comets and a rare trojan asteroid orbiting Earth discovered by astronomers within 3 weeks

First it was C/2021 A1 (Leonard), then C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE) and finally asteroid 2020 XL5.

C/2021 A1 (Leonard)

MPEC 2021-A99 announced the discovery of a comet (magnitude ~19.5) by Gregory J. Leonard on CCD images taken on Jan. 3.54-3.56 UT with the Mount Lemmon Survey’s 1.5-m reflector. Follow-up measurements were performed by professional astronomers, who acknowledged the discovery.


New Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard)

.
C/2021 A1 (Leonard) has a diffuse coma about 7″ in diameter. This comet has excellent brightness prospects for December 2021.

In fact, before the perihelion on January 3, 2022, at a distance of 0.6 AU, comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) will pass just 0.233 AU from Earth on December 12, 2021 and it will have an exceptionally close pass of Venus at 0.028 AU on December 18, 2021.


Orbit diagram of new comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard)

.
Comet C/2021 A1 (Leonard) could potentially become a naked-eye object.


C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE)

MPEC 2021-C16 announce the discovery of a new comet (magnitude ~19) in infrared images obtained during Jan. 22 UT with the Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (or NEOWISE). The new comet has been designated C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE).


New Comet C/2021 B3 (NEOWISE)

.
Follow-up measurements show that this object is a comet with a compact coma about 10″ arcsecond in diameter.

Earth Trojan Asteroid 2020 XL5

Earth has a second Trojan asteroid sharing its orbit, reports amateur Tony Dunn on the Minor Planet Mailing List.

The asteroid, dubbed 2020 XL5, is a few hundred meters across and its orbit is tied to a gravitationally stable ahead of the Earth in its orbit.

What are Trojan Asteroids?
Trojans are asteroids gravitationally locked to stable Lagrange points either 60° ahead (L4) or behind (L5) the planets in their orbits around the Sun. 2020 XL5 was found around the L4 point. Massive Jupiter has more than 9,000 Trojans.


Earth-Sun Lagrange points (not to scale). Trojans orbit near the L4 and L5 regions, though their orbits may stray from those exact points.

.
So far, Trojans have been found sharing orbits — at least temporarily — with Neptune, Uranus, Mars, Venus, and Earth.

Wha are Earth Trojan Asteroids so hard to find?

Earth Trojans are hard to find because during most of their orbits, they appear close to the Sun in the sky. Not only that, but the gravitational resonance does not hold them in lockstep at 60° ahead and behind of the Earth, explains Dunn.


Instead, the objects trace paths around the L4 and L5 points, which are themselves moving as Earth orbits the Sun.


An initial calculation of 2020 XL5’s trajectory (green), a new Earth Trojan Asteroid

.
The first Earth trojan, 2010 TK7, comes within 20 million kilometers (12 million miles) to Earth every few hundred years; it is currently drifting away. Models show its orbit is stable enough to stay in a one-to-one resonance with Earth for about a quarter million years. While there are Earth Trojan orbits that are stable for the life of the solar system, no objects have been found occupying them.

Two spacecraft on their way to visit near-Earth objects searched Trojan regions in 2017, but NASA’s Osiris-Rex found nothing at L4 and the Japanese Hayabusa 2 found nothing at L5.


orbit of 2020 XL5

.
However, the observations were not definitive, and in 2019 Renu Malhotra (University of Arizona) wrote that the Earth could still have up to several hundred Trojans at least a few hundred meters in diameter, amounting to several percent of the some 10,000 near-Earth objects of that size.


So are we going to find some more of these celestial troyan horses? Are they inhabited by deadly viruses? Next generations will know!

.
 

Sheltie

Fratty and out of touch.
‘It snuck up on us’: A ‘city-killer’ asteroid just missed Earth and scientists almost didn’t detect it in time

U3XHF4GQUJGW3JCIPMYMMWL3EE.jpg


Alan Duffy was confused. On Thursday, the astronomer’s phone was suddenly flooded with calls from reporters wanting to know about a large asteroid that had just whizzed past Earth, and he couldn’t figure out “why everyone was so alarmed.”

“I thought everyone was getting worried about something we knew was coming,” Duffy, who is lead scientist at the Royal Institution of Australia, told The Washington Post. Forecasts had already predicted that a couple asteroids would be passing relatively close to Earth this week.

Then, he looked up the details of the hunk of space rock named Asteroid 2019 OK.

“I was stunned,” he said. “This was a true shock.”

This asteroid wasn’t one that scientists had been tracking and it had seemingly appeared from “out of nowhere,” Michael Brown, a Melbourne-based observational astronomer, told The Post. According to data from NASA, the craggy rock was large, roughly 100 meters wide, and moving quickly along a path that brought it within about 73,000 kilometers of Earth. That’s one-fifth of the distance to the moon and what Duffy considers “uncomfortably close.”

.
I am convinced, no matter how hard we search, it will be the one we don't see that hits us.
 

Toroid

Founding Member
This looks like one of those drills that could got live.
JPL to Lead Large-Scale Asteroid Impact Response Drill – Pasadena Now
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory will lead a multi-agency practice drill next week to examine how authorities might respond to the discovery of an asteroid headed for an impact with Earth.

The hypothetical scenario will be spearheaded by JPL’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, or CNEOS, during next week’s 7th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, JPL announced in a written statement.

NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office will also take part in the simulation, “allowing NASA’s PDCO and other U.S. agencies and space science institutions, along with international space agencies and partners, to use the fictitious scenario to investigate how near-Earth object observers, space agency officials, emergency managers, decision-makers and citizens might respond and work together to an actual impact prediction and simulate the evolving information that becomes available in the event an asteroid impact threat is discovered,” according to the statement.

The drill begins Monday when scientists will announce to their colleagues they have “discovered” a potentially hazardous asteroid.

“Details about the imaginary asteroid’s threat to our planet will evolve over the days of the conference, and exercise participants will discuss potential preparations for asteroid reconnaissance and deflection missions and planning for mitigation of a potential impact’s effects,” the statement said.

In reality, the international community has agreed that a 1 in 100 chance of an impact with a near-Earth object would trigger response actions, officials said.

“Tabletop simulations” like the one planned next week help scientists better prepare for a potential disaster, said CNEOS Director Paul Chodas.

“Hypothetical asteroid impact exercises provide opportunities for us to think about how we would respond in the event that a sizable asteroid is found to have a significant chance of impacting our planet,” Chodas said. “Details of the scenario – such as the probability of the asteroid impact, where and when the impact might occur – are released to participants in a series of steps over the days of the conference to simulate how a real situation might evolve.”

NASA has taken part in seven prior impact scenario simulations, which NASA Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said may one day have real-world implications.

“Each time we participate in an exercise of this nature we learn more about who the key players are in a disaster event, and who needs to know what information, and when,” Johnson said. “These exercises ultimately help the planetary defense community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure we are all coordinated should a potential impact threat be identified in the future.”

The exercise precedes the expected launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test Mission, or DART, later this year.

The spacecraft will reach asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022 and smash into it in an attempt to “change its orbit in space, which could be a key technique for mitigating a potentially hazardous asteroid that is on a collision path with Earth, should one be discovered in the future,” according to the JPL statement.

More information on the Planetary Defense Conference Exercise can be found online at cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21.

More information on NASA’s planned DART mission can be
 
Top