Interestingly, this newly discovered asteroid passed within a quarter of the moon's distance (about 100,000 km) from Earth at 12:12 p.m. Italian time on July 13, 2023. However, this raises the question, why didn't any of our telescopes detect it sooner? The answer lies in the asteroid's trajectory, coming towards Earth from the direction of the Sun - a recognized blind spot in our defense against space rocks.
But the European Space Agency (ESA) has a plan to address this vulnerability. The ESA has proposed a mission, known as NEOMIR, designed to detect asteroids approaching from the Sun's direction. NEOMIR will orbit between Earth and the Sun at the first Lagrange point (L1), serving as an early warning system for detecting asteroids down to 20 meters in size that earthbound instruments might miss. However, the launch of NEOMIR is not scheduled until 2030.
To understand more about these celestial bodies, let's delve into some basic information.
Asteroids are rocky celestial bodies that are typically irregular in shape and not very bright. Most dwell within the asteroid belt, a region situated between Mars and Jupiter. Asteroids come in various shapes, with some even possessing their own natural satellites.
Contrary to asteroids, comets consist of both rock and ice. As a comet nears the Sun, the ice vaporizes and is expelled, along with dust, forming a 'fuzzy' appearance and sometimes two tails.
A meteoroid, on the other hand, is a relatively small fragment of an asteroid or comet, often resulting from collisions. When a meteoroid enters Earth's atmosphere, it becomes a meteor, reaching high speeds and glowing brightly due to friction with the air, often seen as a 'shooting star'. If it survives the descent and lands on Earth, it's then referred to as a meteorite.
Regarding the planetary defense strategy.
ReplyDeleteNear-Earth asteroids (NEAs) are not solid rocks, but rather loose collections of gravel, stones, and dust. While around 30,000 NEAs have been discovered, it is estimated that there are actually about one million of these objects. While most of the larger NEAs have been found, there are still many that remain undiscovered. The specialized space telescope NEO Surveyor (a prototype of which was the "Sentinel" in the B612 Foundation) that is being developed to detect these remaining NEAs is necessary to launch as soon as possible. It is also crucial that work be done on international, competitive principles to develop the most adequate methods for deflecting asteroids. These methods should be more effective than the currently popular but based on insufficient options for momentum transfer in the absolutely inelastic collision mode, such as impact and surface or near-surface small-power nuclear explosion, not so weak as gravitractor, less risky than high-power nuclear explosion, feasible unlike the use of powerful lasers that cannot be cooled in space or engines that cannot be attached to a rapidly rotating pile of gravel and stones in an "on-off" mode, more efficient than methods based on the use of scanty radiation pressure on solar sail. One promising method is the use of powerful pushing evaporation of NEA by highly concentrated solar radiation, which is suitable for asteroids of any type and size and does not require a lot of energy or cost, as well as a long warning period. For more information, see the corresponding section on Wikipedia:
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Asteroid_impact_avoidance#Focused_solar_energy
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