NASA addresses NEO detection through two surveys mandated by U.S. The second survey, the George E. Brown Jr., Near-Earth Object Survey, seeks to detect 90 percent of near-Earth objects 459 feet (140 meters) in diameter or greater by 2020. Both surveys rely on powerful telescopes to repeatedly scan large areas of the sky. Space Studies Board. “Defending Planet Earth: Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies.” The National Academies Press. Now, if you’re prone to panic, remember that the key word is “potentially.” Not every space rock that makes a close approach to Earth will make an impact. The ballast acts like an anchor, changing the asteroid’s center of gravity and diverting its trajectory over the course of 20 to 50 years, depending on the size of the rock being moved and the weight of the ballast. It is possible to survive an asteroid hitting Earth, depending on the space rock’s size.

European Space Agency. “Don Quijote concept.” NEO Space Mission Studies. Whatever the method, a repair mission would entail replacing Hubble’s batteries or providing a new power source. Vindication: Recently, I wrote an entry noting that the preponderance of acronyms with multiple definitions has rendered them ineffective in providing a concise way to label techologies. NASA has multiple techniques to stop an asteroid including nuclear weapons, kinetic impactors and gravitational tractors, among others. You just type in what city you live in, and the site offers up-to-date information on the ISS and its trajectory, including alerts that can let you know exactly when to watch the night sky for a space station spotting. The James Webb Space Telescope is an orbiting infrared observatory that will look to the beginning of time and to hunt for the unobserved formation of the first galaxies, as well as to look inside dust clouds where stars and planetary systems are forming today. In 1990, it was Discovery that deployed another resounding NASA success, the Hubble Space Telescope. In addition, many of the earliest high-profile space missions were planned and designed on-site.

However, the use of Vandenberg AFB for space shuttle missions was canceled after the Challenger disaster in 1986. The weather criteria used for launch included, but were not limited to: precipitation, temperatures, cloud cover, lightning forecast, wind, and humidity. This application has an easy to use WYSIWYG Editor. With the “Open Source Program Office”, there is now a name for the department of an organization that is supposed to take care of questions relating to the use of Open Source. As it turns out, there are a few legitimate ways to use Office 365 without paying for it. And on hot days, we could all use some ice. Paradoxically, Mercury’s hottest temperatures could be responsible for some of that ice. Ten percent of all the frozen H2O on Mercury’s surface may have been generated this way. A single photo taken by the MESSENGER probe in 2008 shows 763 identifiable craters within a region of the planet’s surface that’s just 172 miles (276 kilometers) wide. The thin atmosphere offers very little protection from asteroids, so impact craters are abundant. As we grapple with that final question, we must face a harsh reality: Despite our best efforts, a catastrophic impact could be in Earth’s future.

So most of the time, Mercury is closer to Earth than any other planet – despite its place in the order of the planets. Here’s another thing that might take some getting used to: When you view the sun from Mercury, the sun appears to freeze in place partway through its journey across the sky. There was one amazing shot that stuck with me: It showed an aerial view of swimmers just off the coast of Nags Head, and, unbeknownst to them, hundreds of sharks swam nearby. This would allow the asteroid to rotate without tangling the tether (no one likes a tangled tether). Clearly, astronomers would try to pinpoint where the asteroid would hit so ground-zero areas could be evacuated, and governments would try to build underground bunkers, store food and water, collect animal and plant species, and shore up the global financial, electronic, social and law-enforcement infrastructures. In fact, many astronomers point to fictional accounts — “On the Beach” by Nevil Shute, for example — as the best source material about what we might do and how we might fare in a true global cataclysm.