The Flowing of the Dao

Apophis approaches. Everything else pales in significance. We didn’t come 4.6+ billion years to get wiped out by some inert hunk of cold rock.

Nine students from the Technion-Israel Institute of Technology have developed a model spacecraft for deflecting objects falling from space.

The model has been created in response to the asteroid Apophis, which could in theory collide with Earth in 2036, and was presented at a competition organised by NASA and the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics.

http://www.theengineer.co.uk/Articles/304760/Students+to+save+the+Earth.htm

That’s no asteroid … it’s a spaceship.

LOL just kidding.

The Arecibo Observatory in Arecibo, Puerto Rico will observe a newly discovered asteroid on Jan. 27-28, as the object called 2007 TU24 passes within 1.4 lunar distances, or 334,000 miles, from Earth.

The asteroid, estimated at between 150 and 600 meters in diameter – about 500 feet to 1,900 feet, or the size of a football field, at 360 feet, to the size of Chicago’s 110-story Sears Tower, at 1,454 feet – was discovered by the University of Arizona’s Catalina Sky Survey in October 2007. It poses no threat to Earth, but its near approach gives Arecibo astronomers a golden opportunity to learn more about potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

“We don’t yet know anything about this asteroid,” said Mike Nolan, head of radar astronomy at the Puerto Rico observatory. Such objects pass near Earth with relative frequency, he said – approximately one every five years or so – but it’s rare that astronomers have enough advance notice to plan for rigorous observing.

http://www.eurekalert.org/pub_releases/2008-01/cuc-aap012508.php

I’m so disappointed.

Since our last update, we have received numerous tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four different observatories. These new data have led to a significant reduction in the position uncertainties during the asteroid’s close approach to Mars on Jan. 30, 2008. As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 0.01% or 1 in 10,000 odds, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/2007wd5

“These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track … threatening asteroids,” said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory.

The asteroid, known as 2007 WD5, was discovered in late November and is similar in size to an object that hit remote central Siberia in 1908, unleashing energy equivalent to a 15-megaton nuclear bomb and wiping out 60 million trees.

Scientists tracking the asteroid, currently halfway between Earth and Mars, initially put the odds of impact at 1 in 350 but increased the chances this week. Scientists expect the odds to diminish again early next month after getting new observations of the asteroid’s orbit, Chesley said.

“We know that it’s going to fly by Mars and most likely going to miss, but there’s a possibility of an impact,” he said.

If the asteroid does smash into Mars, it will probably hit near the equator close to where the rover Opportunity has been exploring the Martian plains since 2004. The robot is not in danger because it lies outside the impact zone. Speeding at 8 miles a second, a collision would carve a hole the size of the famed Meteor Crater in Arizona.

http://www.physorg.com/news117434054.html