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P. Carril / ESA
Asteroids zip past Earth in this artist's conception.
The nonprofit B612 Foundation says it's planning the first privately funded deep-space mission, with the goal of launching an instrument known as the Sentinel Space Telescope to look for potentially hazardous asteroids from a vantage point inside Earth's orbit around the sun.
The foundation, headed by former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, tipped its hand today in an advisory alerting journalists about a press conference to be conducted at 8:30 a.m. PT June 28 at the California Academy of Science' Morrison Planetarium in San Francisco.
"We will create the first comprehensive dynamic map of our inner solar system showing the current and future locations and trajectories of Earth-crossing asteroids, paving the way to protect the Earth from future impacts and opening up the solar system to future exploration," the advisory read.
Scheduled speakers include Lu as well as the foundation's chairman emeritus, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart; project architect Scott Hubbard, a Stanford professor who once served as NASA's Mars czar; and mission director Harold Reitsema, former director of space science missions at Ball Aerospace.
A spokeswoman for the B612 Foundation, Diane Murphy, told me that the advisory was the only information being made public in advance of the press conference. That means it could be more than a week before we get formal word about the projected cost of the mission, its financial backers, projected launch date or other key details. However, the concept for the Sentinel Space Telescope has been percolating among asteroid-watchers and activists for years — providing an advance glimpse at what the project would entail.
Facing the threat
The B612 Foundation was established almost a decade ago to call attention to the potentially catastrophic threats posed by near-Earth objects. For example, an asteroid strike is thought to have led to the dinosaurs' demise 65 million years ago, and as recently as 1908, a much smaller cosmic impact wiped out half a million acres of Siberian forest.
A comprehensive catalog of potentially threatening asteroids could provide more advance warning of potential threats, giving humanity more time to do something about them.
NASA has made good progress in cataloging most of the large asteroids that could pose a world-ending threat, thanks to ground-based observations as well as space missions such as the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer, or WISE. Last year, the WISE mission's science team estimated that more than 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids wider than 1 kilometer (0.6 miles) had been found. However, scientists figure that so far they've been able to track less than a third of the near-Earth asteroids between 100 meters and a kilometer in width. Such asteroids could destroy a city or cause a "cosmic Katrina" if they hit just the wrong place.
Two Earth-crossing asteroids, 2005 YU55 and 2012 LZ1, sparked headlines in the past year when they made close encounters, and an other asteroids are due to come even closer in the years ahead. The most worrisome space rocks are those that spend much of their time interior to Earth's orbit, where they can get lost in the sun's glare. For that reason, the Sentinel mission's planners want to put their telescope in a place where it can look out toward Earth, with the sun behind it.
B612's action plan
A letter posted to Google+ in January, and attributed to Lu, lays out what appears to be a game plan for turning the Sentinel mission into a reality:
"We now have a detailed plan to build an infrared telescope spacecraft that will within 5.5 years of operation catalog and track the vast majority of threatening asteroids. We have a fixed price bid from a spacecraft contractor, and are finalizing an agreement with NASA to provide communications and tracking services. The planned launch date is in 2016, with a flyby of Venus to enter the final observing orbit around the sun from where it can continuously monitor Earth’s orbit."
The letter said such a mission would cost several hundred million dollars, a cost that is "comparable to a multistory building or other municipal civic project."
It said the foundation's goals for 2012 were to add to B612's fundraising team, fill some technical positions, continue with analysis of the mission design "leading to a signed contract with our spacecraft manufacturer," and secure an anchor donor. Funding the work planned for the year would require raising $4 million, the letter said.
"By this time next year we should be able to begin actual construction of the Sentinel spacecraft," the letter said.
Since that letter was written, a different venture known as Planetary Resources announced that it had gained financial backing from a bevy of billionaires for efforts to build and deploy asteroid-watching telescopes in Earth orbit — with the ultimate goal of going out to the most promising asteroids and mining them for water and precious metals. Is there some synergy at work here? What exactly will be announced next week? For now, your guess is as good as mine, so feel free to weigh in with your comments below.
More about asteroids:
- How to handle asteroid threats
- Asteroid debate rises to next level
- Asteroid likely to spare Earth in 2040
- Reality check for asteroid miners
- Cosmic Log archive on asteroids
Alan Boyle is msnbc.com's science editor. Connect with the Cosmic Log community by "liking" the log's Facebook page, following @b0yle on Twitter and adding the Cosmic Log page to your Google+ presence. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
Leave a Comment:
Where can I send a donation for the telescope ?
SWEET! I hope that they succeed in getting off the ground!
(And I'm very disappointed that NASA did not do this very mission decades ago.)
You should contact NASA directly.
Nobody commenting on a story of this magnitude? I remember the B612 group discussing this at TED and some possible solutions for dealing with a verified collision bound asteroid (or even possibly mining one that passes by closely for it's rare metals) and was truly impressed by mankinds initiative. They hope to be able to park an object next to the asteroid to create a slight gravitational pool to ultimately deviate the path incrementally to avoid Earth!
Seeing B612 and Planetary Resources working together to get an instrument(s) into space with the ultimate goal of capturing and mining an asteroid would be an awesome endeavor. Discovering just how many "city busters" less than a km out there would also be a worthy goal. To one day have a complete catalog of the mass of asteroids coming into the inner solar system is very interesting and may also provide insight into the evolution of our solar system. Hope it happens and thanks for letting us know about it.
I can't wait until we're an interstellar species. I only hope it's something I'll be able to see within my lifetime (currently age 36).
Interstellar? I'd be happy with interplanetary! :-(
Suppose we wanted to (or had to) mount an expedition to Gliese 581. It's the closest star most likely with Earth-like planets. It's 20 light years away.
The hypothetically fastest ship we could build would be a nuclear Project Orion spacecraft. Besides the slight issue of detonating nukes in space (which is banned by treaty), it would travel at a BEST speed of... 0.1c (or, 1/10th light speed).
Throw in the time needed to get up to speed and time to "brake", and we could reach Alpha Centauri (~ 4ly away) in about 44 years. Gliese 581? You're talking about a 220 YEAR mission. To put that in persepective, if astronauts were to arrive there tomorrow, they would have had to launch in... 1792 and would have probably enjoyed the speech given on their departure by President George Washington. :-)
President Washington had one heckuva JFK moment in that speech, didn't he? Very inspiring.
Can this group use that large, extra mirror that the NRO recently gave to NASA? NASA received two large mirrors from the NRO for projects which were apparently started then cancelled, but only after spending a few hundred million dollars to make these large space (spy) telescope mirrors. So NASA said they can use one of them, but the other is just being used to set ants on fire or something.
These guys are amazing ....
They'll come up with many methods of pushing , slowing down , turning , exploding , thrusting away , ect. , to keep asteroids from having a devastating impacts on Earth ....
I hope ....
I would like to repeat a warning/comment that I made during the recent close approach to Earth by asteroid 2012 LZ1.
The telescope used to make that detection was the 0.5 m diameter Uppsala Schmidt, sited at Siding Spring, the location of the Australian National Observatory. The Siding Spring Survey (SSS) is a subsidiary of the Catalina Sky Survey (CSS), headed by Steve Larson of the University of Arizona's Lunar and Planetary Lab. The funding for the SSS has come from both NASA and the Australian National University (ANU). Rob McNaught, the discoverer of 2012 LZ1, is a member of the SSS. One SSS observer is already out of a job, Rob McNaught is next.
Because of a lack of funds, in a few weeks the SSS will shut down. This will leave *no* professionally operated telescope in the Southern Hemisphere of sufficient size devoted solely to the task of discovering hazardous near-Earth objects (NEOs). None. Not a one.
Are there more NEOs like 2012 LZ1 out there? Yes, and resoundingly so. However, we had best get used to not detecting them in the near future. If the SSS had shut down a few weeks ago, we would not now know about 2012 LZ1 and its recent close approach and flyby of our planet.
What I find difficult to believe is that the combined resources of NASA and the ANU cannot keep the SSS in operation. It is all well and good to discuss and plan for future space-based telescopes, but first and foremost I think we should put a little effort into maintaining the overall meagre ground-based optical telescope NEO search capacity that we already have.
To learn more about the SSS and CSS, please visit www.lpl.arizona.edu/css/
I not employed by and have no formal association with any of the organizations mentioned above. I have contributed this comment on my own without prompting by anyone else.
Since this is being done to protect all inhabitants of the Earth perhaps some other Countries or The United Nations should get involved.
Wonder if there is more to this than meets the eye. Seems to me there is a high level of asteroid activity lately, from the President's NASA goal to these private companies and organizations. I hope it's nothing more than what we hear.
@Nutz, I am a planetary astronomer, and while I'm not neck-deep into asteroid research I've played a small part over the past 30+ years.
As you can imagine our detection methods have improved steadily over the years (digital vs film cameras, as well as internet vs photocopied results sent via international snail mail), leading to more discoveries. Also, the media itself, when they deign to occasionally report our findings, has also changed drastically in that time (newspapers and magazines vs instant news websites such as this one).
We are NOT seeing an increase in asteroid activity. What is happening is that we're somewhat more successful at finding these dark little speedy rocks, and the media is talking about it more than they used to.
I guarantee that there are just as many asteroids passing as closely and as often by the Earth 30 years ago as there are now. The difference is - we missed almost all of them back then. Ignorance was bliss.
Our current commitment to finding these bad boys is somewhere between pathetic and miserly, which is still an improvement over the state of the field when I got started. We can, and we must, do better, because one of these days one of these rocks will kick us in the ass.
Michael (Astronomy.FM)..........
Enhanced detection of NEO's is a worthy goal. But, simply knowing that we are about to be clobbered surely is not enough.
Toward that interest, can you speculate how difficult it might be to capture one of these Earth orbit crossing asteroids either into high Earth orbit or a Lagrangian point ? Perhaps such a large mass might prove useful should we ever need to nudge or block a truly massive threat.
Hi Ian;
"...simply knowing that we are about to be clobbered is surely not enough" - I agree 100%. But it is the absolutely necessary first step. I am confident that it's something that we can do, and frankly something that we should have done decades ago.
But I'm hesitant to hypothesize beyond what I know ("Dammit Jim, I'm an astronomer, not an engineer!). I don't know which of the several methods proposed to wrestle these mountain-sized behemoths, or combination of them, is the best approach to deal with the threat. My uninformed opinion is that if we can place a small-ish asteroid in a nearby orbit, we should mine as much of it as marketable, and perhaps use the remains as the "ammo" to shoot a number of rocks via an EM railgun at something that is heading our way. (But, that would also make for one heck of a space-based weapon, so perhaps it's not within humanity's political wisdom to build.)
With apologies who have seen this before, the key to snipping the asteroidal Sword of Damocles that is hanging over our heads is:
1) Early Detection
2) Early Detection
3) Early Detection
Cheers! ~Michael (Astronomy.FM★Radio)
We've probably been 'buzzed' quite a few times in history, but only lately have we come to realize just how much there is. It's not that there are more threats, but more ability to find them.
(Even impacts like Tunguska were barely noticed at the time. Today, you'd find it on the news five minutes later, with the Russians scrambling to determine if it was a natural event, or an attack.)
http://www.smbc-comics.com/index.php?db=comics&id=1814
If we were (extremely) lucky to find an NEO that, because of a combination of mass, integrity, composition, and trajectory, could economically and feasibly be captured, several exploits are imaginable.
In addition to those mentioned above (i.e. ballistic missiles, mining), the possibility that such a body could be hollowed to form a superbly shielded manned outpost comes to mind. Additionally, of course, much could be learned by careful study of such a pristine asteroid.
Sun-Earth L4 & L5 seem likely points for stationing such an asteroid base since NEO's coming from the direction of the Sun would be easily and always accessible relative to Sun-Earth L1, L2, & L3 and, particularly Earth-Moon L-points. A negative for SE L4 & L5 is their relatively large distance from the Earth. Still, there may be cases where this (distance) is an advantage.
http://www.haydenplanetarium.org/tyson/read/2002/04/01/the-five-points-of-lagrange
I do not think it is political. I think it's just that our tech has gotten better so we are seeing them now... Using your theory one could say that all these planets that we are discovering around other stars is so NASA can boost their budget.
It has been said that "there are more people working right now at the McDonalds closest to you, than there are people in the entire world working on mapping asteroids."
The testament to this is the scary thing that happened last week - an asteroid about 1600 feet across passed by Earth. That's not the scary thing though - the scary thing is that it wasn't even detected till about 4 days before it got here. Hopefully this project will achieve it's goal, and someday, we won't have any more surprises.
Of the scenarios I've seen put forward on how the earth could be decimated or completely destroyed, there are two that hold water for me. One is super volcanos, such as Yellowstone. One could theorize that a massive eruption there might well trigger other volcanic or even tectonic events elsewhere, cementing our near or complete extinction. The other is something from outside, meaning the space rock with our name on it.
Not much we can do about a volcano. It's gonna blow, or it won't. But, to KNOW about a near earth object far enough in advance to possibly DO something about it, even if it's just dig holes in the ground to hide in for a decade or two, give us a survivability factor above the current percentage.
I applaud the effort and deplore the shortsightedness of NASA. They could have literally created a new "reason for being" if they'd raised the flag years ago about how desperately we need to know what's out there, heading our way and possibly impacting the earth. Quite a mission statement, if you ask me.
And, I fully agree this should be an international effort. Ain't just the US that would suffer. Where's the UN's interest in protecting the entire planet? But, I understand their ignorance a little. The UN has been the most ineffective body with the most unrealized potential I've ever seen. Great concept, implementation has sucked for decades.
Here's hoping this effort bears fruit as its success could very well affect every living thing on this planet! Now, THAT'S a lofty goal!
Be talkin' to you.............................Web Rydr
Well written, Web Rydr.
People fail to realize that our technology is limited to detecting objects that either emit, reflect, deflect, or block electromagnetic waves in various spectra. Asteroids the size of a city block don't reflect much light and are not massive enough to deflect or block light until they get close enough to appear larger, so seeing them from Earth's perspective or orbit is like finding a needle in a field filled with haystacks. Once they get close enough, they get easier to see, but the small ones are still extremely dim and close to invisible unless they do transit a star that we might detect in the scanning for exo-planets.
I believe that some day we could have stations in place in various locations in our solar system between earth and the asteroid belt that will become the space equivalent of fire towers that will be able to monitor these and other threats at a very high degree of accuracy. The problem is that it will cost much more that we're willing to pay, and even then a rare and very small object could still slip through the net as no monitoring system covering that much area can be perfect.
@Web Rydr: "I applaud the effort and deplore the shortsightedness of NASA."
Very nicely said....
Hi, I'm an amateur physicist/Inventor/Elec/Mech.Engineer/philosopher and Cosmologist minus the mathematics, and I'd like to make a suggestion.
There is a problem with detecting these objects... in that they do not reflect very much of the sun's radiation for the telescopes to see. I propose a new technique called "grid mapping".
This is going to be an expensive project, but in order to "really" protect Earth, I think it will need to be done.
Any detection system is only as good as "what it can detect". Peering into telescopes "hoping" to find objects is a miserable, tedious, inefficient, and unreliable method. It's archaic, so to speak. Sorry guys... but it is.
Here's how grid mapping works, it's actually very simple. We will need several hundred satellites placed into orbit at strategic and geometric locations in the solar system that links up to the other satellites to make a "grid". When an object passes between the two satellites, it records that information and will try to track it's speed. Then, as it passes another set of satellites, it will record the same information from the object. At that point, the trajectory and speed of the object should be able to be calculated by "GRID", as I will call the AI system, and at that point another calculation can be made as to whether it is an Earthly threat or not.
Peering out into the blackness of space "hoping" to find an asteroid is too inefficient. We MUST develop a grid mapping system to identify any and all incoming objects into our solar system.
I figure, if a spacerock is flying at 28,000mps, and our grid mapping system picks it up at the edge of the solar system, GRID will give us ample enough time to prepare the deflection system made up of either stategic nukes, or leech rockets to attach and redirect the objects course.
The only problem with this is.. this will cost ALOT of money, but what is money without the Earth?
Thanks for listening...
Sounds like a good idea, maybe. You did say several hundred satellites correct? You left out one thing. Who will pay for this? How much? How long to put hundreds of satellites into space?
"Space is big. Really big. You just won't believe how vastly hugely mind-bogglingly big it is. I mean, you may think it's a long way down the road to the chemist, but that's just peanuts to space." - Douglas Adams
If I get what you are trying to explain, you would need several hundred quintillion satellites to be even remotely effective. I assume you are talking about a "trip wire" sort of detection mechanism, if that's the case, it's a non-starter for the reason I gave above. Space is 3 dimensional and nearly all stuff doesn't travel exactly in the same elliptic plane.
Mitchell
Well that more then answers my questions. Sort of like building the Death Star and ALL the material needed to complete it. The thousands of years and The quintillion dollars needed for this task. Next idea.....
Once we gain the ability to change the trajectory of asteroids we could aim two relatively small ones at key locations on earth for a positive result. If we could find 2 asteroids approximately 500 feet in diameter, and aim one at Iran, and the other at North Korea the world would be a much better place then. Perhaps we'll get lucky, and fate will do this on its own.
As the (currently) only space-capable nation inclined to do so, they'd know who was responsible...
Indeed, they'd blame us, even if nature sent one their way.
If several Billionaires and Joe Public are funding this let's get this Puppy up. Nothing like insurance for Humans to survive on Planet Earth. We don't need to be surprised by a 1400 foot rock to come barreling down on us and take out a City or Two.
It is well known that the tumbling of asteroids is affected by sunlight.
Given that fact, and that the ONLY interception method which might work is "the speed of light", IMO we need to launch an aiming directed-light source, capable of influencing direction with light, while the object remains far enough away.
this would be cheaper if the space rocks had some sort of alarm system attached to them
LoJack for asteroids?
Space exploration is exciting, but what if we see something coming that we can do nothing about? Would NASA tell us of our demise or just let it happen so we can die without the dread? I'd prefer NASA please don't make everyone panic if such a thing would occur, keep silent and let us die as who we are.