Celestial Asteroid size of Eiffel Tower heading for Earth…

marsh

On TB every waking moment

Asteroid size of Eiffel Tower heading for Earth…
Posted by Kane on November 6, 2021 11:17 am

View: https://youtu.be/wgDo1_f0jwc
1:55 min
NASA plans to crash spacecraft into an asteroid to test planetary defense system

Asteroid headed towards earth…

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test
View: https://youtu.be/NPeRUXSO2iY
3:02 min
 

West

Senior
By crashing a craft on the asteroid, we are effectively declaring that we are arseholes.

Who knows really what's living perhaps on or in that supposedly dead rock. Really guys, land on it, don't crash on it!

Idiots!

:D
 

Krayola

Veteran Member
More info....

Dubbed 4660 Nereus, or 1982 DB, this vaguely egg-shaped asteroid has a size making it taller than the Eiffel Tower and nearly twice as tall as the Washington Monument. It is set to pass by the planet on December 11 at a distance of approximately 3.9 million kilometers and at a speed of 6.578 km/s.

For comparison, the distance between the Earth and the Moon is about a thousandth of that – around 385,000 km. As such, despite being classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) due to its size and close proximity to Earth, it seems unlikely to pose a threat to the planet.

This is fortunate, as an impact from an asteroid of such a size could be devastating.
 

Double_A

TB Fanatic
Unless something changes this rocks orbit, forget about it.

The average distance between the Earth and Moon is known as one (1)LD (one Lunar Distance)

Those here in the "know" generally don't get concerned until the miss distance is about 0.1 LD.

The Geosynchronous Satellites we have orbiting earth are at about 22,000 miles from Earth. I start to worry when asteroids pass between Earth and those Geosynchronous Satellites!
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
How do you know it came first? Maybe its a piece of a larger one that broke off (that being its birthday) after the Eiffel Tower was built?

Odds say the asteroid as it exists now (give or take a few micrometeoroid impacts) was probably around well before the dinosaurs. Of course, no way to be certain without landing a mission (or several missions) on it to gather actual data on its physical ingredients, making an intense study of all the asteroids we can find, then backtracking every single orbit of everything remotely in the same vicinity back to 1889 (when the Eiffel Tower construction was finished). I think going with the odds is probably the more likely scenario.
 

Faroe

Un-spun
So if we shoot at it, blast the thing into multiple bits flying in various directions....
Isn't that going to produce a potential threat?
 

FaithfulSkeptic

Carrying the mantle of doubt
Odds say the asteroid as it exists now (give or take a few micrometeoroid impacts) was probably around well before the dinosaurs. Of course, no way to be certain without landing a mission (or several missions) on it to gather actual data on its physical ingredients, making an intense study of all the asteroids we can find, then backtracking every single orbit of everything remotely in the same vicinity back to 1889 (when the Eiffel Tower construction was finished). I think going with the odds is probably the more likely scenario.
I hope you're being facetious. I was.
 

BornFree

Came This Far
Yes, it is heading for Earth, but we have nothing to fear from this one. Scientists have been tracking it for 40 years and it is not projected to get even close to the Earth in our lifetimes. So we can see it as a dim spot in the night sky every once in a while.
Sensationalist Headline. I learned not to trust this source some time ago. Sometimes they are right, but sometimes they just make stuff up. What is even worse is sometimes when they are found out then they just change the story without even noting that they changed it.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
So if we shoot at it, blast the thing into multiple bits flying in various directions....
Isn't that going to produce a potential threat?

Individual pieces would be less likely to hit the ground, but assuming most of the pieces would still hit Earth then the pieces would still collectively heat up the atmosphere as they burned up. As I understand it the asteroid's orbital energy equation has to balance, and that means energy released coming through the atmosphere or impacting the ground. The asteroid isn't big enough to do all that much damage even if it hit the ground intact, so we're not talking about frying anything on the ground if all those pieces did heat up the atmosphere. Or not. I'm not an astrophysicist.
 

FaithfulSkeptic

Carrying the mantle of doubt
I think the idea is to nudge it ever so slightly. Change it's vector even 1/100° way out there potentially equals 1000's of miles difference here ... assuming you can detect them way out there.

Frankly, I think the best "thruster" to nudge them would be the surface of the asteroid itself. I'd think a 10 Mton thermo-nuke boiling off a huge amount of one side would have to produce an enormous amount of thrust, and navigation isn't any more difficult than slamming something into it.
 

danielboon

TB Fanatic
2009 JF. 2009 JF1 is a small near-Earth object that should pass within 0.3 AU (45 million km) of Earth in 2022. On 5 February 2022 the 2009 observations were remeasured greatly reducing the odds of an impact. On 6 May 2022 it has a 1-in-140,000 chance of impacting Earth.
 

tanstaafl

Has No Life - Lives on TB
Remember that elongated interstellar asteroid that some folks thought was an alien spaceship? At some point in 2022 it will be passing Neptune's orbit (not Neptune itself, just the orbit), but I can't find a specific date saying when.
 
Top