Bus-Sized Asteroid Hurtles Past Earth

[kentonio]

Bus-Sized Asteroid Hurtles Past Earth

An asteroid the size of a double-decker bus has hurtled past Earth just days after it was first spotted.

The seven-metre wide asteroid - known as HL 129 - came within 186,000 miles of earth over the weekend, closer than the Moon's orbit.

The Moon is on average 238,855 miles away from our planet.

The space rock had only been spotted on Wednesday, relatively short notice for an asteroid.

It was spotted by Nasa's Asteroid Watch project based at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

The asteroid came closer than the DX110 rock in March, which was spotted by stargazers as it travelled past Earth at a distance of 216,000 miles.

Last month Edward Lu, a former astronaut, said the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a "city-killer" sized asteroid was "blind luck".

He is the co-inventor of a "gravity tractor", a theoretical device he says could be used to pull dangerous asteroid’s away from the Earth's orbit using a gravitational tug.

The asteroid 2007 VK184 – once believed to be the most significant threat to Earth over the next century – has recently been removed from Nasa's asteroid impact hazard list.

Latest observations show it will pass no closer than 1.2 million miles from Earth in June 2048.

http://news.sky.com/story/1255257/bu...les-past-earth

Get the feeling we're going to end up losing a city or major town to a strike before governments get really serious about asteroid watching/strike prevention.

[Sava]

Is that an order?

(and how do I get specific feelings if they don't come to me naturally)?

[kentonio]

It's only an order when I wear the special uniform.

[Sava]

[Lorizael]

http://news.sky.com/story/1255257/bu...les-past-earth

Get the feeling we're going to end up losing a city or major town to a strike before governments get really serious about asteroid watching/strike prevention.

Probably. My hope is that an asteroid strikes an uninhabited area and wreaks nuclear weapon-level damage on some cacti. In the last century we've only had airbursts, which people seem to just regard as cool rather than terrifying.

[Bugs ****ing Bunny]

If they only spot it days away from impact, I doubt they could do anything.

[dannubis]

PLay deep impact in fast forward...

[regexcellent]

Too bad it didn't hit Cleveland.

[Lorizael]

If they only spot it days away from impact, I doubt they could do anything.

Which if why we need to focus first and foremost on detection.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

The gravity tractor will never work, absent ridiculous amounts of fuel...

[pchang]

Dark, bus sized rocks farther away than Jupiter are pretty much impossible to detect with today's technology. Most of them are in our ecliptic, so we can concentrate our views. However, we have no hope of spotting stuff coming in more than 15 degrees above or below.

[kentonio]

Seems like a good reason to put a ton of cash into developing new technologies.

[N35t0r]

Let's develop new technologies then

[Lorizael]

The gravity tractor will never work, absent ridiculous amounts of fuel...

The gravity tractor is the kind of thing the ion drive is good for. Low thrust, long duration.

[Buster Crabbe's Uncle]

Sure. But still constant course adjustment and ridiculous amounts of fuel. Has anyone ever run the maths on that?