Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/eu_russia_asteroid_encounter

by edw519 • 17 years ago

21 20 17 years ago

news.yahoo.com

NathanKP• 17 years ago

Its nice that they are taking the initiative to experiment despite the low risk of the asteroid actually hitting Earth. However, I sure hope that they are careful and don't accidentally knock it into an orbit that causes a guaranteed Earth hit.

anovaskulk• 17 years ago

That would be quite a feat.

noss• 17 years ago

It would be quite a weapon too!

Fixnum• 17 years ago

Given the type of rhetoric coming from Perminov, I suspect that the driving force behind this announcement is merely resurgent Russian nationalism, if not an explicit political directive to distract Russians from the economy, the continuing failures of the military's new submarine-launched balistic missile program, and the destruction of civil society.

skushch• 17 years ago

I think another angle to this is if actually successful it will be a public demo of space warfare capabilities. Sort of like the Chinese anti-satellite missle test.

jsz0• 17 years ago

This would be a great opportunity to land a probe with some serious drilling equipment. I bet there's a lot of interesting material in that asteroid. I'm not sure changing the trajectory is a great idea though. Seems kind of risky. What if it breaks into smaller pieces? At least do it after it has passed the Earth this time around.

dirtbox2• 17 years ago

There would be nickel, iron and rock. I think our time would be better served building bomb shelters. I trust NASA's prediction far more than Russia's attempts at "diverting" it.

cema• 17 years ago

Everyone I know is just laughing at it. This is just a way for them to get (or, as they say in Russia, "saw off") more money from the government's coffers.

Apophis has been studied quite closely by astronomers, and the chance of impact has been reduced from tiny to minuscule.

An old story too. Why Perminov decided to choose this time to go open with this idea I do not know.

Now, there may be good reasons to launch a probe towards Apophis, for scientific or technological research. If eventually something like this happens, more power to them.

rbanffy4• 17 years ago

After we learn to steer asteroids, it would be interesting to make one dip into Earth's atmosphere to de-accelerate and to enter LEO. A mountain of raw materials in low orbit would be a very interesting resource.

You would, of course, have to pick one that is solid enough to withstand this torture or melt its surface to make it a solid blob of something before it fragments and hits something you would rather not hit.

I really like this idea.

snorkel• 17 years ago

"NASA had put the chances that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 as 1-in-45,000. In October, after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path, the agency changed its estimate to 1-in-250,000."

So this could end up being history's most notable example of premature optimization.

Dilpil• 17 years ago

If the Expected Value in human lives is 6 billion divided by 330,000 (18,800), it might be a worthy project.

Semiapies• 17 years ago

It's not expected to be an extinction-level impact even if it were to hit.

Russia may send spacecraft to knock away asteroid

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