Closer encounter: Nasa plans landing on 40m-wide asteroid travelling at 28,000mph

[LongTomH]

Source: The Guardian UK

It was once considered the most dangerous object in the universe, heading for Earth with the explosive power of 84 Hiroshimas. Now an asteroid called 2000SG344, a lump of rock barely the size of a large yacht, is in the spotlight again, this time as a contender for the next giant leap for mankind.

Nasa engineers have identified the 1.1m tonne asteroid, which in 2000 was given a significant chance of slamming into Earth, as a potential landing site for astronauts, ahead of the Bush administration's plans to venture deeper into the solar system with a crewed voyage to Mars.

The mission - the first to what officials call a Near Earth Object (NEO) - is being floated within the US space agency as a crucial stepping stone to future space exploration.

A report seen by the Guardian notes that by sending astronauts on a three-month journey to the hurtling asteroid, scientists believe they would learn more about the psychological effects of long-term missions and the risks of working in deep space, and it would allow astronauts to test kits to convert subsurface ice into drinking water, breathable oxygen and even hydrogen to top up rocket fuel. All of which would be invaluable before embarking on a two-year expedition to Mars.

Read more: http://www.guardian.co.uk/science/2008/may/07/starsgalaxiesandplanets.spaceexploration

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This is interesting. There's a lot we can learn about the history of the solar system from small bodies like asteroids and comets. An asteroid mission would take less time and fuel; but, let us test out techniques for longer missions to Mars.

[izquierdista]

1. Lowered expectations

Kennedy: "I believe this nation should commit itself to achieving the goal, before this decade is out, of landing a man on the moon and returning him safely to the Earth."

Bush: "There's this rock, see....."

[Dollface]

4. He saw the Bruce Willis movie and thought it was really neat.

[greyl]

13. It isn't Bush's idea. nt

[damntexdem]

2. And Hillary will try to win all of its delegates, and then claim:

"We've covered more mileage to win delegates."

[DavidDvorkin]

5. Hah. Good one.

[jeff30997]

3. "a crucial stepping stone"

Lol.Really appropriate.:)But seriously it's great news.

[DavidDvorkin]

6. "The most dangerous object in the universe"

Hmph! How disgustingly terracentric!

[Robb]

7. You got your Earth in my asteroid. /nt

[BearSquirrel2]

8. STUPID ...

The only possible benefit I can see is if Bush is the astronaut and it's a one way mission.

Send dedicated career professionals .... robots.

[MilesColtrane]

9. 1 in 556 chance it will impact the Earth between 2068-2101.

Long odds, but considering what would happen if it hit, they're not long enough.

NASA needs to learn how to land on an asteroid and change it's trajectory, because an asteroid hitting the planet is inevitable at some point in the future.

[Traction311]

26. What exactly would happen if it hit?

Considering the size compared to others, not as much as you think. Probably wipe out a small city, at best. Certainly no worldwide effects.

[MilesColtrane]

29. You're right.

I was basing possible effects on the faulty assumption that a 1.1 megaton asteroid impact would roughly be equivalent to the explosion of 100 1.5 kiloton nuclear weapons.

That's the scenario considered in http://lasp.colorado.edu/aerosol/mills/2008MillsPNAS_MassiveOzoneLoss.pdf">this paper.

Upon further inquiry, a forty meter asteroid wouldn't inject enough soot into the stratosphere to appreciably alter the ozone layer.

My bad.

[Traction311]

31. I think trhe one that struck Siberia in 1908 was a similar size

The entire area sure felt it, but no damage outside of the area.

[htuttle]

10. How hard can it be?

I used to bullseye womp rats in my T-16 back home, they're not much bigger than two meters....

[Prisoner_Number_Six]

11. ...and they're gonna send Bruce Willis to mine it.

Should be easy. :shrug:

[muryan]

12. This will provide invaluable information

Asteroid mining will be a the big money maker in the far distant future, so this is a natural first baby step

[barnel]

14. 'and we plan to sculpt it into the shape of a shark'

as a way to waste even more money

[4waterfalls]

16. funny

but I support the mission.

[Fly by night]

15. Is there room on board for Bush and Cheney?

To celebrate 50 years of space flight, I think it would be appropriate to put another chimp in a rocket. This time with its handler.

[sofa king]

17. That's a cool idea.

Orbit-matching with asteroids might be a very practicable form of space travel almost by itself. Catch one on the right trajectory, and you can use it to dive closer to the sun for a gravity assist, while hiding in the shadow of the asteroid to avoid prolonged exposure to solar radiation.

Another nice thing about playing around in an orbit similar to Earth's is that if something goes wrong, the crew at least has a chance of getting back. Less so with Mars or perhaps even the Moon, depending on the circumstances.

If it's a good idea, it sure as hell didn't come from the White House.

[ohio2007]

18. ....Murphy's Law....... a lil asteroid with a slim chance of hitting earth.....

is about to get a littl nudge that may be enough to catch us on the rebound after it goes around the sun ;)

lol

[L. Coyote]

19. How much food and shelter for homeless Americans would this buy?

[PittPoliSci]

28. how many bad arguments can you present?

[struggle4progress]

20. What a stupid idea. One cannot really "land" on a 40m asteroid

in any conventional sense: the gravitational force at the surface of this object is gonna be something like 0.0000000001 that of the Earth, and the surface escape velocity will be something like 0.000001 that of the Earth, maybe 0.02 m/s -- certainly less than 0.1 mph, a fraction of normal walking speed. So an astronaut who is "standing" on this thing and tries to take a step or two reaches escape velocity and goes flying off into space

[tkmorris]

23. True enough

But I would say that the stupid part isn't the idea itself, but rather calling it a "landing". It won't be obviously, for the reasons you pointed out, and instead will be more akin to 'docking" than landing. The craft will simply attempt to match the asteroids speed and trajectory, then nestle in close and attach to it. Any astronauts leaving the spacecraft would certainly be tethered.

[struggle4progress]

25. Still a stupid idea: most of the payload is life support, and the scientific

pay-off is minimal compared to the expense. Robotics is more more cost efficient for scientific information collection

Frankly, I'm disgusted that we're abandoning important Earth observation satellites in favor of a silly study like this. Recovering water and hydrogen fuel from asteroids for extended space travel is study for a project that is unlikely at best and certainly not likely to occur in the near future -- and such a study is not harmed in the least by postponing it until such time as the project seems more credible

The real interest of this particular asteroid is its potential collision with Earth. The issues around it, and similar earth orbit crossers, include the important question: how should we respond to a credible threat? And that's almost certainly not going to involve a manned mission

[Patsy Stone]

21. I've seen this movie.

Will Aerosmith be recording the theme to the mission?

[skoalyman]

22. I can just picture the lander with oil company logos on it.

:crazy:

[GoddessOfGuinness]

24. How about taking a few folks on a one-way ticket there?

[PittPoliSci]

27. this is a great idea. n/t

[ronnie624]

30. The headline is utter nonsense.

Motion describes a relationship between two objects, so it doesn't matter if the asteroid is "travelling at 28,000mph" or sitting perfectly still as the spacecraft approaches.

Time is not completely separate from and independent of space as you would ordinarily assume. In his Special Relativity theory, Einstein assumed that the fundamental laws of physics do not depend on your location or motion. Two people, one in a stationary laboratory and another in a laboratory aboard a train or rocket moving in a straight line at uniform speed, should get the same results in any experiment they conduct. In fact, if the laboratory in the train or rocket is soundproof and has no windows, there is no experiment a person could conduct that would show he/she is moving.

****

Einstein found that what you measure for length, time, and mass depends on your motion relative to a chosen frame of reference. Everything is in motion. As you sit in your seat, you are actually in motion around the center of the Earth because of the rapid rotation of the Earth on its axis. The Earth is in motion around the Sun, the Sun is in orbit around the center of our Galaxy, the Galaxy is moving toward a large group of galaxies, etc. When you say something has a velocity, you are measuring its change of position relative to some reference point which may itself be in motion. All motion is relative to a chosen frame of reference. That is what the word ``relativity'' means in Einstein's Relativity theories. The only way observers in motion relative to each other can measure a single light ray to travel the same distance in the same amount of time relative to their own reference frames is if their ``meters'' are different and their ``seconds'' are different! Seconds and meters are relative quantities.

<http://www.astronomynotes.com/relativity/s2.htm>

[eowyn_of_rohan]

32. Picturing Slim Pickens riding that bomb in Dr. Strangelove-nt

[yurbud]

33. what if they drink the asteroid water and it has the andromeda strain in it?