How Much Space Do We Have…
Despite the vast emptiness of space—this little old planet manages to get itself in the way of some flying rocks now and again—rocks that can change the everything if they make it all the way to the surface.
Just ask the Dinosaurs.
For years scientists have been on the lookout for Near Earth Objects or NEO’s that could come blazing into our atmosphere.
The thought being—if they can figure out what’s aiming at us—maybe they can prevent it from doing major damage.
And now—scientists may have that chance.
According to NASA’s Near Earth Object project— an asteroid named 1999 AN10 is coming darn close to earth in 19 years.
The space agency says the rock is a kilometer wide—and in 2027, it’ll pass with-in 19,000 miles of the earth’s surface.
How close is that?
Well, we’ve got a whole band of stationary satellites in geosynchronous orbit around the earth that are 23,000 miles above the surface.
As you can see in this chart— the asteroid will pass between THEM and the EARTH..
Astrologically speaking—that’s darn close!
Although NASA insists that’s not close enough to collide with the earth—it’s still TOO CLOSE to leave the asteroid unaffected.
The space agency admits the pass will be close enough that the Earth’s gravity will affect the asteroid’s orbit— meaning when it circles around for it’s next encounter—it’ll smack RIGHT into the earth !
Originally, scientists thought the collision would happen in 2039… As you can read here, they’re now waffling on that and say it’s more likely to collide with us in 2044 or 2046..
But, here’s the rub.
They really can’t say for sure because their data has a lot of uncertainty.
It could be worse—or not happen at all.
One thing that should probably be done—find a way to deflect 1999 AN10’s orbit when it makes it’s close pass in 2027…
We’ve got nearly 2 decades to figure out HOW to do it…
If the effort is successful, we will have all the space we need.
—Steve
Click on this map to see details on where readers are located
Blog Information Profile for instanteye
Add to: | blinklist | del.cio.us | digg | yahoo! | furl | rawsugar | shadows | netvouz
Recent Readers to Between The Lines via KEOTAG
View Entire Community
Provided by MyBlogLog
If you enjoyed this post, please consider leaving a comment or subscribe to the feed and get future articles delivered to your feed reader or email.
Subscribe to RSS
Comments
No comments yet.
Leave a comment