Newfound Asteroid May Strike Earth in 2046, NASA Says

https://www.livescience.com/newly-discovered-asteroid-the-size-of-a-swimming-pool-has-a-1-in-600-chance-of-colliding-with-earth-nasa-says

by LinuxBender • 3 years ago

61 47 3 years ago

livescience.com

hd954894• 3 years ago

Can we capture it?

accrual2• 3 years ago

From a purely technical perspective: maybe. We'd need to know how similar the object's orbit is relative to Earth's. If the orbit is roughly coplanar and concentric with Earth, it will cost less change in velocity (delta-V) to reduce the differences and bring it into a stable orbit. The more different it is (e.g. if it swings all the up to Jupiter and back), the more it will cost.

Once you know how much dV is required to capture, we'd next need to put that much dV at the object, which would be even more costly to launch.

Lastly, depending on the object's composition it may not be possible to even apply much dV to it. If it's a essentially a coalesced pile of rubble, any force applied will just break it into pieces. If it's roughly solid, then maybe.

Fun fact: Earth has had more than one "moon" in the past, they just tend to not last long before they're kicked out of orbit. [0]

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2006_RH120

hd954894• 3 years ago

Even if we break it up and capture a chunk it would be both a huge wealth of knowledge and if the chunks was big enough it could be extremely useful construct material

seer• 3 years ago

Funny, this feels like the plot from Don’t look up.

On the less humorous side it would probably be pretty hard to impart enough delta-v to capture it.

detrites• 3 years ago

Remember to factor in some 20+ years of technological growth.

mabbo• 3 years ago

There's probably better candidates.

For any two objects in orbits around a common body (like the sun) to match their orbits, they need to have their locations match and their velocity, at the same time. To collide, you only need your location to match.

One way to do this is to get to a matching location and then do a hard change of velocity so that the asteroid is now in a stable orbit. But that's a lot of energy for a rock with a mess measured using scientific notation.

There are better candidates out there where we could make a tiny change to their orbit and have them be captured naturally due to relative velocities being much closer to matching. Still a lot of energy, but a lot less.

hd954894• 3 years ago

I’m assuming it’s too risky to let them clip the atmosphere to provide the delta v?

nawgz• 3 years ago

New object, current 1-in-625 chance of impact, impact could cause local death and damage, more observational data will refine the trajectory estimations.

I can't really tell how news-like this is. Mostly, my question would be: this object is called 2023 DW, does it mean we went 2023 AA, AB, ..., DA, DB, ... DW? If so it's interesting that only ~100 new asteroids are observed and labeled so far this year. Maybe the categorization is somehow different than I understand.

LegionMammal978• 3 years ago

"2023 DW" is a provisional minor-planet designation [0]. The "D" indicates that it was discovered in the second half of February (Feb. 16-28), and the "W" indicates that it was the 22nd minor planet discovered in that time frame.

[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Provisional_designation_in_ast...

esnard• 3 years ago

It's indeed somehow different, not sure exactly how it works though:

Between 2023 BG5 discovered on January 26 and 2023DQ a "PHA" (potentially hazardous asteroid) discovered on February 23 [...]
Then, on the 26th we discovered 2023 DV and 2023DW, and on the 27th, 3 new asteroids, 2023DX, 2023DN1 and 2023 DT1.

From https://www.spaceobs.com/en/Alain-Maury-s-Blog/2023-DW

isaacg• 3 years ago

This object is rated as a 1 on the Torino scale, which combines probability of impact with size to get an overall danger level.

https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Torino_scale

The last time an asteroid reached a 1 on the Torino scale was late January. That asteroid is 2023 AJ1. It was downgraded to 0 on the scale in early February, after further observations decreased the estimated chance it will hit the earth.

Overall, objects reach a 1 on the Torino scale 3-4 times a year. No objects have reached level 2 or above since 2006.

perihelions• 3 years ago

That Wikipedia entry is great.

- "Due to exaggerated press coverage of Level 1 asteroids, a rewording of the Torino Scale was published in 2005, adding more details and renaming the categories: in particular, Level 1 was changed from "Events meriting careful monitoring" to "Normal".

jaqalopes• 3 years ago

I think it’s truly awesome that we have a Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

jeffrallen• 3 years ago

It would be awesomer if they had nukes.

euroderf• 3 years ago

It would be awesomer if their actual, sub rosa remit was to defend against aliens, per Supreme Headquarters Alien Defence Organisation[1].

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/UFO_(TV_series)#SHADO

macinjosh• 3 years ago

Any way we can speed that up a little? /s

Jokes aside, could anyone knowledgeable explain why this comes down to a probability. Isn't the speed and direction of objects traveling in space constant and predictable? What are the unknown variables?

NotYourLawyer• 3 years ago

Uncertainty in the measurement of its position and velocity.

prophesi• 3 years ago

Measuring its current position and velocity isn't the hard part, it's chaos theory and the n-body problem for its future position/velocity.

accrual2• 3 years ago

Yes, but only with sufficient observation. Since this body was recently discovered, there likely hasn't been enough observation time to know the direction and velocity of the object with great certainty. The more we observe it, the better we'll know where it'll be in 20 years.

lisper• 3 years ago

The speed and direction of objects moving through space is deterministic, but it is neither constant (obviously) nor completely predictable except in very special cases. In general the motion of systems of three or more bodies are chaotic, i.e. very small changes in initial conditions can result in very large changes in position and velocity in the future. Also, we can't measure positions and velocities with infinite precision. This has nothing to do with quantum mechanics, it's just that the data that comes out of our instruments has finite precision and so there will always be measurement errors. Finally, earth is a very small target, so figuring out whether something will hit it requires a lot of precision.

Also, quoting from the original article: "Often when new objects are first discovered, it takes several weeks of data to reduce the uncertainties and adequately predict their orbits years into the future."

robotsteve2• 3 years ago

1. Uncertainty in the speed, direction, position.

2. Uncertainty in the model (e.g. influence of external bodies besides the sun and earth).

Kinematic motion models are exact but our knowledge of all the variables involved is not.

dixie_land• 3 years ago

It's time, let's send in Bruce Willis

luckman212• 3 years ago

Sadly you'll need to find a cure his frontotemporal dementia first.

jfoutz• 3 years ago

The biggest surprise (for me) from the dart mission was that the asteroid wasn't one big rock. It's more like, dust and gravel and boulders all stuck together with gravity.

As much as I love a certain Michael Bay movie about a rag-tag group of drillers tasked with drilling an asteroid in space, it seems unlikely that would be necessary.

Seems like, the two obvious approaches are a push or an explosion.

Using an explosion to diffuse the parts of an asteroid, and that might be a whole lot easier than previously thought, since the thing is only weakly held together. The other approach of giving it a push seem a whole lot tougher, since they're not rigid.

z3phyr• 3 years ago

Not all asteroids are alike. Some are ice, some are soft (like the one dart mission hit) and yet others are solid metallic hunks.

goalieca• 3 years ago

So.. for science sake we must smash more and more.. one of each kind!? Awesome!!

wil421• 3 years ago

Hopefully we will be able to find a roughneck crew of drillers who will be able to fly to the asteroid and plant a nuke.

eesmith3• 3 years ago

Perhaps a non-obvious approach? https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_tractor

A gravity tractor is a theoretical spacecraft that would deflect another object in space, typically a potentially hazardous asteroid that might impact Earth, without physically contacting it, using only its gravitational field to transmit the required impulse.[1][2] The gravitational force of a nearby space vehicle, though small, is able to alter the path of a much larger asteroid if the vehicle spends enough time close to it; all that is required is that the vehicle thrust in a consistent direction relative to the asteroid's path, and that neither the vehicle nor its expelled reaction mass come in direct contact with the asteroid.

zupa-hu• 3 years ago

Wow, that’s fascinating!

antognini2• 3 years ago

This article is a week old. Based on the latest observations the chance of impact has reduced to 1:1000.

You can check the latest probabilities here: https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/sentry/details.html#?des=2023%20D...

croutonwagon• 3 years ago

Even 1:1000 is pretty high odds in general. But that link is quite cool.

Also 4.23 Mt isnt a huge impact. Definitely not dinosaur killer right?

antognini2• 3 years ago

It's about 10 times larger than the meteor that fell over Russia a few years back (the Chelyabinsk meteor [1]), so not too big in the grand scheme of things. It would not really have any major effects unless it hit near a populated area, which is very unlikely. If it did impact the Earth it would probably hit the Pacific ocean.

T-A• 3 years ago

4.23 Mt isnt a huge impact

Hiroshima was 15 kt, 4.23 Mt is 282x that. Fortunately this thing is small enough that it would burst at high altitude and only do minor damage on the ground:

https://impact.ese.ic.ac.uk/ImpactEarth/cgi-bin/crater.cgi?d...

kjs3• 3 years ago

Not a dinosaur killer, no. But you probably wouldn't want it to come in over where you live.

highwaylights3• 3 years ago

I don’t think a 1-in-600 chance, while less remote than I’d like, rises to a reasonable standard of “may”.

Can we get the title edited?

karmakaze• 3 years ago

With space things we typically deal with astronomical odds, so I'd say 1:600 is a solid "may" and on the internet looks like 'probably not' to most readers.

highwaylights3• 3 years ago

Nonetheless, "1-in-600" could have been in the post to avoid clickbait.

dkjaudyeqooe• 3 years ago

To "Newfound Asteroid Unlikely to Strike Earth in 2046"?

highwaylights3• 3 years ago

Perfect!

mr90210• 3 years ago

"Don't Look Up"

Newfound Asteroid May Strike Earth in 2046, NASA Says

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