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Asteroid in 2013 - A job for SpaceX?

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AnOutsider

S532 # XS27
Moderator
Apr 3, 2009
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Blast it or paint it: Asteroid to threaten Earth in 2013 RT

To avert a possible catastrophe – this time set for February 2013 – scientists suggest confronting asteroid 2012 DA14 with either paint or big guns. The stickler is that time has long run out to build a spaceship to carry out the operation.

*NASA's data shows the 60-meter asteroid, spotted by Spanish stargazers in February, will whistle by Earth in 11 months. Its trajectory will bring it within a hair’s breadth of our planet, raising fears of a possible collision.

The asteroid, known as DA14, will pass by our planet in February 2013 at a distance of under 27,000 km (16,700 miles). This is closer than the geosynchronous orbit of some satellites.

Maybe SpaceX can get something whipped up to get up there quick...

...or we could just paint it
 
That's not a civilization-killer, but it would be pretty nasty if it were to hit land near a major city. Fortunately the world is 70% ocean, and hitting water wouldn't cause a huge tsunami or anything.

The article mentioned it might break apart in the air. Actually large bodies like that don't simply break apart, they pretty much detonate due to massive thermal stresses. That's what happened during the infamous Tunguska event.
 
I had to google that, so for anyone that doesn't know:

Tunguska event - Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

The Tunguska event, or Tunguska blast or Tunguska explosion, was an enormously powerful explosion that occurred near the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in what is now Krasnoyarsk Krai, Russia, at about 7:14 a.m. KRAT (0:14 UT) on June 30 [O.S. June 17], 1908.

The explosion is believed to have been caused by the air burst of a large meteoroid or comet fragment at an altitude of 5–10 kilometres (3–6 mi) above the Earth's surface. Different studies have yielded varying estimates of the object's size, with general agreement that it was a few tens of metres across.
 
Paint it??? What's that supposed to accomplish? Make it easier to see as it hurtles towards us? I'm reminded of a skit from the Royal Canadian Air Farce, back in their radio days, decades ago. The flight attendant on an airplane says, as part of the safety briefing (and in an annoyingly cheerful voice): "In the event that we plummet uncontrollably into the side of a mountain, an alarm bell will ring. It won't help, but it will notify you should you wish to scream."
 
Mitigation was not specifically studied, but the team found
small variations in the energy absorption and reflection properties of Apophis'
surface are sufficient to cause enough trajectory change to obscure the
difference between an impact and a miss in 2036. Changing the amount of energy
Apophis absorbs by half a percent as late as 2018 - for example by covering a 40
x 40 meter (130 x 130 foot) patch with lightweight reflective materials (an 8 kg
payload) - can change its position in 2036 by a minimum of one Earth radius.

A change somewhat greater than this minimum would be required
to allow for prediction uncertainties. For Apophis, scaling up to distribute 250
kg (550 pounds) of a reflective or absorptive material (similar to the carbon
fiber mesh being considered for solar sails) across the surface could use the
existing radiation forces to produce a 6-sigma trajectory change, moving at
least "99.9999998" percent of the statistically possible trajectories away from
the Earth in just 18 years.

Larry