December 22, 2007
Asteroid to Crash Into Mars. Earth Saved
Mars is in danger of being struck by an asteroid at the end of next month, astronomers have calculated.
The impact, however, would be tiny in comparison to that of the asteroid that struck Chicxulub in Mexico 65 million years ago, which caused a worldwide cataclysm that is thought to have wiped out the dinosaurs. The new asteroid is 100 times smaller than the 10km diameter rock that caused that event. Nothing that the 2006 hurricane season did to the US.
The scientists, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in La Canada Flintridge, put the chances that it will hit the Red Planet on Jan. 30 at about 1 in 75.
A 1-in-75 shot is “wildly unusual,” said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near-Earth Object office, which routinely tracks about 5,000 objects in Earth’s neighborhood.
The likely impact would be on the threshold of visibility from the largest of Earth’s observatories, but its effects would readily be seen by probes orbiting the Red Planet such as the European Space Agency’s Mars Express. It will not be visible with domestic telescopes or the naked eye.
According to one of the researchers, typically the odds they look at for solar system strikes are a million to one. Anytime they have something that’s 100 to 1 or less, they sit up straight and tall in their chairs and take notice. And whereas normally they hope against the asteroid striking the surface (when Earth is in the cross-hairs), this time they’re totally behind the idea of it impacting upon the surface of Mars especially so with so many NASA assets ready to take front-row pictures.
Currently the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter is mapping Mars, and the Spirit and Opportunity rovers are on the surface preparing for a cold winter (see previous TGDaily.com coverage on Spirit and Opportunity). This would be the first time that humans have significant assets in place to observe a potentially devastating crash. In 1908 in Siberia, Russia, a similar sized asteroid broke up in the atmosphere and rained debris over an 830 square mile area, knocking down over 80 million trees. It was the largest impact with the Earth in recent history. Now wasn’t the Space Shuttle mission STS-114 supposed to study asteroid collisions?
With the thin Martian atmosphere, the asteroid will likely make it all the way to the surface, creating an impact crater 1/2 mile wide when it strikes. NASA will likely be able to get some high-gloss 8-1/2″ x 11″ photos of the asteroid as it passes through the atmosphere and impacts upon the surface.
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Jorden
12/25/2007 at 12:03 am
Will this through Mars out of orbit? And if it does, will it affect Earth at all???
Richard
12/28/2007 at 2:27 pm
I do not believe this collision will throw Mars out of orbit (but); since Mars is possesed of a magnetic core; this impact will ring (like a bell) Mars’ core which in turn will set in motion a “ringing” of earths core. The inclination of a planets axis (spin) direction toward the Sun can be altered by certain forces which will effect the weather patterns and climatic dipositions. The great State’s of Michigan. Indiania, Ohio, Pennsylvania, and New York were once temperate climates like Hawaii possesed of a great but shallow salt sea; something changed that?
All great advanced civilizations recorded the Sun rising in the West and setting in the East (pole shift?) as a “temperary” occurance.
Are these the “End Times” as predicted not only in the Christian Bible but verified by the geoligists that study past events that “sterilized” the entire planet earth eons ago?
Lets stop the spending on space exploration and figure out a “plan” for “survival of the choosen few who will re-populate the entire Planet after the next Major Gobal Catastrophy that will end Life as we know it today.
America needs a National Survival Program with educational programs and survival stations that can accomidate ten’s of thousands of individuals under one roof. This “vision” is nothing more than a vision of an Earth Based Colony for mans survival in a hostile enviornment like would be found on the Moon or Mars.
Large scale Space Colony’s must be built here (now) with the anticipation of saving mankind from total extingtion.
This is my point of view.
Richard C. Fox/Fournioer
Former Congressional Candidate (1994/Michigan 14th Federal District).
313 969-9786