Code Yellow: MITs Radical Asteroid Impact Prevention Plan

In a report that reads as if it was a first draft for the next Armageddon blockbuster, researchers at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology have announced to the world their plan to save earth from impending doom; if necessary that is.

And while the plan is not necessarily a plan to directly destroy or impair an asteroids path towards collision with earth, it is possibly one of the coolest things you’ll ever see.

The plan is described as “the least violent and complex of all”, and involves a long strand of tough polymer ribbon (yellow by preference). An un-manned space vehicle would make two passes of the asteroid, stringing along the ribbon in two long and separate lines, attached to the asteroid and held six feet apart.

The purpose of the ribbon is to allow an astronaut to land safely on the asteroid to gather samples, and run diagnostic tests of the asteroid to determine what sort of method would be most appropriate for saving mankind as we know it (or at least the bit of mankind in the general impact vicinity).

For a planet with over 150 impact craters caused by asteroids and their fragments, and scientific theories of mass extinctions as a result, such research and plans are unavoidable, and thank goodness for that.

In fact, NASA is already on track to launch their spacecraft Dawn to meet with asteroids Vesta and Ceres in 2011 and 2015 respectively. NASA is also known to be considering plans to land a man on an asteroid in the future.

This all comes a week after British scientists devised a plan to send a probe to study the asteroid named Apophis which is feared will be diverted in to a planetary collision course with Earth on April 13, 2036. And though the science is sketchy behind this precise calculation, and the likelihood of impact then, later, or not at all, is simply unknown, the plans being readied by space organizations and scientists across the planet are reassuring, if nothing else.

If the past is prelude, there's bound to be a massive collision event from a rogue asteroid at some point in the near future unless we successfully intervene.The impact map above shows most of the 160 impact craters that have been identified since 1950. The bulk of the terrestrial impact craters that were ever formed, however, have been obliterated by eons of geological processes.

Study the map at a glance you'll see major impacts in the major population centers of the U.S., Europe, Africa, and Australia. Keep in mind that only 65 million years ago (a wink of the eye in geological time) there was a mass extinction of the dinosaurs that was linked to global effects caused by a massive impact.

A NASA program called the Spaceguard Survey to track the largest potentially hazardous objects of the 20,000 asteroids and comets orbiting relatively close to our planet greater than 3,300 feet in diameter that could devastate most life if they hit.

Donald K. Yeomans, director of the Spaceguard program, said that there were believed to be 1,100 of these larger objects and that the survey had cataloged about 73 percent of them. The initial goal of tracking 90 percent of them should be reached by 2010, more than a year later than originally planned.

In a note of cosmic irony, that which might eventually destroy us may also have been responsible for the origins of life on our planet.

In 2011, NASA will launch the OSIRIS mission to a menacing asteroid called RQ36,which  would barely be noticed "except" says Joseph Nuth of NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, "that It's a treasure trove of organic material, so it holds clues to how Earth formed and life got started, and it regularly crosses Earth's orbit, so it might impact us someday." RQ36 is roughly about two-fifths of a mile in diameter. It orbits between about 83 million and 126 million miles from the sun, swinging within about 280,000 miles of Earth orbit, or roughly 40,000 miles more distant than the moon.

"OSIRIS of Egyptian mythology is the god of life and fertility, the god who taught Egyptians agriculture," said Dante Lauretta, OSIRIS Deputy Principal Investigator. "There's an analogy to the proposed 21st century space mission. We're looking at the kind of object that we think brought life to Earth; that is, objects that seeded Earth with early biomolecules, the precursors of life."

The mission will also help to better track the orbits of asteroids that might hit Earth by accurately measuring the "Yarkovsky effect" for the first time. The Yarkovsky effect is a small push on an asteroid that happens when the asteroid absorbs sunlight and emits heat. The small push adds up over time, and it is uneven due to an asteroid's various surface materials, wobble, and rotation. There's no sure way to predict an Earth-approaching asteroid's orbit unless you can factor in how the Yarkovsky effect will change that orbit.

“The threat of the Earth being hit by an asteroid is increasingly being accepted as the single greatest natural disaster hazard faced by humanity,” says Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences team, who developed the identifying program.

The team used raw data from multiple impact simulations to rank each country based on the number of times and how severely they would be affected by each impact. The software, called NEOimpactor (from NASA's "NEO" or Near Earth Object program), has been specifically developed for measuring the impact of 'small' asteroids under one kilometer in diameter.

Early results indicate that in terms of population lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the infrastructure destroyed.

The top ten countries most at risk are China, Indonesia, India, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Nigeria.

“The consequences for human populations and infrastructure as a result of an impact are enormous,” says Bailey. “Nearly one hundred years ago a remote region near the Tunguska River witnessed the largest asteroid impact event in living memory when a relatively small object (approximately 50 metres in diameter) exploded in mid-air. While it only flattened unpopulated forest, had it exploded over London it could have devastated everything within the M25. Our results highlight those countries that face the greatest risk from this most global of natural hazards and thus indicate which nations need to be involved in mitigating the threat.”

The team is also examining how the consequences of an impact change with increasing impact energy. Initial results indicate that a 100 meter diameter asteroid will predominantly cause localized casualties and damage across a few countries when impacting on either land or ocean. However, the consequences of a 200 meter diameter asteroid hitting the ocean increase significantly, with the generated tsunamis reaching a global scale. At 500 meters in diameter, almost any ocean impact will generate significant casualties and economic cost across the world.

Posted by Josh Hill, Rebecca Sato, and Casey Kazan.

Related Galaxy posts:

The Dawn Mission -NASA's Journey to the Beginning of the Solar System
The End of the World -A Video (the most terrifying short film ever!)

Story Link:

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/main.jhtml?xml=/earth/2007/09/06/sciasteroid106.xml

Comments

[guardians]

I would like to participate my time,problem solving skills,ideas, and creativity to help in the prevention of such catastrophies. With such a doomsday cenario such as this, the world can't afford to pass up any on any one man's thoughts or suggestions as to resolve with possitive results the events that can doom us all. Such ideas if collected can prove to be another tool in the fight for mankinds survival.
we should not only leave it to scientists and government to hold the answers nor fate of our planet in their hands, but we should all act with concern for the well being of this planet and life as we know it! Joseph @ dropathought@live.com... lets put our minds,money, technology, influences,creativity and problem solving skills to work as we are the greatest speacies for the job. drop me a message with your thoughts and get started. For us and our loved ones and as the care takers of this Planet we call Earth. all ideas are welcome!!!!