Philip Lubin has been funded by NASA NIAC to study a practical and effective method of planetary asteroid defense that allows for extremely short mitigation time scales if required. The method involves an array of small hypervelocity kinetic penetrators that pulverize and disassemble an asteroid or small comet. This effectively mitigates the threat using the …
Sutter Ultra is a NASA NIAC phase 2 study to find smaller and slower asteroids up to 350 times faster than all existing surveys combined. They will use sensor configuration with many low cost, high performance Compound Telescopes with Matched Filter (CTMF) technology, arrayed into a fully integrated system. They are making a ground demo …
A Phase 1 NASA NIAC study proposes to create soil from carbon-rich asteroid material, using fungi to physically break down the material and chemically degrade toxic substances. They will use fungi to help turn asteroid material into soil. The basic idea is to inoculate carbonaceous asteroid material with fungi to initiate soil formation. Fungi are …
Space Telescope Design That Will Be 400 Times Better at Finding Asteroids
Dave Tholen and collaborators have detected light from the sun is moving the 300 meter near-Earth asteroid Apophis by 170 meters per year. This acceleration means that Apophis might hit the earth in 2068. Detailed analysis on the next close pass in 2029 will determine if Apophis is a risk. The Sentry Risk Table estimates …
NASA plans to launch the Psyche mission to explore a metal-rock asteroid that is also called Psyche. The critical design review is done and construction has started. They plan to launch August 2022 on a SpaceX Falcon Heavy. The asteroid Psyche is largely metallic iron and nickel. It is similar to Earth’s core and could …
Aguas Zarcas is a meteorite that broke up over Chile in 2019 but it is new meteorite sample that contains nucleobases that are part of RNA. A similar meteorite his fifty years ago but this is the first when humans have sequencing technology to study it. This meteorite provides a window into the origins of …
The Carnival of Space 661 is up at Universe Today. Universe Today – Trump Signed an Executive Order Allowing Mining of the Moon and Asteroids. On April 6th, the Trump administration took things a step further by signing an executive order that formally recognizes the rights of private interests to claim resources in space. This …
The Palermo Technical Impact Hazard Scale for asteroids is a logarithmic scale used by astronomers to rate the potential hazard of impact of a near-earth object (NEO). It combines two types of data—probability of impact and estimated kinetic yield—into a single “hazard” value. A rating of 0 means the hazard is equivalent to the background …
The Carnival of Space 639 is up at Urban Astronomer. Universe Today – The Large Synoptic Survey Telescope Could Find More of Earth’s Transient Moons. Earth also has a population of what are known as “transient Moons”. These are a subset of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) that are temporarily scooped up by Earth’s gravity and assume …
The Carnival of Space 631 is up at Urban Astronomer. Universe Today – Hayabusa 2 has one Last Lander it’s Going to Throw at Ryugu. JAXA (Japan Space Agency) posted time-lapse photos of target markers falling towards the surface of the Ryugu asteroid. There was a slight parabolic arc to their descent. , also issued …
