Asteroids: killer Asteroid detected heading towards Earth by AI technology

While artificial intelligence (AI) has generally been hailed as a means of improving our daily lives, some experts have warned about the potential existential threat it poses to humanity. Or does it?

A new AI-powered algorithm has detected a potentially hazardous asteroid (PHA) heading in Earth’s direction that other more old-school surveys - including the NASA-funded Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System (ATLAS) - failed to find.

This new PHA named 2022 SF289, which is 600 feet in length and large enough to destroy a city, was detected while the asteroid-hunting algorithm was undergoing an efficiency test using data from the ATLAS survey in Hawaii. 

Read more at : 'https://www.euronews.com

Asteroids: Why Earth needs a defence system against incoming asteroids - by Bob McDonald

The Earth was grazed by three space bullets this week in the cosmic shooting gallery that is our solar system. Each small asteroid carried more energy than a nuclear weapon, yet we didn't see them coming until the last minute and there is no system in place to protect us from getting hit.

On Wednesday, Asteroid 2014 DX110, 30 metres wide, whizzed by the Earth closer than the moon. It was followed the next day by 2014EC, a 10-metre space rock that passed even closer, missing us by a mere 65,000 km. That same evening, another surprise visitor, 2014EF, gave us a close encounter. None of these had a chance of hitting the Earth, but by space standards, these fly-bys are incredibly close.

Thursday's first visitor was about half the size of the object that did hit us last February, lighting up the skies over Chelyabinsk, Russia, and causing millions of dollars in damage. All of these objects arrived with very little warning. The first object on Thursday was spotted two days before it came by; the second one in less than 24 hours.

Scientists estimate that these close encounters with small asteroids happen every couple of weeks, which means there are about 25 chances every year that the Earth could get hit by one of them. It is also estimated that there are more than a million small asteroids out there, crossing the Earth's orbit, and so far, only 10,600 have been found.
 
Perhaps the odds have been on our side so far, but it's obvious that sooner or later, we are going to get pounded by one of these marauders from space. And if one comes down in a major centre, such as New York, Tokyo, Mexico City or Paris, the damage could be worse than a nuclear strike. So, why is there no system in place to protect ourselves from a clear and present danger?

The Hollywood solution - sending brave astronauts out to blow up an object, as portrayed in the movie Armageddon - won't work. It takes years to plan a mission like that, such as the asteroid rendezvous mission currently in development at NASA, which won't get off the ground for at least a decade. Besides, large asteroids, while more damaging, are rarer. We know where they are, and none is heading our way in the foreseeable future.

It's the small ones, which we only see a day or two before they arrive, that are the problem. To defend against those, we would need a missile system constantly at the ready, with the capability to be programmed quickly for rendezvous with the asteroid and powerful enough to reach out millions of kilometres from Earth.

It would take a sizeable multi-stage rocket, such as the kind used to send probes to Mars, in order to reach deep space. That technology already exists, but there are none at the ready to depart on a moment's notice.

Read more: Why Earth needs a defence system against incoming asteroids - Quirks and Quarks

NASA illustrates Earth's frightening chances of an asteroid collision

Earth is sitting in the path of more than 1,400 asteroids that could potentially cause significant damage, but according to NASA we likely won't see any of them smash violently into our planet anytime soon. In a chilling graphic of Earth sitting in a web of possible danger, NASA mapped out data it's collected on potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) that have intersecting orbital patterns with Earth and its neighboring planets.

The PHAs that NASA has visualized, as a part of its Jet Propulsion Labratory Photojournal project, are "fairly large" and measure at least 460-feet wide. Each of these asteroids is traveling as what the agency described as "close" to Earth's orbit. Close, NASA says, is within 4.7 million miles — which thankfully means we've got a bit of breathing room.

Read more: NASA illustrates Earth's frightening chances of an asteroid collision | The Verge

Asteroid: Stranger in the night: space rock to make close Earth flyby

Asteroids passing Earth

A little-known asteroid will skim past Earth on 15 February, passing just 28 000 km from our planet. The 50 m-diameter chunk of space rock was discovered last year by ESA-sponsored amateur astronomers in Spain.

Details of the ancient asteroid, 2012 DA14, are sketchy – no direct measurements of its size are available. From its brightness, scientists estimate its diameter at 50–80 m. Its composition is unknown and its mass is thought to be of the order of 130 000 tonnes.

“Its orbit can be computed quite accurately using Europe’s NEODyS asteroid database,” says Detlef Koschny, responsible for near-Earth objects at ESA’s Space Situational Awareness office.

“These computations show that a collision with Earth can be excluded quite safely at least for this century.”

Read more: Stranger in the night: space rock to make close Earth flyby / Operations / Our Activities / ESA

Asteroid which holds potential danger for Earth: Chinese space probe flies by asteroid Toutatis

Travelling in deep space, Chang'e-2 made the flyby on Dec. 13 at 16:30:09 Beijing Time (08:30"09 GMT), the State Administration of Science, Technology and Industry for National Defense (SASTIND) announced on Saturday.

The flyby was the first time an unmanned spacecraft launched from Earth has taken such a close viewing of the asteroid, named after a Celtic god.

It also made China the fourth country after the United States, the European Union and Japan to be able to examine an asteroid by spacecraft.

Chang'e-2 came as close as 3.2 km from Toutatis and took pictures of the asteroid at a relative velocity of 10.73 km per second, the SASTIND said in a statement.

Sources with the administration told Xinhua that Chang'e-2 is continuing its deep space travel and will reach a distance of more than 10 million km away from Earth in January next year.

Note EU-Digest: The Toutatis asteroid presently not pose a threat to Earth says NASA, and researchers say that there is no chance it will hit our planet over the next four centuries or so.

However, the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Massachusetts lists the Toutatis asteroid as a potential threat. They listed it as a potential threat, meaning that it could pose a risk to Earth at some point in the future.

Read more at http://www.inquisitr.com/439020/is-the-toutatis-asteroid-a-potential-threat-to-earth-in-the-future/#28BG03Pio3xheZ7S.99

Read more: Chinese space probe flies by asteroid Toutatis- China.org.cn

Outer Space: Why Asteroid Panic Is On the Rise

Asteroid 2012 DA14 is making headlines this week, despite the fact that the "incoming" space rock, as it has been described, definitely won't hit Earth.

The 150-foot-wide space rock will pass within 17,000 miles (27,000 kilometers) of us next February. That's nearer than the orbits of some geosynchronous satellites, and the closest shave of a mid-size asteroid ever predicted before the actual flyby has occurred. But even so, NASA assures the world that there is no chance of asteroid 2012 DA14 hitting Earth next year. Zero, zip, zilch

Why, then, all the terror about this unthreatening space rock? And why the recent doom and gloom about another space rock, the big asteroid 2011 AG5, a football-field-size rock that NASA says will almost certainly not collide with the planet in 2040? Don Yeomans, head of the Near-Earth Object Observations Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, blames the upsurge in asteroid panic on two main factors

For more: Why Asteroid Panic Is On the Rise | Asteroid 2012 DA14 & 2011 AG5 | Space.com