recent "asteroid?" near miss to earth?

[Rusty Heap]

I believe it was only 3-4 days ago that there was an unknown "object" that was slated to pass within 80,000 miles or something like that distance wise from earth.......the "thing" was only supposed to be 30-50 foot across I think.

......NASA didn't know if it was a natural rock, or space debris, or what.

does anyone have any follow up info on it?

zero press coverage.

[Bill Douglas]

I heard something whistle past my left ear. I just thought it was a .38 and carried on doing the gardening.

[ckissick]

I didn't here about it. As a reference point, the Tunguska, Siberia meteor of 1908 is roughly estimated to have been 100 to 300 feet across. A 30-50 footer would cause some very serious damage if it hit a populated area, but only local damage. But first, there's only a 25% chance of hitting land, and a much smaller chance of hitting a populated area. The Tunguska blast flattened over 800 square miles of forest, but killed no one.

[jyl]

It was 2010AL30, est 10 meters wide, closest was 80,000 miles to Earth, had it "hit" Earth it would have disintegrated in the atmosphere.

[masraum]

had it "hit" Earth it would have disintegrated in the atmosphere.

That's what I read. Nothing to worry about. I think the flaw in the 30' - 300' comparison is that you need to compare volume or mass rather than radius. Vol vs radius is a cubic relationship. 30 vs 300 isn't a ten fold increase, it's much much more.

[Pazuzu]

30 feet hitting the surface of the Earth was a couple hundred feet across when it's in space.

The really bright fireballs that get mentioned every now and then? Something the size of an SUV to a schoolbus, burning up completely before it reaches the Earth.

Also depends on rocky or iron cored meteoroids. The rocky ones tend to shatter when they hit the atmosphere, even the really big ones, they have a structure similar to pumice.

[looneybin]

wasn't the one that hit in Arizona only the size of a bus?
That crater is i think 2 miles across

[tcar]

Originally Posted by looneybin

wasn't the one that hit in Arizona only the size of a bus?
That crater is i think 2 miles across

Not quite on both counts.

Crater is less than a mile across, but the meteorite was about 50 yards wide.

Some guy paid for the rights to dig it up and mine it many years ago, but the meteor mostly vaporized when it hit. When he dug, there was nothing there.

Just a scattering of particles left.

[Heel n Toe]

Mmmmm... not quite "just a scattering of particles" have been found.

This is the Holsinger Meteorite... a 1400+ lb. piece of the meteor that created "Meteor Crater." It's the largest piece of it that has been found (found in the crater), and it's in the museum adjacent to it... I've seen it and touched it... it's a spooky-lookin' rock. If I remember correctly, it's between 3 and 4 feet long.



"A study published in the journal Science concludes the stone that came in from space that day was a nickel iron meteor 100 feet in diameter and weighing 60,000 tons, traveling at speed of almost 45,000 miles an hour.
::::::::::::::
...hundreds, if not thousands of pieces of the meteor, ranging from a few grams to a couple hundred pounds, have been found and picked up from the so-called Canyon Diablo scatter field around the impact site. Up to this time no reliable estimate of the total overall weight found thus far, or for the estimated amount of remaining pieces, has been forthcomimg. Meteorite hunter Dr. Harvey Harlow Nininger, a well-respected student of things-meteor, has estimated that about 30 tons of specimens had been collected. Workers have estimated that 8,000 tons of iron are contained in the fine grained material around the crater. This leaves about 55,000 tons to speculate about. Some of it remains buried as drilling in the crater for the main bolide has shown. Some of it remains in the form of specimens in area surrounding the crater. Until the area was closed to meteorite hunting recently, hunters with metal detectors were still finding significant pieces. However, as stated above by Pierazzo, et al, 85 percent, 51,000 tons, the vast majority of the impacting body creating the crater, vaporized. It instantly turned from a solid nickel and iron rock into a gas, creating a cloud of super heated vapor riding the crest of the 2000 mile per hour winds, only to cool and condense and rain nickel and iron spheroids down upon hundereds of square miles in every direction."
METEOR CRATER METEORITE: What Happened To It?

"The object that excavated the crater was a nickel-iron meteorite about 50 meters (54 yards) across, which impacted the plain at a speed of several kilometers per second. The speed of the impact has been a subject of some debate. Modelling initially suggested that the meteorite struck at a speed of up to 20 kilometers per second (45,000 mph), but more recent research suggests the impact was substantially slower, at 12.8 kilometers per second (28,600 mph). It is believed that about half of the impactor's 300,000 tonnes (330,000 short tons) bulk was vaporized during its descent, before it hit the ground.

The impactor itself was mostly vaporized; very little of the meteorite remained within the pit that it had excavated."
Meteor Crater - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

[m21sniper]

I wonder if our NMD hit to kill interceptors could hit an incoming meteor.

[vwbobd]

I had asteroids one time, hurt and itched like a mofo till I had them removed.....but NASA didnt do it my doctor did

[Gogar]

Originally Posted by m21sniper

I wonder if our NMD hit to kill interceptors could hit an incoming meteor.

I don't know, a meteorite traveling at MACH 37 might be tough to get a bead on.

[m21sniper]

ICBMs are almost as fast when they tip over in their trajectories. Some of them can eclipse mach 25 i think.

[jyl]

I think the missile interceptors would not do enough damage to a 50 meter diameter rock, even if they hit it. Probably need to intercept the objects further from Earth so that a small impact can cause it to miss.

[m21sniper]

I'm not even thinking about damage so much as whether or not we could actually hit one in it's terminal approach.

I find it to be an interesting question, just from a technical standpoint.

[Gogar]

I guess the steeper it's trajectory, the easier it would be to hit, but the harder to get it to change course.

I think there's also a specific angle of trajectory where it would just bounce off the atmosphere as opposed to coming in. That's what them space shuttle guys say.

[RWebb]

a large object may not skip like a tiny shuttle

a large one would ideally be intercepted and moved into a different orbit by placing rocket motors on it

or drill into it and blow off shards repeatedly...

speed is relative - so you do the intercept far enuff away that you can match speeds

of course, HOW are you going to carry all the 'stuff' you need way up out of Earth's gravity well??

if a big one is on track to splat this planet, then we would be nearly as helpless as the dinosaurs...

[m21sniper]

That's how i'd approach it i guess. Just hit it with repeated deep penetrator warheads (nuke) starting at the farthest range possible, until the whole thing is broken into more manageable pieces that could then be intercepted (if necessary) on their terminal approach by HTK interceptors.

I'd think that if we started shooting at an asteroid that's still 2 weeks from impact with say 1 deep penetrating nuke missile an hour, that by the time it got here there would not be much left.

[Dueller]

A steroid?

Not to worry....Mark McGuire took care of it.

[Gogar]

Originally Posted by RWebb

a large object may not skip like a tiny shuttle

a large one would ideally be intercepted and moved into a different orbit by placing rocket motors on it

or drill into it and blow off shards repeatedly...

speed is relative - so you do the intercept far enuff away that you can match speeds

Someone should make a movie like that.