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posted by Fnord666 on Saturday August 12 2017, @05:46PM   Printer-friendly
from the duck-just-in-case dept.

2012 TC4 will pass Earth well within the Moon's orbit a month from now, but not nearly as close as previously estimated:

Mark your calendar for Oct. 12. That's when asteroid 2012 TC4 will slip past Earth at an expected distance of around 27,300 miles (44,000 kilometers). The European Southern Observatory's Very Large Telescope in Chile recently caught sight of the asteroid, which could be up to 100 feet (30 meters) in size.

NASA is leading a coordinated international campaign to observe TC4. In July, NASA suggested the asteroid could squeeze in as close as 4,200 miles (6,800 kilometers), but the European Space Agency's latest estimates give us more breathing room.

Geostationary equatorial orbit (GEO) is at about 35,786 km above mean sea level.

Also at Phys.org (AFP).


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  • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:25PM (7 children)

    by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Saturday August 12 2017, @11:25PM (#553025) Journal

    I find it concerning that the prior orbit calculated was so wrong. This seems to imply that the other orbits they calculate might be equally wrong, and not necessarily in the same direction.

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  • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:07AM (4 children)

    by kaszz (4211) on Sunday August 13 2017, @04:07AM (#553103) Journal

    Did you account for the distance to Earth? the closer a object gets. The more data for an accurate trajectory and less chance of disruptions.

    • (Score: 2) by HiThere on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:49PM (3 children)

      by HiThere (866) Subscriber Badge on Sunday August 13 2017, @06:49PM (#553324) Journal

      No. Those making the projections are supposed to account for that. And the stories never give error bars, so I can't even say for certain if their earlier projection was wrong. Still, it sure *looks* as if it was wrong. They were off by over 20,000 miles, which would mean that if that was within their error bars, so was a direct central impact.

      That said, yes, this kind of prediction is difficult and uncertain. But the prediction (as reported) wasn't "better keep an eye on this one", but rather "this one is going to miss us safely by this much". Which leads to a lack of trust in all the other predictions (as reported).

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      • (Score: 2) by kaszz on Monday August 14 2017, @03:48AM (2 children)

        by kaszz (4211) on Monday August 14 2017, @03:48AM (#553466) Journal

        Actual policy if there IS an impact is to not tell the public to avoid public riots. Figure that.

        I'll keep your point in mind though. There obviously seems to be a loophole.

        • (Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:47AM

          by Anonymous Coward on Monday August 14 2017, @06:47AM (#553531)

          [citation needed]

          Like the leaky White House can keep it a secret anyway.

        • (Score: 2) by Justin Case on Monday August 14 2017, @04:51PM

          by Justin Case (4239) on Monday August 14 2017, @04:51PM (#553750) Journal

          Agree with AC. Citation?

  • (Score: 3, Interesting) by JoeMerchant on Sunday August 13 2017, @08:35PM (1 child)

    by JoeMerchant (3937) on Sunday August 13 2017, @08:35PM (#553354)

    I think they calculate cones, then quote the close side of the cone within some confidence interval... thus the news tends to get better most of the time.

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    • (Score: 3, Interesting) by Sulla on Monday August 14 2017, @09:54PM

      by Sulla (5173) on Monday August 14 2017, @09:54PM (#553853) Journal

      When I was in college I had a lab class that took snapshots of rock locations and used a program to track the possible future locations. It did end up looking like an arcing cone. It was a pretty cool class and some of my classmates got their report published and got some sort of cool NASA acknowledgement for correctly predicting their rock hitting Mars. Mine did piss all forever hanging out in the belt.

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