Travelers In The Night

A small asteroid soars into the lonely space high above and below the plane of our solar system.

About 35 million years ago the Earth was impacted by two large asteroids creating the more than 50 mile diameter Popigai [pop a gay i] Crater in Russia and a similar crater in Chesapeake Bay in the USA.  Analysis of fragments indicate that the impacting objects were not made of the same material. This finding has led scientists to speculate that there may be an astronomical process which changes conditions in the inner asteroid belt and causes the Earth's orbit to change slightly.  This combination could have triggered the ice age which caused the first significant ice sheet in Antarctica to form and led to the last major extinction event in the Earth's history.

Perhaps the reason that we have not detected alien civilizations on distant worlds is because they exist in oceans covered by miles of radiation absorbing ice and rocks.

In February 2013 a space rock about 59 feet in diameter entered the Earth's atmosphere over Chelyabinsk, Russia making a fire ball 30 times brighter than our Sun. It came without warning and nearly 1,500 people were injured primarily by flying glass from broken windows. In the end spending a billion dollars a year on asteroid damage prevention is like purchasing expensive insurance for an extremely unlikely event. However, it has a side benefit that it will employ people and may stimulate science and technology.  

A rock from another solar system is likely to have streaked by Earth before heading back into interstellar space.

There are more than 20,000 pieces of space junk larger than 4 inches in diameter and millions of tiny ones in orbit around the Earth.  At orbital speed a flake of paint carries as much energy as a 550 pound object traveling at 60 miles per hour.  Eventually all of this stuff will fall back to Earth.   So far no injuries or property damage has been confirmed.  Heads up.

On it's gravitational leash, Earth's pet space rock, 2016 HO3, accompanies us at a distance of between 38 and 100 times the Moon's distance from Earth as we both travel about the Sun.

For 43 years after its discovery in 1949, the Earth approaching asteroid Icarus, was known as the object which passes closest to our Sun. It is named for a boy in Greek mythology whose wings of feathers and wax melted when he ignored his father's advice and flew too close to the Sun.  

To survive on Venus where the temperature is 864F and the surface air pressure is 90 times that of Earth, NASA and JPL engineers are exploring the concept of avoiding the use of modern temperature sensitive electronics by creating a fully mechanical rover.

Using the long arm of the internet, astronomers in Russia are observing with a telescope located near Mayhill, New Mexico to discover solar system objects. The New Mexico Skies Observatory, near the village of Mayhill, is located 7,300 feet above sea level and has world class, clear dark skies, ideal for astronomical viewing. In addition to discovering new objects the ISON-NM telescope is being used to determine the size and shape of asteroids by carefully measuring the light they reflect as they spin on their axis of rotation and move about the Sun.  The size, shape, and rate of spin of an asteroid is the kind of information which humans need to prepare for the unlikely situation that a small body is found to be on a collision course with planet Earth.

What at first appeared to be an asteroid turned out to be a double comet.

Juno was found by German astronomer Karl L. Harding in 1804 who noticed that to the human eye it appeared to be a star like moving point of light in the night sky.  The light that Juno reflects suggests that it could be the source of stony meteorites called chondrites that we find on Earth. 

Martian Trojan asteroids have stable orbits around the Sun, leading and trailing the red planet by 60 degrees, where the Sun's and Mars's gravity are balanced. The impact more than 4 billion years or so ago which blasted loose the Trojan asteroids and gave them the 3mi/s required to escape the red planet gives us an insight into the level of violence which occurred before our solar system came into it's present relatively calm state.

Recently my NASA funded Catalina Sky Survey teammate Carson Fuls discovered an approaching asteroid about the same size as the one whose high altitude disintegration injured nearly 1500 people in Chelyabinsk Russia in February of 2013.  Fortunately this new one missed planet Earth.  There is more good news.  Carson spotted this small space rock about 40 hours before its closest approach to planet Earth.  This means that if it had been on a collision path with our home planet we would have had time to warn people to seek shelter before it created a potentially destructive sonic boom in our atmosphere.

Recently there were four fireball meteors, brighter than the planet Venus, which exploded over Germany, France, Ohio, and Arizona within the space of only 10 hours. There are likely to be on the order of 1,000 fireball events over the Earth every day.

How would you like to know more about a particular star than anyone else on Earth? 

On Earth, human life is enabled by plants which provide us with calories, vitamins, fuel, medicines, and oxygen to breathe. In addition, recent scientific studies indicate that plant cultivation reduces anxiety and depression and has a positive influence on diabetes, heart disease, obesity, and longevity. It is likely that when humans travel to Mars they will continue this practice. The plants that Mars explorers take with them will provide a source of fresh fruits and vegetables , fresh air to breathe, and perhaps a psychological benefit that is crucial to the success of their mission.

An asteroid hunter literally has to sort through millions of objects to find an unknown Earth approaching asteroid.

The largest asteroid to come near the Earth in 100 years has two moons.

In the space of less than ten nights, my Catalina Sky Survey teammates discovered 8 new Earth approaching objects. One of them can pass closer to us than our communication satellites.