There is a non -zero chance that somewhere in the neighboring solar system is a rock that could kill us all.
This stony assassin could well orbit around the sun right now, by evening on a celestial path which could one day cross with ours.
And if this rock is large enough and strikes in the right place – boom. Fire and smoke and death and extinction. Homo sapiens Go the way to T. Rex.
To save us from a killer asteroid, we must first find it. A spacecraft now under construction at the NASA laboratory propulsion jet can be our best hope.
THE Object surveyor close to the earth (NEO) is an infrared telescope of $ 1.4 billion with a single mission: to chase asteroids and comets that could pose a danger for the earth.
An illustration illustrates NASA NASA Neo Surveyor, scheduled for launch in 2027.
(NASA / JPL-CALTECH)
Astronomers have already identified approximately 2,500 asteroids greater than 140 meters – 459 feet – which could get closer in a disturbing manner.
Statistical models suggest that there could be up to 25,000 objects of this type in the solar system, in addition to countless smaller asteroids which could also make considerable damage, said Amy MainzerProfessor of UCLA planetary science who directs the NASA NASA mission.
“We still don't know everything in our own backyard,” said Mainzer. And if we need to set up a defense against an incoming threat of space, she said: “It all starts by knowing that there is something there and having enough time to really make an enlightened plan.”
Asteroids are essentially construction debris left by the formation of the solar system. A collapsed cloud of gas and dust condensed in places to create planets, including that on which we are currently surviving. He also produced smaller rocks which have never reached the size or status of the planet.
A technician makes ventilation holes to equalize the pressure over a length of electrostatic ribbon on a component of the Neo surveyor of JPL à Pasadena.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The surveyor does not realize A 2005 congress act Ordering the NASA to catalog 90% of objects close to the earth greater than 459 feet, which is roughly the size to which an asteroid could eliminate a city, or “vaporize the Los Angeles basin”, said Tom Hoffman, JPL project manager for the mission.
In the first five years following its advance on September 13, 2027, the launch from Cape Canaveral, Florida, the mission is responsible for identifying at least two thirds of the 25,000 asteroids estimated larger than this size which would be surrounded by the earth.
During his first decade, astronomers expect to have followed at least 90%, said Mainzer.
Most of what we know of the asteroids of our celestial district comes from telescopes on the ground. Once seen here on earth, the most elusive asteroids look like ink spots traveling in a dark sky, said Hoffman.
But these dark objects absorb enough sun energy to raise their temperature. Through an infrared telescope, they shine like red Christmas lights.
The destination of the telescope is the first point in Lagrange, or L1, one of the five known places in the solar system where the balanced gravitational forces of the sun and the earth tend to maintain objects in place. For a fixed distance of about 1 million miles above the earth – five times the distance by the moon – it will follow our planet around the sun, admiring a wider exponential view of the field around the orbit of the earth than the existing telescopes.
Tom Hoffman, project manager, describes the mission of the surveyor of almost land of JPL.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
The more it captures images of a potentially dangerous object, the more astronomers can draw the future movements of the object and calculate the risk.
The most famous collision between the earth and one of these objects took place about 66 million years agoWhen a rock 7.5 miles wide broke which is now the Yucatan peninsula.
The impact cremated everything in the surroundings and triggered massive fires.
Toxic clouds of sprayed rocks, sulfate and forest follow -ups quickly covered the planet, blocking a whole fraction of the energy of the sun and Put photosynthesis to a virtual stop For the sole known moment in history.
Much smaller rocks can still wreak havoc. In 2013, an asteroid about 60 feet in diameter entered the atmosphere near the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia.
He exploded before hitting the ground – a common spell for smaller asteroids that cannot withstand entry compression – and broken enough windows to send around 1,600 people to hospital with minor injuries.
“All that is bigger than that – it will not only be broken glass,” said Mainzer.
Technicians work on a component of the NEO Surveyor of JPL in Pasadena.
(Myung J. Chun / Los Angeles Times)
Real asteroids do not go towards the earth external parts of space as they do in the films. They tend to orbit elliptical paths around the sun, going to our telescopes, decades, even centuries before any potential collision.
Fortunately, technology has gone a long way from the upper Cretaceous. The sooner we find these asteroids, the more we must understand the right way to prevent a disaster, and the less work you need to succeed.
“All of this amounts to doing things as soon as possible, because then you have to do anything anything,” said Kathryn Kumamoto, head of the planetary defense program at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory.
“If we wanted to, say, deflect the asteroid, we only have to push it very little if we can get there very far in advance,” said Kumamoto. “A change of millimeter per second during decades will increase thousands of kilometers, and this can be sufficient for the asteroid to completely lack the earth.”
Nasa Double asteroid redirection test, or dartConfirmed in 2022 that it is possible to successfully change the trajectory of an almost earthly object when it deliberately crushed a spacecraft in a tiny asteroid at 7 million kilometers.
But Brute Force is not our only option. Other proposals include part of the object painting with a light -colored coating that would redistribute its heat and eventually change its rotation and orbit, said Mainzer, or park a large nearby spaceship whose gravity would reshape the trajectory of the object.
“It all starts by knowing that there is something there and having enough time to really make an enlightened plan,” said Mainzer.
