{"id":1692,"date":"2021-04-12T08:31:30","date_gmt":"2021-04-12T08:31:30","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/horizon.peachpuff-wolverine-566518.hostingersite.com\/?p=1692"},"modified":"2021-04-12T08:31:30","modified_gmt":"2021-04-12T08:31:30","slug":"how-do-we-know-if-an-asteroid-headed-our-way-is-dangerous","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1692\/how-do-we-know-if-an-asteroid-headed-our-way-is-dangerous\/","title":{"rendered":"How do we know if an asteroid headed our way is dangerous?"},"content":{"rendered":"
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There are a lot of things that pose a threat to our planet \u2013 climate change, natural disasters, and solar flares, for example. But one threat in particular often captures public imagination, finding itself popularised in books and films and regularly generating alarming headlines: asteroids.<\/strong><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n

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In our solar system there are millions of space rocks known as asteroids. Ranging in size from a few metres to hundreds of kilometres, these objects are mostly left over from the formation of our planets 4.6 billion years ago. They are building blocks that didn\u2019t quite make it into fully fledged worlds.<\/p>\n

Asteroids and other objects that make a closest approach to our sun of less than 1.3 astronomical units (1 astronomical unit, AU, is the Earth-Sun distance) are known as\u00a0near-Earth objects<\/a>\u00a0(NEOs). These are objects deemed to pose the greatest risk to our planet.<\/p>\n

It is not uncommon for asteroids to hit Earth.\u00a0Hundreds of meteorites<\/a>\u00a0reach the surface of our planet every year, most too small to be of any concern. But occasionally, large rocks can hit and cause damage. In 2013, the Chelyabinsk meteor\u00a0exploded over Russia<\/a>, injuring hundreds. At the extreme end of the scale, 66 million years ago, an asteroid\u00a0wiped out the dinosaurs<\/a>.<\/p>\n

Now scientists are trying to work out how much danger we might be in from future asteroids, and what we can do to prevent considerable damage to our planet. And while no known asteroids currently pose any significant threat to Earth (in late March 2021, one of the largest and best known asteroids on a possible collision course, Apophis, was\u00a0ruled out<\/a>\u00a0as being a potential danger for at least 100 years thanks to better pinpointing of its orbit), the race is on to make sure we\u2019re ready if or when one does.<\/p>\n

Discovered<\/strong><\/p>\n

As our methods of surveying the solar system improve,\u00a0more and more asteroids<\/a>\u00a0are being discovered \u2013with about\u00a03,000 NEOs found in 2019<\/a>. But there are important gaps in our knowledge that still need to be answered, namely, if we spot an asteroid coming our way, how do we know if it is a threat?<\/p>\n

While most asteroids larger than one kilometre in size are accounted for, and their orbits known not to impact Earth, smaller asteroids are less well monitored. Even a rock tens of metres across can cause significant damage if it hits a populated area.<\/p>\n

The time between spotting a new asteroid and it hitting our planet can be a matter of days and such an asteroid is known as an \u2018imminent impactor\u2019.<\/p>\n

Dr Ettore Perozzi from the Italian Space Agency (ASI) and colleagues have been working on a way to rapidly study such asteroids in a short window, ideally within days, with their\u00a0NEOROCKS<\/a>\u00a0project, to see what danger they pose.<\/p>\n

\u2018We are making an experiment to see how quick we can make a whole chain of commands, from the alert of a new object to the follow-up observations,\u2019 said Dr Perozzi, a co-investigator on the project.<\/p>\n

New discoveries of asteroids by many telescope surveys around the world are uploaded to a website called the\u00a0Minor Planet Center<\/a>. The NEOROCKS project aims to practice following up these discoveries using more advanced telescopes \u2013 like the Very Large Telescope in Chile \u2013 to work out the characteristics of a given asteroid, including its size and what it\u2019s made of.<\/p>\n

\u2018If it\u2019s made out of an incoherent rocky composition, it might not even reach the ground as a meteorite,\u2019 said Dr Perozzi. But \u2018if the asteroid has a hard structure, it can reach the ground and produce a cratering event (if it\u2019s big enough). The goal is try to see which of these events we are going to face.\u2019<\/p>\n

\u2018If the asteroid has a hard structure, it can reach the ground and produce a cratering event (if it\u2019s big enough).\u2019<\/p>\n

Dr Ettore Perozzi, Italian Space Agency<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

Rapid response<\/strong><\/p>\n

While the project\u2019s work has been hampered by Covid-19 so far, the team are hoping to resume their rapid response observations in the coming year. In the future, such a method could help us to prepare to evacuate an area if we knew it was in the path of a small asteroid that was still capable of causing damage.<\/p>\n

In the event a larger asteroid on a collision course with Earth was found perhaps years in advance of its impact, however, we may need to find a way to deflect it away from our planet \u2013 and the\u00a0NEO-MAPP<\/a>\u00a0project is investigating how we might do that.<\/p>\n

In November 2021, NASA will launch a mission to a double-asteroid called Didymos and Dimorphos to practice changing the orbit of an asteroid. Called the\u00a0Double Asteroid Redirection Test<\/a>\u00a0(DART), the mission will slam into Dimorphos in October 2022, hopefully changing its 11.9-hour orbit around Didymos by several minutes.<\/p>\n

NEO-MAPP will be involved in using data from this mission, along with a planned ESA\u00a0follow-up mission called Hera<\/a>\u00a0in 2024 that it is helping to develop, to investigate how successful this test was. Known as a kinetic impactor, it could be a method we employ one day to nudge an asteroid ever so slightly out of the path of our planet, years before it is due to impact.<\/p>\n

\u2018Hera will arrive at the crime scene after DART has made its impact,\u2019 said Dr Patrick Michel at the French National Centre for Scientific Research (CNRS), the project coordinator for NEO-MAPP. \u2018It will measure the outcome of the impact and fully characterise the event.\u2019<\/p>\n

Other possible asteroid deflection methods include using a spacecraft\u2019s gravitational pull to gently change the orbit of an asteroid \u2013 a process much slower than a kinetic impactor \u2013 or using nuclear explosions to push an asteroid off course. But so far the DART mission is the only planned technological demonstration of a deflection technique \u2013 and international treaties\u00a0forbid<\/a>\u00a0the nuclear option.<\/p>\n

Rendezvous<\/strong><\/p>\n

Another mission, Japan\u2019s Hayabusa2 that\u00a0returned samples of asteroid Ryugu to Earth<\/a>\u00a0last year, is scheduled to visit an extremely small asteroid called 1998 KY26 in 2031. At just 30 metres across, it will be the smallest asteroid ever visited by a spacecraft \u2013 but it\u2019s a rendezvous that could give us crucial information on these small bodies.<\/p>\n

\u2018It is a super-fast rotating object, less than ten minutes,\u2019 said Dr Michel. \u2018That is the kind of object we want to understand. What does it mean to rotate so fast?\u2019 Answering this question could tell us, for example, how the object is able to stay together despite its fast rotation.<\/p>\n

Understanding smaller asteroids \u2013 which are hard to track but hit us more often than larger asteroids \u2013 and developing rapid response techniques to evacuate local areas in the event of an impact, alongside testing ways to deflect larger asteroids, will be crucial in protecting Earth in the future. And while none of the latter pose a danger for the time being, it is vital that we are prepared for any eventuality.<\/p>\n

\u2018Fortunately, the famous dinosaur-killer event is a once in every 100 million years event,\u2019 said Dr Perozzi. \u2018But that doesn\u2019t mean there aren\u2019t more frequent and dangerous impacts on a regional scale. We need to be ready.\u2019<\/p>\n

The research in this article was funded by the EU.\u00a0<\/em><\/p>\n

Originally published on Horizon Magazine<\/a><\/em><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

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In our solar system there are millions of space rocks … Read more<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":298,"featured_media":1693,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"generate_page_header":"","jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[15],"tags":[403,35],"class_list":["post-1692","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-space","tag-asteroids","tag-space"],"yoast_head":"\nHow do we know if an asteroid headed our way is dangerous? - Horizon Magazine Blog<\/title>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/scienceblog.com\/horizon\/1692\/how-do-we-know-if-an-asteroid-headed-our-way-is-dangerous\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"How do we know if an asteroid headed our way is dangerous?\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"There are a lot of things that pose a threat to our planet \u2013 climate change, natural disasters, and solar flares, for example. 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