Russia plans attack on Apophis Asteroid

[Science Teacher]

MOSCOW ? Russia is considering sending a spacecraft to a large asteroid to knock it off its path and prevent a possible collision with Earth, the head of the country's space agency said Wednesday.

Anatoly Perminov said the space agency will hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis, telling Golos Rossii radio that it would invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project once it is finalized.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated the chances of it smashing into Earth in its first flyby in 2029 were as high as 1-in-37, but have since lowered their estimate.

Further studies ruled out the possibility of an impact in 2029, when the asteroid is expected to come no closer than 18,300 miles (29,450 kilometers) above Earth's surface, but they indicated a small possibility of a hit on subsequent encounters.

In October, NASA lowered the odds that Apophis could hit Earth in 2036 from a 1-in-45,000 as earlier thought to a 1-in-250,000 chance after researchers recalculated the asteroid's path. It said another close encounter in 2068 will involve a 1-in-330,000 chance of impact.

Without mentioning NASA findings, Perminov said that he heard from a scientist that Apophis is getting closer and may hit the planet. "I don't remember exactly, but it seems to me it could hit the Earth by 2032," Perminov said.

"People's lives are at stake. We should pay several hundred million dollars and build a system that would allow to prevent a collision, rather than sit and wait for it to happen and kill hundreds of thousands of people," Perminov said.

http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20091230...lYwN5bl90b3Bfc3RvcmllcwRzbGsDcnVzc2lhbWF5c2Vu

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: Russia plans attack on Apophis Asteroid

An Updated Assessment Of The Impact Threat From 99942 Apophis (OASIS, edited)

Presentation Abstract

Title - An Updated Assessment Of The Impact Threat From 99942 Apophis

Author Block Steven R. Chesley 1, A. Milani 2, D. Tholen 3, F. Bernardi 2, P. Chodas 1, M. Micheli 3

1JPL,
2Univ. Pisa, Italy,
3Univ. Hawaii.

Special Instructions Should be scheduled to follow related paper by Tholen et al.


Abstract

The potentially hazardous asteroid 99942 Apophis has been the subject of widespread attention, in both the technical and public arenas, at first due to a potential for impact in 2029 and later for the possibility of post-2029 impacts. While it has been understood since late 2004 that the 2029 encounter will be close (~38,000 km from the geocenter) but harmless, potential resonant return impacts in 2036 and 2037 have persisted. We apply new astrometry that substantially extends the available data arc [Tholen et al. DPS 2008, 2009], and reduces uncertainties by ~50%, to obtain a new impact hazard assessment. We show that the new orbit uncertainties in 2029 are comparable to, or even smaller than, the likely dispersions induced by the Yarkovsky effect and so this nongravitational acceleration can no longer be neglected in the analysis. We describe a technique to account for Yarkovsky dispersion in the risk assessment.
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<cite cite="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?mID=2337&sKey=26616bb1-f010-47f8-a3d0-12ee59cadaf8&cKey=a522093d-3eb7-442f-a1dd-64f052733529">OASIS</cite>

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: Russia plans attack on Apophis Asteroid

Here is Apophis! (OASIS, edited)

Presentation Abstract

Title - Here is Apophis!

Author Block
David J. Tholen 1, M. Micheli 1, G. T. Elliott 1, F. Bernardi 2

1Univ. of Hawaii,
2Univ. of Pisa, Italy.

Special Instructions Presentation adjacent to Steve Chesley.


Abstract

Previously we had called attention to a positive declination bias of 0.1 to 0.2 arcsec in over a hundred observations of (99942) Apophis made at Mauna Kea Observatory since the last published observations in 2006. After investigating a variety of possible causes, we have determined that the vast majority of the bias is due to the reference catalog used for the observations (the USNO-B1.0), with differential refraction being the second largest effect, but usually smaller than the catalog error by over an order of magnitude. To correct for this problem, we have begun systematically remeasuring all of our Apophis images against the 2MASS point source catalog. Although the brighter magnitude limit of this catalog provides typically about half the number of reference sources compared to the USNO-B1.0, the number is still adequate to perform good astrometric solutions. The best of our data has astrometric uncertainty as small as 0.05 arcsec, thus offering several times higher fractional precision than the five available Doppler radar observations of Apophis, and approaching within a factor of two the fractional precision of the two available delay radar observations. However, on one of the nights already remeasured, the bias was not completely eliminated. Comparison to the UCAC2 catalog revealed a bias in the 2MASS catalog for the corresponding position on the sky. Our complete data set now encompasses 40 nights spanning from the discovery observations on 2004 June 19 to 2008 January 9, thereby extending the observational arc by about 50 percent more than the currently published observations do. These data will be used to refine the details of the 2029 close approach to the Earth, which will indicate whether an impact risk for the Earth remains in the decade of the 2030s.
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<cite cite="http://www.abstractsonline.com/Plan/ViewAbstract.aspx?mID=2337&sKey=26616bb1-f010-47f8-a3d0-12ee59cadaf8&cKey=184e7d78-ae9c-47aa-b38a-71b00c61aff9">OASIS</cite>

 

[Giuseppe]

Re: Russia plans attack on Apophis Asteroid

Further informations about Apophis are available at NASA's Near Earth Objects dedicated pages: http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/risk/a99942.html