Lifeboat Foundation

Would we suffer the same fate as the dinosaurs?

This asteroid flyby was so close it was about halfway between the Earth and Moon. How’d we miss THAT? #SCINow

An asteroid approximately the size of a football field flew close by Earth only a day after it was first spotted this weekend. This near miss is a perfect example of an argument I’ve been making for some time: These are the asteroids we should worry about, not the so-called potentially hazardous rocks being tracked by NASA and periodically hyped by panicked headlines.

NASA scientists first observed the asteroid, now called 2018 GE3, on April 14, according to a database. It ventured as close as halfway the distance between Earth and the Moon, and was estimated to be between 47 meter and 100 meters in diameter (~150 and 330 feet). This is smaller than the asteroids governed by the NASA goal, which is to track 90 percent of near-Earth objects larger than 150 meters (~460 feet) in diameter. Nevertheless, it still could have caused a lot of damage if it had hit Earth.

Continue reading “Weekend Asteroid Flyby Confirms We’re Worrying About the Wrong Space Rocks” »

In its early life, the Earth would have been peppered nearly continuously by asteroids smashing into our young planet. These fiery collisions made our world what it is today. It may seem like things have changed since then, given the vast assortment of life and wide blue oceans—and things have indeed changed. At least in some respects. However, Earth still receives thousands of tons of matter from space, but this is in the form of microscopic dust particles (as opposed to recurrent, energetic collisions).

Fortunately, in modern times, a large asteroid colliding with the surface of the Earth happens only very rarely. Nevertheless, it does happen from time to time.

As most are probably already aware, it is widely believed that an asteroid initiated the dinosaurs’ extinction some 65 million years ago. And more recently, the Russian Chelyabinsk meteor hit our planet in February of 2013. It entered at a shallow angle at 60 times the speed of sound. Upon contact with our atmosphere, it exploded in an air burst. The size of this body of rock (before it burned up and shattered) is estimated to be around 20 meters (across) and it weighed some 13,000 metric tons.

Continue reading “Elon Musk: We Must Leave Earth For One Critical Reason” »

Humanity’s brutal and bellicose past provides ample justification for pursuing settlements on the moon and Mars, Elon Musk says.

The billionaire entrepreneur has long stressed that he founded SpaceX in 2002 primarily to help make humanity a multiplanet species — a giant leap that would render us much less vulnerable to extinction.

Human civilization faces many grave threats over the long haul, from asteroid strikes and climate change to artificial intelligence run amok, Musk has said over the years. And he recently highlighted our well-documented inability to get along with each other as another frightening factor. [The BFR: SpaceX’s Mars Colony Plan in Images].

Instead of Nuking an Asteroid, Just Splash It With Paint

Recent headlines have contained lots of asteroid-nuking talk. There’s a team of Russian scientists zapping mini asteroids in their lab, and supposedly NASA is thinking about a plan that would hypothetically involve nuking Bennushould it threaten Earth in 2135.

It’s true that NASA is drafting up ideas on how one might nuke an incoming asteroid, a theoretical plan called HAMMER, or the Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response, as we’ve reported. But scientists probably won’t need to use such a response on the “Empire State Building-sized” asteroid 101955 Bennu, which is set to pass close to Earth in 2135. Diverting such a threat could be much, much easier.

“Even just painting the surface a different color on one half would change the thermal properties and change its orbit,” Michael Moreau, NASA’s OSIRIS-REx Flight Dynamics System Manager, told Gizmodo. That would involve literally sending a spacecraft to somehow change the color of some of the asteroid.

Continue reading “Divert an Astroid? Yes! But, no need to blast or shove it” »

NASA has a plan to deal with potential asteroid impacts that sounds like it’s been taken straight from a science fiction film.

The space agency is building a spacecraft named HAMMER — which stands for Hypervelocity Asteroid Mitigation Mission for Emergency Response.

The plan is to blow any harmful looking asteroids out of the sky before they have a chance to hit out planet.

Continue reading “NASA building ‘HAMMER’ spacecraft to save Earth from cataclysmic asteroid impact” »

A massive asteroid estimated to be 2.7 miles wide is set to make a ‘relatively close encounter’ with Earth on 1 September.

Dubbed ‘Florence,’ the huge space rock will pass just 4.4 million miles from our planet on Friday – or, about 18 times the distance between Earth and the moon.

Continue reading “A THREE MILE wide asteroid is set to graze past Earth this Friday” »

A big space rock slipped right by us last week and was only spotted as it left our cosmic neighborhood.

Today is World Asteroid Day… https://bcgallie.wixsite.com/asteroidday

Asteroid Day is a global awareness movement to protect Earth against asteroid impacts. The original inspiration for this campaign came from Grigorij Richters’ asteroid impact disaster film 51 Degrees North — all profits from which he has now dedicated to the cause of Asteroid Day world-wide. Dr. Brian May is a key supporter and delivered a slight update of the original mix, specifically for the Asteroid Day launch. Learn more about Asteroid Day, here: http://www.asteroidday.org

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