Asteroid Flyby on Halloween Night
Posted on October 26, 2015So here’s the scenario: you’re out trick-or-treating on Halloween night, and there’s the usual assortment of pirates, zombies, and Boba Fetts. When all of a sudden, you round a corner and come face to face with Asteroid TB145!!! Sure, it’s passing 1.3 lunar distances from Earth, but it still wants candy and is close enough to TP your house if it doesn’t get any.
For more deets, visit NASA JPL.
Scots Propose Blasting Asteroids to Combat Climate Change
Posted on October 08, 2012The latest in Awesome Actual News Related to Spaceships and Asteroids comes from the Scottish University of Strathclyde’s Advanced Space Concepts Laboratory, where researchers have proposed using asteroid dust to shield our planet from the Sun, reducing solar radiation enough to slow global warming for a bit.
The plan is to push a nearby asteroid — the best candidate being 1036 Ganymed — to Langrange point L1, where the gravitational pull of the sun and the Earth balance each other, and then BLAST THE ASTEROID INTO EARTH-SHIELDING SMITHEREENS.
Now this is what we’re taking about!
What with Scott Manley’s recent HD video of asteroid discovery, AtariAsteroids.net will gladly buy any Scotish astronomer a pint or a dram.
The Atlantic has a good article with more details.
Meanwhile, we’ll be down at Barcade training for when they start hiring on this mission.