The dino-killing asteroid is hurtling towards our planet earth; but astronomers are yet to ascertain as to which of these big space rocks will hit us head-on…
An asteroid as big as an Eiffel Tower just missed our planet Earth. The asteroid named 2006 QQ23 was cruising at a speed of 16737 kms per hour missing us just by 4.6 million miles. If this fast moving space rock would have been following a different trajectory it would have hit the Earth with a brutal force of more than 500 times that of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima, Japan.
Although 2006 QQ23 was not a threat for Earth, it throws a caution: out there in the cosmos there is another giant unseen asteroid that could be on a collision course with our blue planet. Experts are 100% certain that we’re going to be hit but are not 100% sure when. In fact they are working hard to develop a strategy to deflect these large asteroids headed our way.
Scanning the Skies
Astronomers have been scanning the skies and they feel there is nothing to panic about as there is no real threat from the giant space rocks. The chance that any big object like the 12 kms wide “impactor” which is said to have hit Earth and wiped out dinosaurs 65 million years ago is highly impossible.
Strictly speaking at any given time there are hundreds of asteroids in our solar system that cause a threat to our planet. And keeping an eye on them are our space agencies – the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near Earth Orbit (NEO) Coordination Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). They continuously monitor hundreds and thousands of known asteroids and meteoroids, classifying a few hundred as ‘uncertain’ or a ‘risk’ as to know whether they will hit our planet. As of August, the NEO Coordination Center had 20,502 asteroids on its list with 865 on the risk list.
However, some astronomers believe that we need to scan the skies and find these killer asteroids that could hit us head on. In other words, we should be able to find out all of these asteroids that are a threat to our planet and catalog their orbits precisely so as to calculate them into the future. But the trouble here is that asteroids have been known to catch us off guard!
Defusing the threat
Apart from detecting and cataloging asteroids, NASA has put a dedicated team in place which is working on a mission called Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART). The mission is to fire a so-called kinetic impactor into a binary asteroid known as Didymos. The so called mission idea is to alter the trajectory of the asteroids which are now most likely to pass by Earth
Another way to deflect an asteroid is to use a gravity tractor or so called spaceship that will use its own gravity to shift the asteroid’s trajectory – a concept by former astronauts Ed Lu and Stan Love. The idea is to use the gravity between a small spacecraft and the asteroid to gently tug it into another orbit. Then there is nuclear option whereby a nuclear warhead is sent into the space and is detonated in front of the asteroids. By doing so, the asteroid is likely to change its trajectory and take another path. Astronomers say these ideas will only work if we have prior information or data with us that proves that the asteroid is hurtling towards us. Also it will take perhaps decades to come up with missions capable of deflecting these dangerous space rocks.
-Team ScienceNow
