100-Foot Asteroid to Buzz Earth Next Month
The near-Earth asteroid 2013 TX68, which is thought to be about 100 feet long, will zoom past our planet on March 5. The space rock could come as close as 11,000 miles or stay up to 9 million miles away during the flyby, researchers say.
Space Weather
3 close asteroids went by earth this week - closer than the moon's distance to earth:
(2016 AQ164), January 10, 0.3 Lunar distance away, Estimated Diameter 2.8 m - 6.3 meters. (2016 AH164), January 12, 0.07 Lunar distance away, Estimated Diameter 3.2 m - 7.1 m. (2016 AN164), January 14, 0.1 Lunar distance away, Estimated Diameter 2.1 m - 4.7 m.
2016 Meteor Showers
Courtesy of NASA, here's the meteor shower lineup for 2016, all times Eastern.
Jan. 4: The first meteor shower of the year was the Quadrantids, most visible at 3:01 a.m.
April 22: The second meteor shower of the year is the Lyrids, most visible at 1:30 a.m.
May 4: Eta Aquarids will be most visible at 2:45 p.m.
July 27: Delta Aquarids will be most visible at 4:32 p.m.
Aug. 12: Perseids, most visible at 8:26 a.m.
Oct. 21: The Orionids, most visible at 12:45 a.m.
Nov. 5: South Taurids, most visible at 12:13 a.m.
Nov. 11: North Taurids, most visible at 11:29 p.m.
Nov. 17: Leonids, most visible at 5:47 a.m.
Dec. 13: The Geminids will be most visible at 6:57 p.m.
Dec. 22: The final meteor shower of 2016 will be the Ursids, which will be most visible at 3 a.m.
NASA Opens Armageddon Office
NASA has just launched a new office aimed at protecting the planet from potential doomsday asteroids.
The Planetary Defense Coordination Office will oversee all of the space agency's efforts to detect and track near-earth objects, and coordinate with other federal agencies as well as other nations if and when it becomes necessary.
NASA has been stepping up its efforts to protect the planet from a devastating impact, most recently teaming up with the National Nuclear Security Administration to work on a plan to use nuclear weapons to deflect an asteroid.
If the agency and other international organizations aren't able to deflect the celestial body, NASA said the new department could work to prepare people on Earth by alerting those in the potential impact zone and assisting emergency response agencies such as FEMA.
Another Asteriod to Pass the Earth
An asteroid the size of a city block will pass by Earth this weekend, but there is no danger of it hitting our planet.
The 80-meter wide asteroid makes its closest approach to Earth on Saturday afternoon in the United States. It will be about 975,000 kilometers (604,500 miles) away.
Planetary Meteor Defense Shield Proposed
Russia is proposing a unified international monitoring system to prevent Earth from being struck with a catastrophic blast from space.
Following the destructive meteor breakup over southern Russia on February 15, Prime Minister Dmitry Medvedev assigned a deputy, Dmitry Rogozin, to find ways to prevent far worse disasters.
Rogozin had proposed in 2011 an “international initiative” to prevent such threats by harnessing the “intellectual and technological efforts of industrial nations.”
Anti-missile and aerospace defense technologies in use today are mostly ground-based and designed to detect incoming objects launched from the ground, rather than those coming from space.
A network structured under the umbrella of the United Nations to detect and deflect meteors or asteroids long before they reach the planet is proposed.
Asteroid
The chunk of space rock, about 50 metres wide, will give us such a near miss that it will skim our planet inside the geosynchronous orbits of many TV and communications satellites on 15 February.
And despite its small size, it will become visible to amateur astronomers in binoculars and small telescopes, with its rapid motion across the starry background, covering an area of sky greater than the apparent width of the Moon every minute, being quite obvious.
The asteroid, which was discovered last year, is labelled 2012 DA14 and is known as a Near-Earth Object because its orbit makes it a potential impact threat at some time in its history. Fortunately, it will not hit us this time or at any date in the predictable future.
Although the asteroid is small, if it were on a collision course with Earth, it would produce the equivalent of 2.5 megatons of TNT.
In December, a larger 5 km-wide asteroid called Toutatis sped by us at a distance of 7 million km and was imaged by Chaina's Chang'e 2 space probe and by radar by radio telescopes on Earth.
Doomsday Asteroid
A near-earth asteroid once considered a potential killer is even bigger than expected, but still not a threat to humanity – now or in the future.
When asteroid 99942 Apophis was discovered in June 2004, initial analyses of its trajectory suggested a small chance that it could collide with the Earth in the year 2029, causing an explosion equivalent to 1480 megatons of TNT–nearly 30 times larger than the biggest hydrogen bomb ever detonated. But later observations have given astronomers a better view of the object, and made it clear that the likelihood of a collision was so small as to be negligible.
Newly discovered Asteroid 2012 TC4 , 22 meters in size, will pass by earth on October 12th just 0.2 lunar distances away (1/5 of the way between the Earth and the Moon).
Meanwhile, newly-discovered asteroid 2012 TV was flying through the Earth-Moon system 0.7 lunar distances away (about 2/3rd of the way between the Earth and the Moon) on Sunday. The 40 meter-wide space rock is glowing like a 13th-magnitude star.
