[meteorite-list] Astronaut Seeks Craft to Bump Asteroids

From: Ron Baalke <baalke_at_meteoritecentral.com>
Date: Wed, 24 Jan 2007 08:59:00 -0800 (PST)
Message-ID: <200701241659.IAA19339_at_zagami.jpl.nasa.gov>

http://www.happynews.com/news/1242007/astronaut-seeks-craft-bump-asteroids.htm

Astronaut Seeks Craft to Bump Asteroids
Associated Press
January 24, 2007

NASA astronaut and former University of Hawaii solar physicist Edward Lu
is calling for a new spacecraft that would divert asteroids on a path to
slam into Earth.

The small space tractor, costing between $200 million and $300 million,
would hover near an asteroid to exert enough gravitational pull that the
space rock's orbit would change and a collision with our planet would be
averted, Lu said before a crowd packed into a 300-capacity auditorium at
the University of Hawaii-Manoa Monday night.

''We're only trying to get a really tiny change in the velocity of the
asteroid to prevent an impact,'' he said.

Lu was part of a panel including three Hawaii scientists who
characterized the chances of an asteroid colliding with Earth as rare
but deserving of the same level of attention as major earthquakes,
tsunamis and hurricanes.

A report on the appearance appeared on the Honolulu Star-Bulletin Web
site on Tuesday.

The asteroid Apophis will pass within about 20,000 miles of Earth on
Friday, April 13, 2029.

''It's going to come so close to the Earth in 2029 that its orbit will
change and it might change enough so that it comes back and hits us in
2036,'' said Hawaii planetary astronomer David Tholen, who discovered
Apophis.

During the asteroid's next close pass to the sun in 2013 that risk will
be assessed in radar surveys, he said.

Objects the size of a grain of sand frequently hit the Earth's
atmosphere, appearing as shooting stars in the night sky. But a larger
impact could be devastating. Asteroids are blamed for the death of the
dinosaurs 65 million years ago and an explosion over Tunguska, Russia,
in 1908 that wiped out 60 million trees over a 830-square-mile area.

According to a presentation by university astronomer Robert Jedicke, a
Tunguska-size explosion would be able to blast or burn nearly all of Oahu.

Because the devastation would be great, the risk to a person of
perishing in a major asteroid collision is about 1 in 10,000 or 20,000
over a 100-year lifetime - the same dying in a plane crash, Jedicke said.

The University of Hawaii's Pan-STARRS program would train four powerful
digital cameras toward the heavens to watch for would-be intruders.

Officials from the project are hoping to garner public support of a plan
to locate on Mauna Kea. The telescopes also could be built at two sites
on Haleakala, where a prototype is being built, but scientists warn the
project would take twice as long to complete there.

Environmentalists and Hawaiian activists have argued against additional
development on Mauna Kea and some scientists have expressed concern
about additional construction as the volcano already hosts 13 telescopes.

The program would be able to provide decades of warning of an impending
impact, the scientists said.

That would be enough time to launch a tractor spacecraft to knock the
asteroid into a safe orbit, said Lu, who spent six month aboard the
International Space Station in 2003 and was a postdoctoral fellow at the
University of Hawaii's astronomy institute from 1992 to 1995.

To do nothing would be to invite disaster, he said.

''If we are wiped out by an asteroid, that will be our own fault at this
point,'' he said.
Received on Wed 24 Jan 2007 11:59:00 AM PST