Tag Archives: asteroids

NASA creates new office to lead asteroid defense efforts

A new office will lead NASA’s efforts to protect Earth from potential strikes from asteroids and comets, along with overseeing the agency’s efforts to discover and study the celestial objects.

NASA announced the formation of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) in a news release last Thursday, saying the new creation is an improvement on the agency’s existing endeavors to detect any potential hazards to Earth and defend the planet against impacts.

NASA said the new office will supervise the agency’s research into so-called near-Earth objects — asteroids and comets that will come close to the planet — and communicate with federal agencies and foreign governments to develop an action plan if there is any chance of a strike.

The agency said none of the 13,500 known near-Earth objects pose any threat of impacting Earth, but about 1,500 new objects are discovered every year. A space rock that came within 300,000 miles of Earth last Halloween went undiscovered until three weeks before its arrival.

NASA officials mentioned that event and a meteor that entered Earth’s atmosphere in 2013 and created a massive fireball above Chelyabinsk, Russia, when announcing the PDCO. Those events “remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky,” John Grunsfeld, the associate administrator for NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, said in a statement.

According to NASA, research and discovery of near-Earth objects has surged in recent years thanks to an influx of funding. The federal budget for fiscal year 2016 includes $50 million for planetary defense and asteroid and comet research, compared to just $4 million in 2010.

NASA said it believes it has discovered 90 percent of near-Earth objects that are bigger than 3,000 feet, and it’s currently focusing on discovering smaller rocks that are a little bit larger than a football field. The agency estimates it has only located about 25 percent of those mid-sized asteroids and comets, though it had been asked in 2005 to find 90 percent of them before 2021.

The agency is also developing some strategies to potentially stop problematic asteroids.

NASA is currently trying to robotically redirect an asteroid into an orbit around Earth’s moon. The agency’s success there could ultimately determine if scientists can steer an Earth-bound asteroid clear of the planet, though NASA says it will likely be the 2020s before it has its answer.

If it’s not possible to prevent an impact, the new office will work with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to help coordinate a response. The PDCO will also issue warnings about space rocks that will pass close to Earth and any potential impacts of their close presence.

“The formal establishment of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office makes it evident that the agency is committed to perform a leadership role in national and international efforts for detection of these natural impact hazards, and to be engaged in planning if there is a need for planetary defense,” Lindley Johnson, the PDCO’s Planetary Defense Officer, said in a statement.

Scientists: Giant Comets May Present Greater Risk to Earth than Asteroids

Giant comets and their debris may present a significantly higher risk to human life than asteroids and should be studied more closely, according to a team of British astronomers.

The astronomers say that hundreds of “centaurs,” huge orbs of ice and dust that usually are between 30 and 60 miles wide, have been discovered in far-flung parts of space in the past two decades. The researchers say the massive comets travel along unstable orbits near the four gas giants of Jupiter, Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.

Centaurs seldom enter the inner solar system, the astronomers say, but their research indicates that the gravitational pull of those four planets can redirect one toward Earth. One centaur will cross Earth’s orbit about every 40,000 to 100,000 years, according to their research.

As the centaurs approach the Sun, they disintegrate and spray debris throughout space. The astronomers say some of that debris will inevitably impact the Earth.

One centaur “contains more mass than the entire population of Earth-crossing asteroids found to date,” according to a news release from the Royal Astronomical Society, which published the study in the December issue of its journal, Astronomy & Geophysics.

Astronomers from Armagh Observatory and Buckingham University performed the research.

One of the study’s co-authors, Bill Napier, said in a statement that scientists have devoted a lot of time and energy to analyzing the risk of an asteroid colliding with the Earth, particularly in the past three decades.

“Our work suggests we need to look beyond our immediate neighborhood too, and look out beyond the orbit of Jupiter to find centaurs,” Napier said. “If we are right, then these distant comets could be a serious hazard, and it’s time to understand them better.”

NASA officials have publicly stated that there’s no known asteroid or comet that has any chance of impacting the Earth within the next 100 years.

However, scientists didn’t discover a space rock that came within 300,000 miles of the Earth – about 1.3 times the distance between the planet and the moon – until three weeks before it zoomed by this past Halloween.

Asteroids Cause Nuclear Level Explosions In Atmosphere

A new report shows that asteroids caused more than two dozen nuclear-level explosions in the Earth’s atmosphere.

The report from the B612 Foundation shows that the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty Organization recorded 26 nuclear-level explosions between 2000 and 2013.  One blast was dozens of times stronger than the Hiroshima bomb with an equivalent power of 16 kilotons of TNT.

Scientists quoted in the report say that the explosions were too high in the atmosphere to cause serious damage on the ground.  However, the explosions show the significant threat to the planet from asteroid impacts.

“While most large asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire country or continent have been detected, less than 10,000 of the more than a million dangerous asteroids with the potential to destroy an entire major metropolitan area have been found by all existing space or terrestrially operated observatories,” former astronaut Ed Lu said.

Lu referenced the 2013 500-kiloton meteor explosion over Russia that caused significant damage to hundreds of square miles of homes and businesses.

Asteroid Impacts More Common Than Previously Thought

A new report from three former NASA astronauts shows that asteroid impacts on Earth are up to ten times more common than previously believed by scientists.

The report, scheduled to be issued to the public on Earth Day April 22nd, presents evidence that it’s been a miracle no major city has been decimated by a major asteroid strike.

“This network has detected 26 multi-kiloton explosions since 2001, all of which are due to asteroid impacts,” Ed Lu of the B612 Foundation said.  “It shows that asteroid impacts are NOT rare—but actually 3-10 times more common than we previously thought. The fact that none of these asteroid impacts shown in the video was detected in advance is proof that the only thing preventing a catastrophe from a ‘city-killer’ sized asteroid is blind luck. The goal of the B612 Sentinel mission is to find and track asteroids decades before they hit Earth, allowing us to easily deflect them.”

The B612 Foundation is building a special infrared satellite that once launched in 2017 will allow scientists to detect hundreds of near-Earth objects that cannot be currently seen by telescope and satellite systems.

Time Has Come (Pt. 7)

John reported that the stars fell (Revelation 6:13). The word for “stars” that John used is the word aster, from which we get the word asteroid. I believe what John saw was most likely a massive asteroid shower. The phrase implies that the stars not only fall but are strewn all over the sky. To the Jews, this was especially bad news, because the order in the heavens was a clear sign of God’s unchanging attitude. Take away the heavens and there’s nothing left! To the Jews, the ultimate chaos would be for the stars to fall from their place in the heavens—but John said that’s exactly what is going to happen. Before he described the fall of the stars, it was prophesied centuries before by Isaiah (“All the host of heaven will wear away, and the sky will be rolled up like a scroll,” Isaiah 34:4). Jesus concurred, quoting Isaiah: “The sun will be darkened, and the moon will not give its light, and the stars will fall from the sky, and the powers of the heavens will be shaken” (Matthew 24:29).

I sincerely believe that the stars in the heavens will not fall from the sky, because one star alone would literally decimate the entire planet. I always go to the Greek for complete clarity of New Testament scripture. In my studies, I have come to believe these stars John saw were in fact an asteroid shower.

Something like John described has happened many times before. One of the greatest of these occurred on October 8, 1871, when legend tells us that Mrs. O’Leary’s cow kicked over a lantern. Within minutes, the O’Leary farm was fully engulfed in a raging fire, with the entire city of Chicago, Illinois, soon to follow.

What many don’t know is that, on the same night as the Chicago fire, there was another deadly fire about 250 miles north of the city in a Wisconsin town named Peshtigo. In Peshtigo, fire literally fell from the sky and quickly consumed the entire city, burning it to the ground. Over 1,000 people per­ished in the fire. To this day, Peshtigo holds the title of the deadliest fire in American history.

Several cities in Michigan burned that same night, including Holland, Muskegan, Manistee, and Port Huron. Scientists believe that great fire was started by an asteroid shower, as indicated by the fragments found near Port Huron, Michigan, not long after the fires had gone out.

John saw the sky split and fold up like a scroll that has been stretched open and then suddenly sliced down the middle. After the opening of the sixth seal, John saw the repositioning of mountains and islands (Revelation 6:14). The most unshakable things on earth will be shattered when Jesus opens the sixth seal.

Excerpt from Time Has Come