Exploring Asteroids Could Help Save the Earth
Five missions exploring the asteroids of our solar system could answer questions about our Earth, exoplanets, and maybe even save us from disaster.
Exploring asteroids with five missions that promise to reveal secrets of the ancient Solar System, and may even help us save the human race.
Roughly 66 million years ago, the age of dinosaurs came to an abrupt end, as a massive asteroid slammed into our world (near the Yucatan Peninsula). The resulting fireball and molten debris falling from the sky ignited forest fires around the globe. This was followed by years or decades when the Sun was largely unseen anywhere.
On 17 October, Asteroid 2021 TG14 — a bus-sized rock — passed by Earth at a distance of just 250,000 km (155,000 miles). While this may seem like a safe miss, this is less than two-thirds of the distance between the Earth and Moon (which averages 385,000 km or 239,000 miles).
Despite this (relatively) close call, there is no chance 2021 TG14, orbiting the Sun once every 470 days, will strike Earth anytime in the foreseeable future. (Even if it did, it would likely only cause localized damage).
Asteroids are highly-unusual, intriguing objects, which can be “fossils” of the ancient Solar System, many forming before the age of planets. Exploring asteroids provides astronomers with fascinating glimpses of these relics from billions of years in the past.
Read more: https://bit.ly/Exploring-Asteroids-Help-Save-Earth
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Coming Up on Astronomy News with The Cosmic Companion
A special Halloween episode with Erika Engelhaupt, author of Gory Details: Adventures from the Dark Side of Science!
2 November (s5/e17): Professor Tara Murphy, University of Sydney, on the strange signals coming from near the center of our galaxy.
9 November (s5/e18): Asteroid Close-Up with NASA's Psyche Mission to the Asteroid Belt! Guest TBA
plus Esen Ercan Alp of Argonne National Laboratory - Studying samples from the asteroid Ryugu!
26 October (s5/e16): Halloween Special! The science of Halloween with Erika Engelhaupt, author of Gory Details.
2 November (s5/e17): Professor Tara Murphy, University of Sydney, on the strange signals coming from near the center of our galaxy.
9 November (s5/e18): Asteroid Close-Up with NASA's Psyche Mission to the Asteroid Belt! Guest TBA
plus Esen Ercan Alp of Argonne National Laboratory - Studying samples from the asteroid Ryugu!
16 November: Vacation -No show
23 November (s5/e19): Shooting asteroids in space with NASA's DART mission! Guest TBA
30 November (s5/e20): Matthew Bothwell talks about his new book, The Invisible Universe. He'll tell us about the Universe we can't see with our eyes.
6 December (s5/e21): Mark McCaughrean, Senior Advisor for Science & Exploration at the European Space Agency, talks about the BepiColumbo mission to Mercury.
13 December (s5/e22): TBA
20 December (s5/e23): Season Finale: James Webb Special with Stefanie Milam, Webb Telescope Deputy Project Scientist For Planetary Science
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