Linked article says closest approach was “about twice as close to our home planet as the moon”, but I think they mean “about half”. Eek!
At CNET, this story carried the headline “Sneaky asteroid spotted whizzing between Earth and moon.”
It should have had the subtitle “creating the constellation Urinea.”
Creatingg the constellation urine (rhymes with Orion)
Until they find a foolproof way to deflect these, I’d just as soon not know. What am I going to do with the knowledge?
Just highlights one of the things I pointed out in my EML-1 article years ago at The Space Review, which is that we don’t look Sun-ward for these things. We look outwards at night, and sideways with WISE, but we need to be looking on our blind side.
My initial guess would be to look for IR bleed during rotation, but I wouldn’t rule out optical. Have the probe spinning like a lighthouse, looking out perpendicularly to the Earth Moon line on which EML-1 lies. Haven’t quite figured out the Sun-blocker part of it (since it has to be decoupled from the spin and always cover the disk of the Sun when the instruments rotate round that way) Over the course of a month you can get a full sky survey, and with enough equipment you could eventually get a monthly update on the whole Solar System. But right now the priority should be blindside threat detection. A shakeout mission for a crewed vehicle to emplace such equipment could knock out a few milestones as well (trans-Van Allen, hitting a halo orbit, &c.).
Whatever solution is settled on, if any, we still need to start looking Sunward for these things to avoid these surprises, and the development of cislunar infrastructure is something that could enable whatever solution.
Which represents the greater impact threat: asteroids in highly elliptical orbits that we may see for the first time on their final approach, or asteroids in orbits that repeatedly pass Earth’s in a lifetime? The latter is certainly easier to detect with enough lead time to deflect. A rock hurtling at us on the outward leg of an elliptical orbit when we first spot it isn’t going to give us to to do much of anything with technology on hand.
What about comets coming in from the Outer Darkness? From what I’ve read they constitute perhaps 25% of the threat. What are we going to do about those?
Lump the comets in with long period asteroids for threat profile.
It’s almost like we need some kind of long range projected energy super-weapon to blast some of these threats on short notice. But I can’t really think of anyone I’d trust to keep such a weapon safe over the long term.
Linked article says closest approach was “about twice as close to our home planet as the moon”, but I think they mean “about half”. Eek!
At CNET, this story carried the headline “Sneaky asteroid spotted whizzing between Earth and moon.”
It should have had the subtitle “creating the constellation Urinea.”
Creatingg the constellation urine (rhymes with Orion)
Until they find a foolproof way to deflect these, I’d just as soon not know. What am I going to do with the knowledge?
Just highlights one of the things I pointed out in my EML-1 article years ago at The Space Review, which is that we don’t look Sun-ward for these things. We look outwards at night, and sideways with WISE, but we need to be looking on our blind side.
My initial guess would be to look for IR bleed during rotation, but I wouldn’t rule out optical. Have the probe spinning like a lighthouse, looking out perpendicularly to the Earth Moon line on which EML-1 lies. Haven’t quite figured out the Sun-blocker part of it (since it has to be decoupled from the spin and always cover the disk of the Sun when the instruments rotate round that way) Over the course of a month you can get a full sky survey, and with enough equipment you could eventually get a monthly update on the whole Solar System. But right now the priority should be blindside threat detection. A shakeout mission for a crewed vehicle to emplace such equipment could knock out a few milestones as well (trans-Van Allen, hitting a halo orbit, &c.).
Whatever solution is settled on, if any, we still need to start looking Sunward for these things to avoid these surprises, and the development of cislunar infrastructure is something that could enable whatever solution.
Which represents the greater impact threat: asteroids in highly elliptical orbits that we may see for the first time on their final approach, or asteroids in orbits that repeatedly pass Earth’s in a lifetime? The latter is certainly easier to detect with enough lead time to deflect. A rock hurtling at us on the outward leg of an elliptical orbit when we first spot it isn’t going to give us to to do much of anything with technology on hand.
What about comets coming in from the Outer Darkness? From what I’ve read they constitute perhaps 25% of the threat. What are we going to do about those?
Lump the comets in with long period asteroids for threat profile.
It’s almost like we need some kind of long range projected energy super-weapon to blast some of these threats on short notice. But I can’t really think of anyone I’d trust to keep such a weapon safe over the long term.
1. Mine them out of existence.
2. …
3. Profit!