Asteroid 2004 BL86: NEO That Flew Past Earth Has A Companion Moon - Binary

This movie of asteroid 2004 BL86 was generated from data collected by NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, on Jan. 26, 2015. Twenty individual images were used.

Credit: NASA

Scientists working with NASA's 230-foot-wide (70-meter) Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, have released the first radar images of asteroid 2004 BL86.

The images show the asteroid, which made its closest approach on Jan. 26, 2015 at 8:19 a.m. PST (11:19 a.m. EST) at a distance of about 745,000 miles (1.2 million kilometers, or 3.1 times the distance from Earth to the moon), has its own small moon.

The 20 individual images used in the movie were generated from data collected at Goldstone on Jan. 26, 2015.

They show the primary body is approximately 1,100 feet (325 meters) across and has a small moon approximately 230 feet (70 meters) across.

In the near-Earth population, about 16 percent of asteroids that are about 655 feet (200 meters) or larger are a binary (the primary asteroid with a smaller asteroid moon orbiting it) or even triple systems (two moons).

The resolution on the radar images is 13 feet (4 meters) per pixel.

The trajectory of asteroid 2004 BL86 is well understood. Monday's flyby was the closest approach the asteroid will make to Earth for at least the next two centuries.

It is also the closest a known asteroid this size will come to Earth until asteroid 1999 AN10 flies past our planet in 2027.

Asteroid 2004 BL86 was discovered on Jan. 30, 2004, by the Lincoln Near-Earth Asteroid Research (LINEAR) survey in White Sands, New Mexico.

Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation state, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits.

Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available.

NASA places a high priority on tracking asteroids in a vain effort that this will somehow protect our home planet from them.

In fact, the U.S. believes it has the most robust and productive survey and detection program for discovering near-Earth objects (NEOs), and report that to date, taking into account all U.S. assets, both civil and military, they have discovered over 98 percent of the known NEOs.

NEO Asteroid 2014 RC flyby caught on video

The NEO, asteroid 2014 RC, flew within 21,000 miles of the surface of Earth on September 7th, 2014.

A. Thirouin, B. Skiff, and N. Moskovitz analysed the brightness variations using the Lowell Observatory's 1.1m (42-inch) Hall telescope in Arizona.

NASA Neowise: A comet that looked like an asteroid

Comet C/2013 UQ4 (Catalina) appeared to be a highly active comet one day past perihelion on July 7, 2014.

Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Comet C/2013 UQ4 (Catalina) has been observed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft just one day after passing through its closest approach to the sun.

The comet glows brightly in infrared wavelengths, with a dust tail streaking more than 62,000 miles (100,000 kilometers) across the sky.

Its spectacular activity is driven by the vapourisation of ice that has been preserved from the time of planet formation 4.5 billion years ago.

"The tail forms a faint fan as the smaller dust particles are more easily pushed away from the sun by the radiation pressure of the sunlight," said James Bauer, researcher at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

C/2013 UQ4 takes more than 450 years to orbit the sun once and spends most of its time far away at very low temperatures.

Its orbit is also retrograde, which means that the comet moves around the sun in the opposite direction to the planets and asteroids.

The comet was originally thought to be an asteroid, as it appeared inactive when discovered by the Catalina Sky Survey on October 23, 2013.

NEOWISE also observed the comet to be inactive on New Year's Eve, 2013, but since then the comet has become highly active, allowing astronomers around the world to observe it.

The comet's activity should decline as it once again returns to the cold recesses of space.

NASA NEOWISE: Asteroid 2014 HQ124 to Pass Earth Safely

This diagram shows the orbit of asteroid 2014 HQ124, and its location relative to Earth on June 8.

Image Credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

A newfound asteroid will safely pass Earth on June 8 from a distance of about 777,000 miles (1.25 million kilometers), more than three times farther away than our moon.

Designated 2014 HQ124, the asteroid was discovered April 23, 2014, by NASA's NEOWISE mission, a space telescope adapted for scouting the skies for asteroids and comets.

The telescope sees infrared light, which allows it to pick up the infrared glow of asteroids and obtain better estimates of their true sizes.

The NEOWISE data estimate asteroid 2014 HQ124 to be between 800 and 1,300 feet (250 and 400 meters).

More than one hundred follow-up observations from NASA-funded, ground-based telescopes and amateur astronomers were used to pin down the orbit of the asteroid out to the year 2200, during which time it poses no risk to Earth.

Its trajectory will continue to be recalculated past that time frame as additional observations are received.

"There is zero chance of an impact," said Don Yeomans, manager of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

"In fact, it's fairly common for asteroids to pass near Earth. You'd expect an object about the size of 2014 HQ124 to pass this close every few years."

Yeomans said that 2014 HQ124 is a good target for radar observations using NASA's Deep Space Network antenna at Goldstone, California, and the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, shortly after the closest approach on June 8.

Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than otherwise known.

2014 HQ124 is designated a "potentially hazardous asteroid," or PHA, which refers to those asteroids 460 feet (140 meters) in size or larger that pass within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million kilometers) of Earth's orbit around the sun.

There are currently 1,484 known PHAs, but none pose a significant near-term risk of impacting Earth.

"Because NEOWISE is a space telescope observing the dawn and twilight sky at infrared wavelengths, it is particularly good at finding large NEOs that make relatively close passes to Earth," said Amy Mainzer, the principal investigator of NEOWISE at JPL.

"Using infrared light, we can estimate the object’s size, and we can tell that it reflects a fair amount of light. That means it’s most likely a stony object.”

NASA detects, tracks and characterizes asteroids and comets passing close to Earth using both ground- and space-based telescopes.

The Near-Earth Object Program, commonly called "Spaceguard," discovers these objects, characterizes a subset of them and identifies their orbits to determine if any could be potentially hazardous to our planet.

To date, U.S. assets have discovered more than 98 percent of the known near-Earth objects.

CTBTO detected 26 asteroid explosions in Earth's atmosphere over last ten years - Video

The B612 Foundation, a California-based nonprofit dedicated to raising awareness about the risks of an asteroid collision, has released this video visualising the 26 asteroids that have hit the Earth's atmosphere between 2000 and 2013.

The 26 asteroids were identified by listening devices manned by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO), a global detection network created to keep an ear out for unauthorised nuclear weapons testing. The impact explosions ranged in strength from one to 600 kilotons.

"To put that in perspective, the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima in 1945, exploded with an energy impact of 15 kilotons," the B612 Foundation pointed out in a press release.

Between 2000 and 2013, CTBTO's a network of sensors that monitors Earth around the clock listening for the infrasound signature of nuclear detonations detected 26 explosions on Earth ranging in energy from 1 to 600 kilotons.

These explosions were not by caused by nuclear explosions, but rather by asteroid impacts.

While most of these asteroids exploded too high in the atmosphere to do serious damage on the ground, the evidence is important in estimating the frequency of a potential “city-killer-size” asteroid.

A list of the impacts shown in the video can be found on the B612 website here.

Asteroid Impacts on Earth Obstructed by Red Tape

Artist's view of last year’s fireball explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia – termed a "superbolide" event.

Credit: Don Davis

Red tape is making it tougher for researchers to study and characterize asteroid strikes on Earth, which are apparently more common than previously thought, experts say.

The bureaucratic snafu affects the use of U.S. government space assets that help scientists study "airbursts" like the meteor that exploded without warning over Russia last year.

At issue is the ability to combine space data with outputs from a global network of seismic, infrasound and hydroacoustic sensors that have been deployed worldwide to provide treaty verification for a nuclear test ban.

This network is the International Monitoring System (IMS) overseen by the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization (CTBTO).

In recent years, the IMS has detected shock waves from many airbursts, providing further evidence that asteroid impacts are more frequent than previously thought.

Ideally, matching observations from spacecraft with measurements from CTBTOs infrasound detectors would give scientists more of a heads-up on what's raining down on Earth, experts say.



Memorandum of agreement
Last year, the Air Force Space Command signed a memorandum of agreement with NASA's Science Mission Directorate.

That document, inked on Jan. 18, 2013, spelled out specifics for the public release of meteor data from sources such as high-flying, secretive U.S. government space sensors.

With that agreement in place, NASA's Near Earth Object (NEO) Observation Program started receiving information on fireball events based on analysis of data collected by U.S. government sensors.

Details of atmospheric meteor explosions, as recorded by U.S. military spacecraft sensors, were posted on a publicly accessible NASA website run by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif.

In fact, the military-civil cooperation was spurred by the details of the February 2013 fireball explosion over Chelyabinsk, Russia, termed a "superbolide" event.

The website postings are designed to assist the scientific community's investigation of bolides, or exceptionally bright fireballs.

However, multiple scientists noted that the JPL website had not been updated recently. That presumably meant that there was some sort of delay, as some fairly big events were detected by infrasound in the last year.

"Because of budget and personnel reductions on our military partner, they ran into workforce issues to accomplish this task," said Lindley Johnson, NEO program executive within the Planetary Science Division of NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

"We are already in discussions with them about what it will take to get it restarted," Johnson told reporters

NASA NEOWISE Image: First Comet observed

Comet NEOWISE was first observed by NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft on Valentine's Day, 2014.

NASA's Near-Earth Object Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (NEOWISE) spacecraft has spotted a never-before-seen comet—its first such discovery since coming out of hibernation late last year.

"We are so pleased to have discovered this frozen visitor from the outermost reaches of our solar system," said Amy Mainzer, the mission's principal investigator from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif.

"This comet is a weirdo - it is in a retrograde orbit, meaning that it orbits the sun in the opposite sense from Earth and the other planets."

Officially named "C/2014 C3 (NEOWISE)", the first comet discovery of the renewed mission came on Feb. 14 when the comet was about 143 million miles (230 million kilometers) from Earth.

Although the comet's orbit is still a bit uncertain, it appears to have arrived from its most distant point in the region of the outer planets.

The mission's sophisticated software picked out the moving object against a background of stationary stars.

As NEOWISE circled Earth, scanning the sky, it observed the comet six times over half a day before the object moved out of its view.

The discovery was confirmed by the Minor Planet Center, Cambridge, Mass., when follow-up observations were received three days later from the Near Earth Object Observation project Spacewatch, Tucson, Ariz.

Other follow-up observations were then quickly received. While this is the first comet NEOWISE has discovered since coming out of hibernation, the spacecraft is credited with the discovery of 21 other comets during its primary mission.

Originally called the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE), the spacecraft was shut down in 2011 after its primary mission was completed.

In September 2013, it was reactivated, renamed NEOWISE and assigned a new mission to assist NASA's efforts to identify the population of potentially hazardous near-Earth objects.

NEOWISE will also characterize previously known asteroids and comets to better understand their sizes and compositions.

Huge Peanut-Shaped Asteroid Buzzes Earth in NASA - Video

A large asteroid shaped like a cosmic peanut zipped safely by Earth this month, and a new NASA video retells the entire space rock encounter as it happened using impressive radar images.

Scientists using NASA's Deep Space Network Goldstone antenna in California tracked the near-Earth asteroid 2006 DP14 using radar imaging as the space rock passed within 2.6 million miles (4.2 million kilometers) of our planet on Feb. 12.

The new radar images show that 2006 DP14 is about 1,300 feet long (400 meters) and 660 feet wide (200 m).

NASA video of asteroid 2006 DP14's Earth flyby with the Goldstone radar images is shown above.

The asteroid is known as a "contact binary" because the two halves of its peanut shape seem to be touching and moving through space together.

2006 DP14 made its closest approach to Earth on Feb. 10 when it traveled about 1.5 million miles (2.4 million km) from the planet's surface, NASA officials said.

Scientists then observed the asteroid on Feb. 12 from 12:03 a.m. EST to 2:27 a.m. EST (0503 GMT to 0727 GMT).

"Radar is a powerful technique for studying an asteroid's size, shape, rotation state, surface features and surface roughness, and for improving the calculation of asteroid orbits," NASA representatives wrote in a statement.

"Radar measurements of asteroid distances and velocities often enable computation of asteroid orbits much further into the future than if radar observations weren't available."

Earlier studies have shown that about 10 percent of near-Earth asteroids larger than 650 feet (200 m) have contact binary shapes, NASA officials said.

Comets and asteroids are considered near-Earth objects (NEOs) of they fly within about 28 million miles (45 million km) of Earth's orbital distance, NASA officials have said.

Large Asteroid scheduled to Fly-by Earth

The space rock was discovered on Dec. 23rd, 2013 and will be makes its closest approach to Earth (3.6 lunar distance) on Jan. 3rd, 2014. Its is estimated to be 102 meters or 400 feet-wide.

Credit: NASA / JPL

Japan JAXA Hayabusa-2 Mission: Commercial Exploitation of Space rocks and Asteroids

In 2013 the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) are sending the space probe, Hayabusa 2, on a long journey to an asteroid named 1999 JU3 (Image by Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency).

A unique space cannon developed for Japan's Hayabusa 2 spacecraft has successfully test-fired on Earth in preparation for a 2014 mission.

During its upcoming journey into space, the cannon will blast an asteroid and mine samples of its soil.

The test took place in the Japanese prefecture of Gifu, paving the way for the Hayabusa 2 spacecraft to extract soil samples from the asteroid, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) announced on Monday.

During the mission of Hayabusa 2, scheduled to begin in December 2014, the space probe will extract soil from inside the asteroid.

To do this, it will be equipped with a collision device designed to shoot at the surface of the asteroid from a distance of 100 meters with metal shell ammunition moving at a speed of two kilometers per second.

JAXA hopes to create a small (a few meters in diameter), artificial crater from which Japanese scientists can extract valuable samples capable of revealing the history of the formation of cosmic bodies of this type.

"A new function, [a] 'collision device,' is considered to be [on board] to create a crater artificially," JAXA explained on its website, adding that collecting samples from the surface that is exposed by a collision will ensure acquiring "fresh samples that are less weathered by the space environment or heat."

In order to calibrate the precision of the cannon, JAXA engineers had to overcome a number of challenges. However, the agency assures that all problems have already been solved.

"We were able to solve several problems associated with the development of the device. During the tests, the projectile hit right on target, and with the expected speed," JAXA engineer Takanao Saiki said.

Japanese scientists actively began exploring asteroids with the Hayabusa mission, which returned to earth in June 2010 after exploring a 500-meter-long rock-rich S-type Itokawa asteroid.

Hayabusa 2 is a successor of the first spacecraft and is scheduled to be launched in 2014 to conduct research of a C-type asteroid temporally called '1999 JU3.'

It is believed to contain a higher concentration of organic matters and water.

"Minerals and seawater which form the Earth as well as materials for life are believed to be strongly connected in the primitive solar nebula in the early solar system"

"Thus, we expect to clarify the origin of life by analyzing samples acquired from a primordial celestial body, such as a C-type asteroid, to study organic matter and water in the solar system and how they coexist while affecting each other," JAXA posted on its website.

So far, research into '1999 JU3' revealed that it is a sphere approximately 920 meters in diameter with an albedo on the surface of about 0.06. The rotation period of the celestial object is approximately 7.6 hours.

Hayabusa 2 is expected to reach its target in the middle of 2018 before departing back to Earth in 2019.

Nasa Asteroid Capture: Three Possible Candidates Selected

This NASA artist's rendering obtained on May 31, 2013 shows what capturing an asteroid could look like. 

The US space agency has narrowed its hunt for an asteroid to capture to three, NASA said.

The asteroids fit the requirements of being between seven to 10 meters (yards) in size, and further study should be able to narrow the choice even more, scientists said at a conference in San Diego, California.

"We have two to three which we will characterize in the next year and if all goes well... those will be valid candidates that could be certified targets," said Paul Chodas, senior scientist at the NASA Near-Earth Object Program Office.

The plan is to send a robotic spacecraft to capture the asteroid and drag it into orbit around the Moon.

Once there, astronauts could visit the asteroid and take samples of it back to Earth for study.

The spacecraft used for travel there and back would be the Orion multi-purpose vehicle, which is being built but has not yet been used, as well as a new deep space rocket launcher.

The program aims to break new ground by increasing NASA capabilities beyond low Earth orbit, where the International Space Station circles the globe.

Paul Chodas

NASA has touted the planetary defense capabilities the project would build toward protecting the Earth from a potential hazardous asteroid collision, as well as the technology it would boost for future human missions to deep space.

President Barack Obama has proclaimed the project would be a key step on the way to sending humans to Mars by the 2030s.

Bill Gerstenmaier, associate administrator of NASA's Human Exploration and Operations Directorate, described the asteroid mission as "pretty compelling."

"If you think about grabbing an object in space and then manipulating it for our use and putting it into a destination where we could go back and routinely visit and let commercial companies go visit, I think that is a pretty compelling activity."

Obama's 2014 budget for NASA asked for $100 million for the asteroid project, but the overall costs may be as high as $2 billion.

Bill Gerstenmaier

"It's a little different way than just a date and a destination. We are really good at just picking dates and destinations. But that's really hard in this budget environment where things are constrained and we have flat budgets, et cetera et cetera, to pull that off," said Gerstenmaier.

"It is not just a one-time thing. It actually feeds forward into the broader context of what we want to do with humans in space."

The launch could happen as early as 2017 or as late as 2019.

After launch of the robotic mission, the journey to the asteroid would take a year and a half, and the act of towing it toward the moon could take another three and a half years, NASA said.

The project would use a new fuel technology called solar electric propulsion.

"We are talking about engineering the solar system, in a way. We are talking about taking an asteroid which was once here, and then putting it into a useful orbit for our purposes," said Chodas.

"This is a very large idea here that we are talking about and I think it will reinvigorate interest in the space program," he said.

Near-Earth asteroid is really a comet

The image displays Don Quixote's orbit. Credit: Josh Emery

Some things are not always what they seem—even in space. For 30 years, scientists believed a large near-Earth object was an asteroid.

Now, an international team including Joshua Emery, assistant professor of earth and planetary sciences at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, has discovered it is actually a comet.

Called 3552 Don Quixote, the body is the third largest near-Earth object—mostly rocky bodies, or asteroids, that orbit the Sun in the vicinity of Earth.

About 5 percent of near-Earth objects are thought to be "dead" comets that have shed all the water and carbon dioxide in the form of ice that give them their coma—a cloud surrounding the comet nucleus—and tail.

The team found that Don Quixote is neither. It is, in fact, an active comet, thus likely containing water ice and not just rocks.

The finding will be presented at the European Planetary Science Congress 2013 in London, Sept. 10. The discovery could hold implications for the origin of water on Earth.

Joshua Emery

"Don Quixote has always been recognized as an oddball," said Emery. "Its orbit brings it close to Earth, but also takes it way out past Jupiter."

"Such a vast orbit is similar to a comet's, not an asteroid's, which tend to be more circular—so people thought it was one that had shed all its ice deposits."

Using the Spitzer Space Telescope operated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory at the California Institute of Technology (CalTech) under contract with NASA, the team, led by Michael Mommert of Northern Arizona University, re-examined images of Don Quixote from 2009 when it was in the part of its orbit closest to the Sun, and found it had a coma and a faint tail.

Emery also reexamined images from 2004, when it was at its farthest distance from the sun, and determined that the surface is composed of silicate dust, which is similar to comet dust.

He also determined that Don Quixote did not have a coma or tail at this distance, which is common for comets because they need the sun's radiation to form the coma and the sun's charged particles to form the tail.

The researchers also confirmed Don Quixote's size and the low, comet-like reflectivity of its surface.

"The power of the Spitzer telescope allowed us to spot the coma and tail, which was not possible using optical telescopes on the ground," said Emery.

"We now think this body contains a lot of ice, including carbon dioxide and/or carbon monoxide ice, rather than just being rocky."

This discovery implies that carbon dioxide and water ice might be present within other near-Earth asteroids, as well.

It also may have implications for the origins of water on Earth as comets may be the source of at least some of it, and the amount on Don Quixote represents about 100 billion tons of water—roughly the same amount that can be found in Lake Tahoe, California's.

Asteroid 1998 QE2 Fly-by - Nasa YouTube video

As the 1.7-mile-long asteroid 1998 QE2 began its relatively close flyby of Earth, telescope images were provided during a live broadcast from the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, seen on NASA Television and nasa.gov.

Among the insight provided from asteroid experts at JPL and the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex, which used radar to track and image the asteroid -- a discovery that QE2 has an orbiting moon about 600 meters wide.

The program also featured NASA Administrator Charlie Bolden, who discussed the agency's role in keeping the planet safe from asteroids and other Near Earth Objects.

The May 31 QE2 fly-by -- some 3-point-6 million miles from Earth is asteroid's the closest approach to our planet for at least the next two centuries.

Also, Garver at Asteroid "Hang Out", MSL's RAD (iation) Measurements, Lightfoot visits Centers, Space Tech Town Hall, IceBridge completes 2013 mission, Grunsfeld visit to Ames and more!

NASA WISE mission finds lost asteroid family members

This artist's conception shows how families of asteroids are created. 

Over the history of our solar system, catastrophic collisions between asteroids located in the belt between Mars and Jupiter have formed families of objects on similar orbits around the sun. 

Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Data from NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) have led to a new and improved family tree for asteroids in the main belt between Mars and Jupiter.

Astronomers used millions of infrared snapshots from the asteroid-hunting portion of the WISE all-sky survey, called NEOWISE, to identify 28 new asteroid families.

The snapshots also helped place thousands of previously hidden and uncategorized asteroids into families for the first time.

The findings are a critical step in understanding the origins of asteroid families, and the collisions thought to have created these rocky clans.

"NEOWISE has given us the data for a much more detailed look at the evolution of asteroids throughout the solar system," said Lindley Johnson, the program executive for the Near-Earth Object Observation Program at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

"This will help us trace the NEOs back to their sources and understand how some of them have migrated to orbits hazardous to the Earth."

The main asteroid belt is a major source of near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are those asteroids and comets that come within 28 million miles (45 million kilometers) of Earth's path around the sun.

Some near-Earth objects start out in stable orbits in the main asteroid belt, until a collision or gravitational disturbance flings them inward like flippers in a game of pinball.

The NEOWISE team looked at about 120,000 main belt asteroids out of the approximately 600,000 known.

They found that about 38,000 of these objects, roughly one third of the observed population, could be assigned to 76 families, 28 of which are new.

In addition, some asteroids thought to belong to a particular family were reclassified.

An asteroid family is formed when a collision breaks apart a large parent body into fragments of various sizes.

Some collisions leave giant craters. For example, the asteroid Vesta's southern hemisphere was excavated by two large impacts.

Other smash-ups are catastrophic, shattering an object into numerous fragments, as was the case with the Eos asteroid family.

The cast-off pieces move together in packs, traveling on the same path around the sun, but over time the pieces become more and more spread out.

More information: Paper: dx.doi.org/10.1088/0004-637X/770/1/7

B612 Sentinel Space Telescope to Hunt Dangerous Asteroids

Artist's Illustration of the B612 Foundation's Sentinel mission, which will search for potentially dangerous near-Earth asteroids.

CREDIT: B612

With the dangers of rogue asteroids made clear by the surprise explosion of a meteor over Russia in February, a non-profit organization is ramping up its effort to search for potentially hazardous space rocks near Earth.

The B612 Foundation was started in 2002 by former NASA astronauts Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart with colleagues. The organization aims to launch a space telescope called Sentinel in 2017 to catalog near-Earth asteroids, including those that may pose a danger to Earth.

To date, about 90 percent of near-Earth asteroids large enough to destroy the entire planet (about 1 kilometer, or 0.6 miles wide) have been discovered, but far fewer of the smaller, city-killing size (roughly 140 meters, or 460 feet, in diameter) have been found.

"We are essentially flying blind in a cosmic shooting gallery," Scott Hubbard, B612 program architect, told reporters on Tuesday (April 9) at the 29th annual National Space Symposium in Colorado Springs, Colo.

This reality was starkly illustrated on Feb. 15, when a 55-foot-wide (17 meters) meteor exploded over Chelyabinsk, Russia, just hours before an asteroid almost three times its size called 2012 DA14 flew uncomfortably close to Earth.

Sentinel's goal is to detect about 90 percent of this city-killing class of asteroids over a period of 6.5 years.

The $450 million mission is to be privately funded, though the foundation has partnered with NASA to share its data and use the agency's Deep Space Network of satellites to facilitate communications between Sentinel and the ground. NASA and lawmakers have said they enthusiastically support the mission and the B612 Foundation's efforts.

"We must better recognize what the private sector can do to aid our efforts to protect the world," Rep. Lamar Smith, R-Texas, chairman of the House Committee on Science, Space and Technology, said during a Congressional hearing on the asteroid issue Wednesday (April 10).

NASA Cowboys Plan to Lasso a passing NEO /Asteroid - Video update

Sen. Bill Nelson announced a bold plan to 'lasso' a passing asteroid and bring it closer to our planetary system for examination. 

Credit: Nasa

NASA /ESA AIDA Mission: Smashing Asteroids

An artist's concept for the Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission led by the European Space Agency to intentionally strike an asteroid and test deflection capabilities that could protect Earth.

CREDIT: ESA

A mission that aims to slam a spacecraft into a near-Earth asteroid now officially has a target — a space rock called Didymos.

The joint European/U.S. Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment mission, or AIDA, will work to intercept Didymos in 2022, when the space rock is about 6.8 million miles (11 million kilometers) from Earth, European Space Agency officials announced Friday (Feb. 22).

Didymos is actually a binary system, in which a 2,625-foot-wide (800 meters) asteroid and a 490-foot (150 m) space rock orbit each other. Didymos poses no threat to Earth in the foreseeable future.

The proposed asteroid-smashing AIDA mission will send one small probe crashing into the smaller asteroid at about 14,000 mph (22,530 kph) while another spacecraft records the dramatic encounter. Meanwhile, Earth-based instruments will record so-called "ground-truthing" observations.

The goal is to learn more about how humanity could ward off a potentially dangerous space rock. The necessity of developing a viable deflection strategy was underlined in many people's minds by the events of last Friday (Feb. 15), when the 130-foot (40 m) asteroid 2012 DA14 gave Earth a historically close shave just hours after a 55-foot (17 m) object exploded above the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, injuring 1,200 people and damaging thousands of buildings.



The AIDA impact will unleash about as much energy as that released when a big piece of space junk hits a satellite, researchers said, so the mission could also help improve models of space-debris collisions.

"The project has value in many areas, from applied science and exploration to asteroid resource utilization," Andy Cheng, AIDA lead at Johns Hopkins University's Applied Physics Laboratory, said in a statement.

The European Space Agency (ESA) has asked scientists around the world to propose experiments that AIDA could carry in space or that could increase its scientific return from the ground. Researchers have until March 15 to pitch their ideas.

Johns Hopkins’ Applied Physics Laboratory is providing AIDA's impactor, which is called DART (short for Double Asteroid Redirection Test). The observing spacecraft is known as AIM (Asteroid Impact Monitor) and will come from ESA.

NEO Asteroid Detection: Can Private Funded B612 do more

NASA's efforts in detecting, monitoring and alerting communities about NEOs and potential asteroid strikes have received criticism from many areas.

Some of the most ardent critics are ex-Nasa staff members. Nasa's NEO efforts are deemed insufficient by former agency astronauts and scientists who last year launched a bold project with high aims.

To design, finance, build and launch the first private space telescope to track asteroids and protect humanity.

The foundation called B612 is trying to raise $450 million to build and deploy a space telescope that would be called Sentinel and placed in orbit around the sun, at a distance of 273 million kilometers from the Earth to detect most objects that are otherwise not visible.

You realize that we have a responsibility to continue safe operations on board Spaceship Earth. And that means protecting humanity.” ~ Ed Lu, former NASA astronaut, STS-84, STS-106, Soyuz TMA-2, ISS Expedition 7

Organized by Piet Hut and Ed Lu, 

a group of 20 experts, in fields ranging from asteroid studies to propulsion to power technologies, came together around our common concern about Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) and how a large impact on Earth could destroy human civilization.

“We feel a certain urgency to get on with it so that we can be confident that we’re not going to have a cosmic disaster here for no good, justifiable reason, just because we didn’t get with it. So let’s get with it. That’s the name of the game.” ~ Rusty Schweickart, Lunar Module Pilot, Apollo 9

NEO Asteroid Detection: NASA's Arecibo now and ATLAS in the future

Arecibo Radio Telescope

The NEO program at NASA currently detects and tracks Earth-approaching asteroids and comets with land-based and orbiting telescopes. Scientists estimate their mass and orbit to gauge whether they pose a danger.

With this system, the Arecibo radio telescope in Puerto Rico, which has an antenna 305 meters in diameter, can observe with great sensitivity a third of the night sky and detect asteroids that are on the large side.

All asteroid observations made anywhere in the world by telescopes, even by amateur star gazers, must be passed on to the Minor Planet Center, which is financed by NASA and run by the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory for the Paris-based International Astronomical Union.

But in times of tight budgets like these, NASA is trying to develop other systems specifically capable of tracking small objects in space.

NASA is financing to the tune of $5 million a project at the University of Hawaii called Atlas, or Asteroid Terrestrial-Impact Alert System.

Researchers say ATLAS, which will monitor the entire visible sky every night, will be able to detect objects 45 meters (yards) in diameter a week before they hit our planet.

For those measuring 150 meters (yards) in diameter, the system -- which could be operational in late 2015 -- will give a three week heads up.

The goal is to find the objects and give enough advance warning for measures to be taken to protect people, said John Tonry, the principal investigator at ATLAS.

The system has enough sensitivity to detect a match flame in New York City when viewed from San Francisco, for instance.

"That's enough time to evacuate the area of people, take measures to protect buildings and other infrastructures and be alert to a tsunami danger generated by ocean impacts," according to the ATLAS website.

ATLAS will complement the Institute for Astronomy’s Pan-STARRS project, a system that searches for large “killer asteroids” years, decades, and even centuries before impact with Earth.

Whereas Pan-STARRS takes a month to complete one sweep of the sky in a deep but narrow survey, ATLAS will search the sky in a closer and wider path to help identify the smaller asteroids that hit Earth more frequently.

NEO Asteroid Detection: Russian Meteor Strike

NASA, universities and private groups in the US are working on asteroid warning systems that can detect objects from space like the one that struck Russia last week with a blinding flash and mighty boom.

But the US space agency reiterated that events like the one in the Urals, which shattered windows and injured nearly 1,000 people, are rare.

"We would expect an event of this magnitude to occur once every 100 years on average," said Paul Chodas of NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

NASA estimates that before entering the Earth's atmosphere above Russia, the asteroid measured 17 meters (56 feet) in diameter and weighed 10 tons.

Fragments of the asteroid caused an explosion equivalent to 500,000 tons of TNT when they hit.

The same day, a 45-meter in diameter asteroid known as 2012 14 whizzed harmlessly past the Earth, its passage overshadowed by the bright arc drawn across the Russian sky that same day.

But had it hit ground, 2012 DA14 could have obliterated a large city.

Ten years ago, NASA would not have been able to detect 2012 DA14, said Lindsey Johnson, near earth object (NEO) project manager at NASA said recently.

But he said NASA has made progress on learning how to detect small asteroids.