Post by xkamelx on Mar 23, 2004 17:30:53 GMT -5
From; www.space.com
An asteroid flew past Earth last week so close that it nearly entered an orbital halo where weather satellites roam. Scientists spotted it March 15 and watched it zoom by just three days later. It posed no threat, but there are hundreds of thousands more where that one came from.
And while asteroid 2004 FH, as it is known, was watched calmly by astronomers, a more frightening scenario unfolded two months earlier
An unprecedented asteroid scare in January had astronomers worried for a few hours over a rock that had a 1-in-4 chance of hitting Earth during the next few days. At the time, some of the scientists were unsure who should be notified. The event has prompted NASA to set up a formal process for notifying top officials in the future of any impending impacts, SPACE.com has learned.
The plan, which has existed on an informal basis for months but was not known to all the key scientists involved, could be put out for review this summer and finalized by the end of the year.
The blueprint will be limited to spelling out lines of communication within NASA, but it might spur other governmental officials to begin considering how to respond to a threat from beyond if NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe were to be informed of one, said Lindley Johnson, the top official for Near Earth Object Observation at NASA Headquarters.
For now, there is no established chain of command to the White House in relation to possible asteroid impacts, nor is there any plan for what government agencies should do regarding possible evacuations or emergency preparations.
Tense hours
Key NASA scientists who monitor potentially threatening space rocks already knew what to do on the night of Jan 13-14 when an apparent cosmic bogey was detected, Johnson said in a recent telephone interview. But there was concern and confusion, both among NASA scientists and between them and other astronomers who play vital roles in tracking newfound space rocks.
Few involved in the somewhat ad hoc global system of asteroid hunting knew exactly who should call whom as the situation unfolded.
It all began with a routine observation.
The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) observatories in New Mexico had recorded four images of an object moving across the sky. The measurements were sent as part of a daily batch to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass, on the Tuesday in January.
Click HERE for the complete article.
And HERE is a nice picture of Earth from an astroid's perspective.
~Myke
An asteroid flew past Earth last week so close that it nearly entered an orbital halo where weather satellites roam. Scientists spotted it March 15 and watched it zoom by just three days later. It posed no threat, but there are hundreds of thousands more where that one came from.
And while asteroid 2004 FH, as it is known, was watched calmly by astronomers, a more frightening scenario unfolded two months earlier
An unprecedented asteroid scare in January had astronomers worried for a few hours over a rock that had a 1-in-4 chance of hitting Earth during the next few days. At the time, some of the scientists were unsure who should be notified. The event has prompted NASA to set up a formal process for notifying top officials in the future of any impending impacts, SPACE.com has learned.
The plan, which has existed on an informal basis for months but was not known to all the key scientists involved, could be put out for review this summer and finalized by the end of the year.
The blueprint will be limited to spelling out lines of communication within NASA, but it might spur other governmental officials to begin considering how to respond to a threat from beyond if NASA administrator Sean O'Keefe were to be informed of one, said Lindley Johnson, the top official for Near Earth Object Observation at NASA Headquarters.
For now, there is no established chain of command to the White House in relation to possible asteroid impacts, nor is there any plan for what government agencies should do regarding possible evacuations or emergency preparations.
Tense hours
Key NASA scientists who monitor potentially threatening space rocks already knew what to do on the night of Jan 13-14 when an apparent cosmic bogey was detected, Johnson said in a recent telephone interview. But there was concern and confusion, both among NASA scientists and between them and other astronomers who play vital roles in tracking newfound space rocks.
Few involved in the somewhat ad hoc global system of asteroid hunting knew exactly who should call whom as the situation unfolded.
It all began with a routine observation.
The Lincoln Near Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) observatories in New Mexico had recorded four images of an object moving across the sky. The measurements were sent as part of a daily batch to the Minor Planet Center in Cambridge, Mass, on the Tuesday in January.
Click HERE for the complete article.
And HERE is a nice picture of Earth from an astroid's perspective.
~Myke