from the Where-is-the-Earth-shattering-kaboom? dept.
CNET reports that two asteroids, 2017 FU102 and 2017 FT102, passed the Earth on 2 April and 3 April.
The near-Earth asteroid 2017 FU102 was discovered by the Mt. Lemmon Survey in Arizona (USA) on 29 March 2017. Today (April 2, 2017), it will have a very close, but safe encounter with the Earth (about 0.6 times the mean distance of the moon).
[...] this ~10 meters large rock will reach its minimum distance from us of 143,000 miles (230,000 km).
The other object, 2017 FT102, is smaller and its approach to the Earth was at a greater distance. It was also discovered on 29 March.
[By comparison, the Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to be 20 meters in diameter. --Ed.]
Further information:
2017 FU102 at IAU Minor Planet Center
2017 FT102 at IAU Minor Planet Center
Related stories:
Days After its Discovery, Asteroid Buzzes Earth
Platinum Asteroid Worth Trillions Of Dollars Flies Past Earth
Watch Jumbo Asteroid Zip Past Earth
Close Asteroid Pass this Weekend
Surprise Flyby of Asteroid on January 9, 2017
NASA's Mission to (Potentially Devastating) Asteroid Bennu
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A small asteroid zipped by Earth at a distance less than the moon's orbit early Saturday (May 3), but posed no threat to our planet. About the size of a city bus, the asteroid was discovered Wednesday, April 28th. The rock is one of over 1400 potentially hazardous asteroids currently being monitored by NASA.
Not much warning, eh?
An asteroid has been spotted that is expected to pass very close to the Earth this weekend.
From its brightness, astronomers estimate that the asteroid is about 20 meters (60 feet) in size.
Based on current calculations, the best estimate for closest approach will be on 7 September, 2014, at about 18:15 UTC (2:15 PM EDT) at approximately 1/10th the distance from the Earth to the Moon, or at about 40,000 kilometers (25,000 miles).
This asteroid compares in size to the one that exploded over Chelyabinsk in 2013, and is roughly 1/3 the size of the meteor at the Tunguska event. The asteroid will pass safely by, but has been added to the database of "interesting" asteroids to track.
An asteroid will be stopping by for a visit around Monday (or Tuesday, depending on your time zone). From National Geographic:
A mountain-size space rock will sail past Earth on Monday, offering stargazers a close look at an interplanetary pinball. Luckily, NASA says there is no risk of collision, but it will be a rare astronomically close encounter that backyard telescope owners can watch.
This will be a rare opportunity to see a bright flyby of a potentially hazardous asteroid from your backyard. For several hours on Monday, [asteroid] 2004 BL86 will reach a visual brightness of magnitude 9. That means small telescopes and possibly even large binoculars will reveal the asteroid—as long as you know where to look.
The asteroid will travel through the constellations Hydra and Cancer in the south-southeastern evening sky and will glide just to the right of a bright celestial guidepost, the planet Jupiter. Between 10 p.m. and 12 a.m. EST [3–5 UTC], it will be making a close pass of the famed Beehive star cluster.
Asteroid UW-158 is set to wizz past Earth today, carrying an estimated five trillion dollars in platinum.
Spectroscopic analysis has revealed the composition of the asteroid, and made it a prime target for future asteroid-mining missions. It is approximately 452 metres by 1,011 metres in size. If the analysis is correct, it could be carrying an astonishing 90 million tons of platinum. It will swing past Earth at a distance of 2.4 million km, and will not be visible to the naked eye.
Paging Bruce Willis...
EurekAlert reports: "NASA to map the surface of an asteroid"
NASA's OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will launch September 2016 and travel to a near-Earth asteroid known as Bennu to harvest a sample of surface material and return it to Earth for study. The science team will be looking for something special. Ideally, the sample will come from a region in which the building blocks of life may be found.
The Daily Mail points out:
Bennu crosses Earth's orbit once every six years and is set to pass between the moon and our planet in 2135.
Scientists are worried the 500-metre wide asteroid's orbit could be tweaked by Earth's gravity as it passes by, causing it to smash into our planet later in the century.[...] 'We estimate the chance of impact at about one in 2,700 between 2175 and 2196,' [Prof. Lauretta] said.
It seems this (paywalled) Sunday Times article might be the original source for the quotes from Prof. Lauretta. Here are some excerpts from the article:
"Bennu is a carbonaceous asteroid, an ancient relic from the early solar system that is filled with organic molecules," said Lauretta.
"Asteroids like Bennu may have seeded the early Earth with this material, contributing to the primordial soup from which life emerged."
[...] For scientists, the chance of obtaining chunks of a carbonaceous asteroid is exciting. For the rest of us, however, Osiris-Rex's most important task may be the measurements it makes of a bizarre and newly discovered force that can send asteroids careering around the solar system and potentially towards Earth.
"The Yarkovsky effect is the force that acts on an asteroid when it absorbs sunlight and then radiates it back into space as heat. It acts like a small thruster, constantly changing its course," said Lauretta. "Bennu's position has shifted 160km [100 miles] since 1999."
It is these forces that make Bennu's trajectory so hard to predict after 2135's near-miss. It is expected to pass Earth at a distance of about 180,000 miles, well inside the moon's orbit and close enough to alter the asteroid's path so it may hit our planet on a future orbit.
[Time sensitive but remove breaking news nexus]
An asteroid with the potential to harm thousands of Earthlings was detected just two days before it passed by Earth:
A smallish asteroid zoomed past Earth this morning (Jan. 9), just two days after scientists first spotted the space rock. The asteroid, known as 2017 AG13, flew by our planet at just half the distance from Earth to the moon today at 7:47 a.m. EST (1247 GMT). (On average, the moon lies about 239,000 miles, or 385,000 kilometers, from Earth.) You can learn more about today's flyby in this video of asteroid 2017 AG13 from Slooh.com, which includes details on the space rock from Slooh Community Observatory astronomer Eric Edelman.
2017 AG13 is thought to be between 36 and 111 feet (11 to 34 meters) wide, according to astronomers at the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts. For perspective, the object that exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in February 2013, injuring more than 1,000 people, was thought to be about 65 feet (20 m) wide.
See also: NASA Formalizes Planetary Defense Coordination Office to Track Asteroids
NASA and FEMA Conduct Asteroid Threat Response Exercise
NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation
(Score: -1, Flamebait) by Anonymous Coward on Tuesday April 04 2017, @05:33AM (1 child)
Was one of them called "khallow"? It has not been warm here, lately. Just asking.
(Score: 0, Troll) by aristarchus on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:27AM
Why are there no other bot comments on the sight tonight? Bad vission la faire? Oh, they know we are here, but they cannot spell well enough to capture us! This was always the weakness of the invaders, Linquistics. Have you not seen "Arrival"? Did you not realize that it was a real-time distress signal, and that all humans are to, well, do something. Maybe remove Bill O'Reilly?? Hardly the least that and extra-trannstorialklllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllllll
(Score: 2) by isostatic on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:12AM (8 children)
A plane with a radius of 143,000 miles from the centre of the earth, or about 35 earth radii, is an area about 1,200 times larger. I.e. all things being equal for every asteroid passing closer than this one, there's a 99.92% chance of it missing. You'd need about 850 to pass before it's likely one would hit the earth.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:47AM (7 children)
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 04 2017, @04:46PM (6 children)
We'll be doing something right when we have the ability to counter such a threat. Until then, it's kinda pointless. Chelyabinsk should have been a wake-up call (not to mention Tunguska).
(Score: 2) by bob_super on Tuesday April 04 2017, @04:50PM
> Until then, it's kinda pointless.
Don't you realize how much I make off gullible idiots every time an asteroid comes a little bit close? And I'm not even a religious entity.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 04 2017, @07:28PM (4 children)
We'll be doing something right when we have the ability to counter such a threat.
We can counter it by not being there when it hits. Even if you can't adjust the trajectory, you can still figure out where it's going and prepare for the impact.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Tuesday April 04 2017, @08:30PM (3 children)
While the odds are low, if it's going to hit in a major metro area, good luck evacuating it in time. The odds aren't zero either: the Chelyabinsk meteor hit that city, not some rural place many miles away. Luckily for them, it exploded 20-30km above the ground, or it could have been far, far worse. Which then brings up the question: is it better to know, or to just let it happen? If they had known that city was going to be hit, they probably would have evacuated. Would more people have been hurt or killed in the chaos of a short-notice evacuation? Quite likely. As it was, ~1100 people got hurt, mainly from broken glass, and one woman broke her spine.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Tuesday April 04 2017, @10:30PM (2 children)
While the odds are low, if it's going to hit in a major metro area, good luck evacuating it in time.
Depends on the location. Developed world could evacuation a huge area (the size of hurricane evacuation notices) given three days warning. But a week should be good for most parts of the world. It of course depends on how accurate the predictions are and whether the object breaks up prior to impact.
(Score: 2) by Grishnakh on Wednesday April 05 2017, @01:54AM (1 child)
Yeah, depends on the location and also the accuracy and the amount of warning time.
And what if you implement such a system, and have several evacuations and it turns out you're wrong, or the impact is hundreds of miles away, or it explodes in the upper atmosphere causing no damage? After a few incidents like this, then people won't follow the evacuations any more ("boy who cried wolf" syndrome). The only sensible way to handle this is to redirect the asteroids before they become impactors. And over time, the program can pay for itself: some of the asteroids will likely have valuable ores that can be extracted.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Wednesday April 05 2017, @06:08AM
(Score: 2) by kaszz on Tuesday April 04 2017, @04:36PM
Image of 2017 FU102 [virtualtelescope.eu]
Any image of 2017 FT102?
List of Near Earth Objects [weather.gg].
Which writes that 2017 GM will come 0.04 of the distance moon-earth and have a diameter of 2.8 - 6.2 m and a speed of 18.50 km/s. It came within 16 000 km on 2017-04-03 earthsky.org [earthsky.org] writes.
(Score: 2) by butthurt on Wednesday April 05 2017, @07:59AM
Another visit from 2012 TC4 is expected on 12 October.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_TC4 [wikipedia.org]
https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sbdb.cgi?sstr=2012TC4;cad=1#cad [nasa.gov]