Image (Credit): Artist’s version of the Chicxulub crater at the time of the meteorite’s impact. (NASA)
Yes, you have heard it all before – a “planet killer” asteroid is coming our way. Well, in this case it appears to be true, but the 1.1km to 2.3km asteroid will only cross our path rather than hit us, at least for now.
The asteroid, named the ever-boring 2022 AP7, is among the top 5 percent of the potentially hazardous asteroids ever found.’
Scott Sheppard from the Carnegie Institution for Science, and one of the authors of a recent paper on 2022 AP7, stated in The Guardian:
Any asteroid over 1km in size is considered a planet killer…The Earth’s surface would likely cool significantly from sunlight not getting to the planet. It would be a mass extinction event like hasn’t been seen on Earth in millions of years.
Fortunately, we should have a few centuries to watch this asteroid before we start worrying about a collision.
Let’s hope we have a Super DART spacecraft sweeping the solar system by then keeping us clear from this asteroid and any other.
And now back to our regularly scheduled programming.
Image (Credit): Asteroid Gaspra in the asteroid belt, visited by the Galileo spacecraft on its way to Jupiter. (NASA/JPL/USGS)
On this day in 1991, NASA’s Galileo spacecraft flew by asteroid Gaspra, which is located in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. Galileo conducted a quick fly-by while flying towards Jupiter and its moons. The spacecraft also visited the asteroid Ida.
Asteroid Gasprawas first discovered back in 1916 by Russian astronomer G. N. Neujmin, who decided to name it after the Black Sea retreat of Gaspra, a Ukrainian spa town currently occupied by the Russians.
Here is some additional information from NASA about the asteroid, which has similar features to the asteroids now serving as moons to Mars (Phobos and Deimos):
A striking feature of Gaspra’s surface is the abundance of small craters. More than 600 craters, 100-500 meters (330-1650 feet) in diameter are visible here. The number of such small craters compared to larger ones is much greater for Gaspra than for previously studied bodies of comparable size such as the satellites of Mars. Gaspra’s very irregular shape suggests that the asteroid was derived from a larger body by nearly catastrophic collisions. Consistent with such a history is the prominence of groove-like linear features, believed to be related to fractures. These linear depressions, 100-300 meters wide and tens of meters deep, are in two crossing groups with slightly different morphology, one group wider and more pitted than the other. Grooves had previously been seen only on Mars’s moon Phobos, but were predicted for asteroids as well.
You car read more about the overall Galileo mission here.
Image (Credit): Artist’s rendering of the Galileo spacecraft arriving at Jupiter. (NASA)
Image (Credit): Image from NASA’s Lucy spacecraft showing the Earth and Moon from 890,000 miles away (look closely – the moon on the left is a very pale dot). (NASA/Goddard/SwRI)
On October 13, 2022, NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured [the above] image of the Earth and the Moon from a distance of 890,000 miles (1.4 million km). The image was taken as part of an instrument calibration sequence as the spacecraft approached Earth for its first of three Earth gravity assists. These Earth flybys provide Lucy with the speed required to reach the Trojan asteroids — small bodies that orbit the Sun at the same distance as Jupiter. On its 12 year journey, Lucy will fly by a record breaking number of asteroids and survey their diversity, looking for clues to better understand the formation of the solar system.
The Chinese Academy of Sciences is considering potential missions including a Ceres orbiter and a huge telescope to hunt for clues about the nature of dark matter.More than 20 candidates are vying for funding for further study under the Chinese Academy of Sciences Strategic Priority Program on Space Science, also known as the New Horizon Program, and are currently undergoing evaluation.
One of Earth’s toughest microbes could survive on Mars, lying dormant beneath the surface, for 280 million years, new research has shown. The findings increase the probability that microbial life could still exist on the Red Planet. Deinococcus radiodurans, nicknamed “Conan the Bacterium,” is one of the world’s toughest microbes, capable of surviving in radiation strong enough to kill any other known life-form. Experiments have now shown that if Conan the Bacterium or a similar microbe existed on Mars, it could survive 33 feet (10 meters) beneath the surface, frozen and dried out, for 280 million years.
The researchers have found an abiotic source of oxygen that stems from sulphur dioxide. Sulphur is not rare in celestial bodies, and since volcanoes produce sulphur and pump it into the atmosphere, terrestrial volcanic exoplanets may have oxygen in their atmospheres. And life needn’t be involved.
A medieval parchment from a monastery in Egypt has yielded a surprising treasure. Hidden beneath Christian texts, scholars have discovered what seems to be part of the long-lost star catalogue of the astronomer Hipparchus — believed to be the earliest known attempt to map the entire sky.
We have now discovered 30,039 near-Earth asteroids in the solar system—rocky bodies orbiting the sun on a path that brings them close to Earth’s orbit. The majority of these were discovered in the last decade, showing how our ability to detect potentially risky asteroids is rapidly improving.
Image (Credit): The image above was taken on October 8, 2022 by NASA’s Hubble Space Telescope. It shows the debris blasted from the surface of Dimorphos 285 hours after the asteroid was intentionally hit by NASA’s DART spacecraft on September 26th. NASA stated that the shape of that tail has changed over time. ( NASA/ESA/STScI/Hubble)
NASA has saved the Earth, or it would have had the asteroid Dimorphos and its partner been heading towards us. That is the news from earlier today from the space agency. NASA’s Administrator Bill Nelson made the following comments regarding the results of the impact by the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) spacecraft:
This mission shows that NASA is trying to be ready for whatever the universe throws at us. NASA has proven we are serious as a defender of the planet. This is a watershed moment for planetary defense and all of humanity, demonstrating commitment from NASA’s exceptional team and partners from around the world.
NASA scientists determined that the orbit of Dimorphos around its parent asteroid, Didymos, was truncated by 32 minutes as a result of the impact. Since minimum success would have been 1 minute 13 seconds, DART was a great success.
Hollywood may prefer a more dramatic method with oil rig astronauts and nuclear bombs, but sometimes a simple nudge will do the job.
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