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Subscribe to RSSThe Daily Rundown's Chuck Todd takes a "deep dive" look into the meteor that hit Russia and why NASA did not have earlier notice of its coming. Rep. Rush Holt explains NASA's tracking system and discusses budget cuts to NASA and the department's future.
The meteor that blew up over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk 11 days ago has provided a new focus for the effort to establish an international asteroid warning system, one of NASA's top experts on the issue says.
Lindley Johnson, the executive for the Near Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said that the Feb. 15 impact is certain to become "by far the best-documented meteor and meteorite in history" — but at the time, he and his colleagues could hardly believe it was happening.
"Our first reaction was, 'This can't be. ... This must be some test of a missile that's gone awry,'" Johnson told NBC News.
The Chelyabinsk meteor exploded at an estimated altitude of 12 miles (20 kilometers) over the city of 1.1 million in Russia's Urals Mountains, setting off a shock wave that blew out windows, caused an estimated $33 million in property damage and injured more than 1,200 people.
It was doubly coincidental for Johnson and his colleagues: The meteor was thought to have been caused by the breakup of a 17-meter-wide (55-foot-wide), 10,000-ton asteroid that entered Earth's atmosphere and released the equivalent of 500 kilotons of TNT in explosive energy. All this happened just hours before a 45-meter-wide (150-foot-wide) asteroid, capable of setting off a city-killing blast, passed within 17,200 miles (27,680 kilometers) of our planet. Adding to that coincidence, researchers from around the world were gathered in Vienna for talks aimed at moving forward with an international network to deal with ... asteroid threats!
The spectacle in Russia "certainly brought renewed interest to our efforts here," said Johnson, a leader of NASA's delegation to the Vienna talks.
He said the recommendations from the researchers were "well-received" and are moving up the ladder to the next phase in a U.N.-led process for addressing outer-space threats. An action plan could be considered by the U.N. Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space during its next meeting in Vienna in June.
Johnson summarized the three main points of the recommendations:
- Set up an international asteroid warning network, or IAWN, supported with existing detection assets but incorporating additional contributions. "The basis of such a network already exists," Johnson said, thanks to NASA, the European Space Agency, the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center and the NEODyS asteroid-tracking center at the University of Pisa in Italy. NASA also has partnered with the U.S. Air Force to share tracking data about near-Earth objects. Just this week, a $25 million Canadian-built satellite known as NEOSSat was launched to look for small asteroids in Earth-threatening orbits.
- Bring the world's space agencies together in a new working group called the Space Mission Planning and Advisory Group — also known as SMPAG (pronounced like "Same Page"). The group's purpose, Johnson said, would be to "get all the agencies on the 'same page' as far as assessing what capabilities could be brought to bear should there be a threatening asteroid detected."
- Put asteroid experts in contact with countries around the world, to advise disaster response agencies about the nature of a potential impact event — that is, the area expected to be affected, the potential effects and the scale of the evacuation if necessary. "It's an offshoot of the warning network," Johnson said. If the asteroid behind the Russian meteor had been detected in advance, for example, the expert network might have advised emergency workers about the potential for a midair blast and the resulting shock wave (although Johnson said he was "surprised" by the shock wave's effect).
Until last year, NASA spent about $4 million a year to track near-Earth objects, or NEOs, and Johnson said the program "has accomplished quite a bit in the relatively short time that it's been in existence." About 95 percent of the potentially threatening asteroids bigger than a kilometer (half-mile) wide have been detected. However, now NASA is working on charting the asteroids down to a width of 100 meters (330 feet). To fund that more difficult task, the annual funding level for NEO research was raised to $20 million a year.
NASA is using that money to beef up its capabilities for spotting smaller asteroids, through programs such as the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System, or ATLAS, which is due to get $5 million over the next five years. Less than a million dollars a year is going toward studies aimed at figuring out what to do if a threatening asteroid is found, Johnson said. After all, you have to identify the risky rocks before you can do anything about them. The potential strategies range from diverting it gently with the aid of gravity tractors or space paintball guns, to blasting it with nukes, Bruce Willis-style.
"It really depends on the scenario that we'd be faced with," Johnson said. "It depends on how big the object is. It depends on how long we have to do something about it. And if we do the search-and-detection job right, we will find a potential hazard many years if not decades before it becomes an immediate threat. There may be technologies available at that time that we never thought about. I don't get too worked up about trying to find an immediate technology that we've got to have right now to do that. Our focus is to find them as early as we can, and have the maximum amount of time to do something about it."
Update for 7:30 p.m. ET Feb. 26: Looking for a practical tip? The large majority of the people injured by the meteor blast were hurt by flying glass, which led Johnson to give this advice during a Vienna news conference: "When you see a white flash and a large trail in the sky, it's probably not a good time to stand at the window and look at it, because it may be a blast coming."
Update for 8:15 p.m. ET Feb. 26: As reported in Technology Review's Physics arXiv Blog, Colombian researchers used video from dashboard cameras and other sources to reconstruct the orbital path of the Russian meteor — and they classified it as an Apollo asteroid, a type of space rock whose path crosses Earth's orbit. That's consistent with NASA's analysis, which said the asteroid traced an orbit that ranged between the main asteroid belt and the region of outer space inside Earth's orbit.
"The preliminary orbit indicates it takes about 2.1 years to go around the sun once ... so this thing was out at its farthest distance from the sun roughly a year ago," Bill Cooke, head of the Meteoroid Environments Office at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, told reporters during a Feb. 15 teleconference.
The space rock was on its way back out toward the main asteroid belt, coming from Earth's sunward side, when it entered the atmosphere and blew up. That's why it wasn't possible to predict the impact in advance: At a width of 55 feet, the object was too small to show up in traditional sky surveys, and it would have been lost in the sun's glare during its final approach.
So far, searchers have recovered just bits and pieces of the shattered space boulder. "The largest I've heard is a kilogram and a half," or about three pounds, Johnson told NBC News.
NASA budgeted $20 million dollars last year to look for objects that may hit the earth, but some scientists say more money should be spent on detection and ways to avoid a possible collision. NBC's Michelle Franzen reports.
Yekaterina Pustynnikova / Chelyabinsk.ru via AP
Click through scenes from Russia's Chelyabinsk region, where a huge meteor fireball set off alarms, injured hundreds of people and caused a factory roof to collapse.
More about asteroids:
- How about blasting 'em with lasers?
- How to 'hear' the Russian meteor
- Asteroids vs. comets: Threats compared
- NBCNews.com archive on asteroids
Alan Boyle is NBCNews.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. To keep up with Cosmic Log as well as NBCNews.com's other stories about science and space, sign up for the Tech & Science newsletter, delivered to your email in-box every weekday. You can also check out "The Case for Pluto," my book about the controversial dwarf planet and the search for new worlds.
This story was originally published on Tue Feb 26, 2013 6:23 PM EST
Leave a Comment:
and as we continue to hear more about the dangers of threats like this, Congress continues to slash funding for NASA...
It's sad to think that Congress has a lot of Space Cadets. To bad it's all in their brains..... Oh wait a minute all there is is space in there.
You can't blame Congress. Think about it. How did they get their jobs?
Are they going to put out a world wide alert telling us to assume the defensive posture?
You know, bend over and place head firmly between your knees so you can kiss your ass goodbye?
Run and duck.
Good advice....
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=IKqXu-5jw60
You have to wonder how our congressmen would justify their poor funding of NASA when one or more of them no longer has a district due to an asteroid/comet turning it into a moonscape.
Michael, you're almost as bad as I am.
Nah. Just lean forward and everything will be fine.
actully the president cut funding to the moon and mars mission specifically so he could do a mission to land on the moon....
Good grief. I sincerely hope they can come up with a better acronym than "IAWN", pronounced... "yawn"? Far from conveying the appropriate sense of urgency, this one's... just making me... sleeeepy.
The trouble with ignorance is that it picks up confidence as it goes along.
- Arnold H. Glasow
;-)
Where is Bruce Willis and company at this time. Out hitting golf balls n the south pacific and trying to shoot Ben Afflack?
And, allthe while Rockhound is showing Liv tyler how to use tampons?
Just asking....
There scemes to be a disconnect in the funding of some science projects. NASA is uping the funding of the search for NEOs from 5 to $20 million per year, which is a start. The Large Hadron Collider has cost $10 Billion to build, (can't find the operating costs in the time I've got).
It is now clear to a lot more people and politicians in particular, that Identifying NEOs should be a much higher priority. Enough should be spent to find all objects down to 50 meters.
I am humbled by the compliment, coming from a Master!
@Ed-2874315: Agreed, with the caveat that the Large Hadron Collider is a European project.
The National Science Foundation is of the opinion that a truly capable asteroid survey would cost $50 million a year, and take until 2030 to complete, so while the increase you describe is nice and all, it's still far short of what is required to do the job right.
Sorry I should have been clearer. (Had to pick up my Daughter at school so I rushed.)
It should be an intenational effort to find the NEOs, The NSF's numbers are based on going it alone. My comparason of funding for the two projects is to illustrate that a lot more than the newly increased NASA spending is needed. $200 million per year is what I would like to see. (The sooner the survey is completed, the better. It would be shameful that, for a lack of money, Earth could be blindsided by a big one.)
This would enable the construction and launch of new orbital instruments dedicated to the search. The Keyhole satellite recently donated to NASA should spend most of it's time on NEOs. (no word so far on how they will allocate the time).
The new company Planetary Resources, has announced that the first phase of their plan involves design and construction of small orbital telescopes specifically for NEO identification. Their business plan calls for selling these telescopes in addition to the ones they build for themselves.
Russian doomsday preparation - buy 5 more gallons of vodka.
Humans screwed up when they hit that fork in the road, I'd say about 6,000 years ago, when they went from just doing, to putting a price tag on everything.
As a moderate; I like the idea of a full tilt space program - and - at the same time, say; what the heck good is something in 2030 going to do me?
A full tilt space program should be done because we want too - not because of some fear. Fear and money/power gave us our current landscape - not the progress you would expect, specially the last 2500 years.
*reminder to self - put rolling papers on survivalist list...the end doesn't have to be all bad :)
nature is way ahead of us in changing the universe around us...we are still developing methods to understand our own environment much less alter it in a way to totally protect ourselves.
Around 1952, my father I saw what, I suppose, was an asteroid go over central Texas very low or very big. I have seen many satellites since which has given me a better perspective.
There was a military operation, "Operation Longhorn", in process at the time and the object went almost directly over the airport that was hosting it. The Government said that they had observers and radar watching the skies all that night and that nothing went over.
There were eighteen groups of people that reported seeing it. My father and I were not one of them. In those days, people would say that you were crazy, if you reported seeing anything. The government had done a good job of shutting most people up.
I have often wondered what they told the soldiers? One of them moved here after he got out of the army and stayed the rest of his life. You might ask why I did not ask him? He was an alcoholic and I don't think he was of sound mind. Still, I guess I should have asked.
I hope a asteroid comes in and fukcs us up. At least we all die together or everyone dependent on the government vanishes because they can not take care of themselves. Anyways, what a waste of money and brain power.
"Anyways, what a waste of money and brain power.'
Don't be so hard on yourself.
Surprised you read the article in the first place. If, indeed, you read it at all. Having to waste your time and briain power would suggest you didn't. However, if you did, what prompted you to waste time and power to comment?
Don`t count yourself short, you seem plenty stupid !
If I could take boraboy's comment seriously, I might be disgusted. As it is, thanks for the laugh! Perhaps this should be brought to the attention of the Republican party as a possible spending cut.
HaHa Wormwood is coming and we can do NOTHING about.
Actually, I think Wormwood is a town in Mississippi. What we have learned is that if the asteroid is 330 feet in diameter and is coming at us in direction of the sun, we haven't a chance to do anything. It will also depend upon the make up of the asteroid and its trajectory as to the damage it would cause. A Nickle/Iron asteroid coming straight down would likely wipe out a good part of a state or if it landed in the ocean would create a wave several hundred feet high. Now don't you feel much more secure?
I'm curious why they don't use radar to detect these objects. All the talk about mining asteroids for metals and platinum suggests they would be detectable. A radar is not blinded by the Sun, so we should at least try radars to protect us from objects coming from that direction.
I think the meteor was traveling at 50,000 MPH, that fast and that small would make detection virtually impossible. But, American space scientist have done the near impossible in the past, so I think it's a great opportunity to create a new type of space radar that could do as you have suggested. Problem is funding, and finding politicians with a "vision".
I can't be sure but you'd think something like SOHO or STEREO might be useful at seeing inbound objects from the direction of the sun.
The noted officials and experts strain very hard to emphasize the seriousness of the situation, all in the service to Humanity: this is also known as "securing funding". For my money NASA and all the rest can go stuff it where the sun don't shine. I want to see pure drinking water good wholesome food and clean air accessible to all the human beings on this dear planet: that's where the money should go.
John--you know, much of the technology related to purifying air or water CAME from the space program, as did a whole lot of other technology. (Think Corningware baking dishes, Tang, computers, etc).
And one of the main problems with polution could be solved by forcing people to STOP having babies they cannot feed, much less house and clothe decently, educate, or provide decent medical care for.
How about if you tackle THAT?
It is God throwing fireballs at the gays. LOL
If we could detect these things early, we could send the Westboro Baptist Cult people to demonstrate right under where the meteor would explode!
Sorry that was probably already told on one of the evagelical networks.
NASA and the rest are not going to be able to stop a large asteroid or comet for that matter. If and when it happens you had better hope you don't live there. Our technology is nowhere close to being able to deflect much less destroy one of these things. If it was discovered that a really big asteroid was headed toward western Europe or North America, it is likely we wouldn't even be told as it would create widespread panic and not change anything. I am far more concerned with man made oil pipelines and our general disregard for our fragile environment.
Yes, we would be told; there is NO WAY this could be kept a secret.
And yes, with sufficient warning we DO have the tech to deflect an asteroid. (Comets are another issue; they can come screaming into the inner Solar System with very little warning, so there would be insufficient time to mount a defence.)
Dougner--and I am MUCH more worried about man's inability to control their little head by NOT having babies they cannot personally support.
What would happen if we nuked a comet?
Just curious. And, I'm sure it depends on the makeup, size, etc.
Good to know some effort is being made.
I wonder what could be done if we spotted a 2 or 3 mile wide asteroid a few days before it would strike the earth.
Could we do anything?
A few days? Evacuate as best as possible. A few years warning (or better yet, decades) and we could do whatever was required.
The good news is that it's estimated that various recent asteroid surveys have likely found all of the "2 or 3 mile wide asteroids" Earth-threatening asteroids that you posit.
The bad news is that we've likely only found and characterized the orbits of some 3% of the potential Earth-impactors of the size of the rock that said "hello" to Chelyabinsk last week.
Asteroids; Mother Nature's way of asking "how is that space program going?" (I wish I knew who to credit that line to....)
Tell your family you love them and kiss your butt goodbye. It doesn't matter if it was rock or iron at that magnitude, a 2-3 mile asteroid would end most life.
So we had to actually experience one to do something about it? LOL... humans!
ZZ2011
On-going work on the problem how best to deflect possible earth-threatening asteroid impact is not the usual topic of conversation amongst the pubic at large. If it is of interest to anyone, they would have to ask. Those involved in asteroid detection have spent many years locating these objects. That they have the technology to have found any but the largest is astonishing when you think about the vastness of our solar system and beyond. At least they are working to avoid a future impact.
It would be like you standing on a mountain top overlooking an immense forest and locating a lone bear with field glasses.
So, friend, give some credit to those looking for possible solutions to save your ass.
I'm sure scientists are/were looking for solutions - I was talking about the world leaders actually... They finally are listening to the scientists. I'm scared to think about what it will take for them to more seriously approach global warming!!
>ZZ2011: So we had to actually experience one to do something about it? LOL... humans!
We humans have been looking and mapping for years now - it is still early in the process, but it is an ongoing job. Canada launched two new Satellites to aid in the search Monday, and that obviously didn't happen just because of the Chelyabinsk event. The Canadian government funded this, and the Canadian scientists have been working on that for years.
So, yes, the recent cluster of events in the media has peaked people's interest - which is a good thing - but many Governments and Scientists have been working on this, and will continue to work on this. :)
ZZ, Charles, and Todd - good comments.
Please forgive me if you've already seen this line from the movie "Armageddon" (posted last week by dbk227), but it sure fits:
PRESIDENT: We didn't see this thing coming?
DAN (Billy Bob Thornton): Well, our object collision budget's a million dollars. That allows us to track about 3% of the sky, and beg'n your pardon sir, but it's a big-ass sky"
We've found and are now tracking 630,000 asteroids, which sounds really fantastic, except - we think that is about ~1% of the total asteroid population. Current funding is about 40% of the level we require to identify and track all of them, even with full funding it will take us until 2030 or so (assuming a modest advancement in tech as we go along).
(I expect that even that piss-poor level of funding will go "poof" as the US Congress screws around with the budget this week....)
I don't know this for a fact, but I wouldn't be surprised if the total expenditure WORLDWIDE for asteroid detection is dwarfed by the amount the US government spends on paper clips.
We can DO this, and we really, really should.... It is what a space program should prioritize FIRST; not as an afterthought.
Mankind can easily avoid severe damage or even extinction from almost any size comet or asteroidal body without the need to invent new weapons, costly lasers, nuclear weapons (banned from space), solar sails, etc.
How so?
The easiest and best way is to use asteroids against each other. A game of Cosmic Billiards.
Sound ludicrous?
We have already landed two crafts on asteroids and impacted a couple as well. So we know we can rendezvous a robotic craft to almost any asteroid that we can track.
So how does this help us?
We can rendezvous larger robotic craft with Titan size rocket engines -- then bolt them onto the asteroids--which are primarily metallic, refuel them as necessary, and nudge them into permanent orbits around the Moon that are just on the edge of break a way points for their mass and speed.
Tricky? Yes. Doable? Yes since NASA has already done it except for the bolting down process and refueling.
We can start this by doing it with 10-20 foot asteroids and work our way up to asteroids up to 500 feet and put a dozen or two of these into separate convenient orbits (giving us lots of directions in which to launch them).
Why a dozen?
Because then we have lots of ammunition to toss at any incoming asteroids--and if we encounter a REALLY big swarm we would at least have hope of surviving with a lot of stored stones around the Moon.
Once those rocks are in permanent orbit around the Moon we can then send additional robots to refuel the engines so they are ready to work for us in defending our Planet (to nudge them out of orbit and on a slingshot path around the Earth towards their intended target an offending asteroidal body).
Once an incoming asteroid has been judged on a collision course with Earth that is about 10 times larger than one that we have stored in the Moon's orbit--we then fire off the engines on that selected asteroid to go and intercept the asteroid and either (1) pulverize it by a direct impact, (2) deflect it with a glancing impact, or (3) use a tractor-gravity approach to pull it off it's impact path (parallel path).
This would work because we can sling shot the asteroids in orbit around the Moon down towards Earth and let the Earth's gravity speed it way up -- to as much as 30,000 mph --and then it's kinetic energy for a small 20 feet asteroid would be equal to several sizable nuclear weapons and for a 500 feet asteroid the kinetic energy would exceed the power of every nuclear weapon on Earth.
Nothing fancy about this and we have the technology and it wouldn't even be that expensive when you consider your saving the Planet and the end results could cost hundreds of billions for a large asteroidal impact and potentially make us extinct.
And since the incoming asteroid itself would be traveling at 15,000 to 60,000 mph itself and we send out an interceptor asteroid at up to 30,000 mph then the impact speed is astounding such that an asteroid of 10 times smaller mass could easily pulverize a much larger body (especially since the Earth is moving too and you have to add that kinetic energy to the total).
NASA needs to begin simulations of this and figure out the costs. I bet it's manageable.
Yes
What a waste of money. Asteroid have been hitting earth for, roughly, forever. And they will continue to. We gotta get over it.
LOL
65 million years ago, the dinosaurs "got over it" when a large asteroid hit near Chicxulub in the Yucatan. I don't wish for us to be an encore. (GM, Michael.)
NorthBostonian,
Certainly the dinosaurs got over it. Oh wait, they didn't. Those little furry things took over and produced you as the height of intelligence. Maybe the next iteration will produce something smarter.
[sarc] What a waste of money. People have been dying from dysentery for, roughly, forever. And they will continue to. We gotta get over it. [/sarc]
Exactly! Think of how much money we waste on water purification! I propose that that we can save BILLIONS of dollars by just shunting the sewage lines back into the drinking water! We could start these savings in North Boston....
Don't forget all the money we waste on vaccinations. Mumps and measles, no big deal. Whooping cough? Tetanus? Save that money.
When I first heard about this meteor they said "it's not related to the big one coming later this morning". How did they know? Well the big one came from a certain direction, this one (if it was even a meteor) came from another.
First thing I thought was that it was a nuclear arms test done in secret by the Russians, staged to look like it was part of the big meteor. Paranoid? Nah, this is the kind of games they they all play, and this very well could be true.
We have detectors in place that would have been able to tell a nuclear blast from a rock entering the atmosphere.
Paranoid? Yes, I believe you are.
I hope they design an emergency plan for one they didn't see coming. You have two days, how do you deal with it?
Shooting down a drone has happened before, and if treating the asteroid like a drone, they can shoot them, for other military has done it before, but when they shooting an asteroid, it has to be over the ocean, north pole, or south pole.
The plan may be shooting them first over the ocean, north pole, or south pole, and the plan B happens simultaneously, called evacuation, and in case of missing target.
That's a nice idea, Billie. But any asteroid that can be shot down with conventional methods that has already entered the atmosphere is not usually a major threat anyway.
By the time it hits the atmosphere, it's too late to shoot it down unless it's very small and not a serious threat on the global scale anyway. Small rocks hit the earth all the time.
The worry is when a bus or city size asteroid hits the earth at 22 thousand miles an hour. If it's already hitting the atmosphere, it would be very hard to shoot down. The trick is to deflect them slightly deeper in space before there is a threat of an impact. It would take much less energy to change the path 2 million miles from earth than to try to destroy it on it's way in to the atmosphere.
I still have a hard time believing that all these events happened within a couple of days of each other and except for that, they are completely unrelated events. Meteor Over Northern CA, the even in Russia and the close call with the big one, all within about 24=36 hours. And yet usually these events happen decades if not 100 or 1000's of years apart in isolation.
For these events to happen so closely together is an enigma of it's own and I don't think anyone can rule out some kind of relationship between these events, even if it's on the solar system level and a multimilion year cycle.
For anyone to claim, no matter what their expertise is, that these events are totally unrelated, it's very hard to believe. To me, that is just saying that there is no known relation, even though they happened at almost exactly the same time. Geologists are too quick to claim that distant earthquakes are unrelated too.
When you find a scientist that actually knows God personally, maybe then I will believe the speculation :)
From what I know the Russian incident is known to happen about once a century. As for fireballs? I've seen about 20 of them in my life and seeings where I'm only 40.... They're not as uncommon as some may have you think.
Just look at the reports: www.amsmeteors.org/fireballs/fireball-report/
Don't worry Obama and his progressive rump swabs will just pass a law to fix this. They're going to ban guns and asteroids.
Yeah, but will they post a law to ban hemorrhoids from posting about politics?