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<ul class="summary-list"><li>NASA conducted a new tabletop simulation of <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/potentially-hazardous-asteroids-fly-by-earth-this-week-watch-live-2024-6">discovering a large asteroid headed for Earth</a>.</li><li>Experts feared Congress wouldn't fund a mission to an asteroid with a 72% chance of impacting Earth.</li></ul>NASA recently brought together about 100 experts to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-simulated-asteroid-couldnt-stop-impact-europe-2021-5">pretend that an asteroid was heading for Earth</a>.The tabletop <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-impact-simulations-difficult-to-stop-2021-5">simulation presented a hypothetical scenario</a> in which cities like Dallas, Washington, DC, and Madrid were at risk of a large asteroid impact."A <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/adam-driver-asks-nasa-save-earth-from-world-ending-asteroids-2023-3">large asteroid impact</a> is potentially the only natural disaster humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent," Lindley Johnson, a NASA planetary defense officer emeritus, said in a press release.But it wasn't clear that they could prevent such a catastrophe — even with 14 years to figure it out.The simulation revealed that <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7">technology wasn't the problem</a> that could ultimately doom a city, region, or entire country. It was politics.<div type="image" title="Senate Minority Leader Mitch McConnell and Senate Majority Leader Chuck Schumer at the Capitol on December 12, 2023." height="1500" width="2000" msid="111347083" hostid="261"></div>"I know what I would prefer [to do], but Congress will tell us to wait," one participant said of their asteroid-response plan, in a selection of anonymized comments in NASA's summary of the exercise, published on June 20."The most important item of the morning was the discussion involving the political nature of the decision-making," another participant said.<h2 id="fff0e374-634e-421c-bed3-007449857a08">Congress may not move fast enough</h2>NASA has conducted nearly a dozen tabletop simulations since 2013. This one happened in May and included participants from the US State Department, FEMA, and the space agencies of Europe, the UK, Japan, and Canada.<div type="image" title="large conference room with long desks full of people in suits sitting at laptops and looking at a large presentation screen with a person at a podium presenting" height="900" width="1634" msid="111347084" hostid="261"></div>Past exercises showed that, in order to save the world, NASA would need at least <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">five years' notice that an asteroid was headed toward us</a>, maybe even 10 years.This time the simulators learned that, even when they had plenty of time, they might not be able to launch their preferred anti-asteroid offensive.That's because they didn't think Congress would approve funding for a critical space mission to study the asteroid "unless impact became certain," NASA's summary said.A major part of the simulation was figuring out how to impress the "seriousness" of the situation upon Congress and other leadership, Johnson said.What's more, the 14-year timeline spanned multiple budget cycles and presidential elections. At any of those junctures, the president, Congress, or NASA's own leadership could change priorities and disrupt the asteroid plan.<h2 id="16c29872-b78b-4870-bb8a-e51b843db37f">The most likely incoming asteroid scenario</h2>Here are the hypothetical conditions the participants were given in this year's exercise: Scientists have determined a 72% chance of this asteroid impacting Earth in 14 years. It could strike anywhere across a swath of North America, Europe, Africa, and the Middle East.The asteroid's size was unclear. It could be anywhere from 60 to 800 meters (half a mile) wide — possibly big enough to devastate an entire country.All that uncertainty made this "a very realistic scenario," Richard Binzel, a planetary scientist at MIT who specializes in potentially hazardous asteroids, but did not participate in the simulation, told Business Insider."In fact, it's the most likely type of scenario we will face, where an asteroid is discovered and we have limited information," Binzel said.Options for preventing an asteroid impact include shooting the asteroid with lasers, launching a nuclear bomb at it, or simply smacking a space probe into it to nudge it away from Earth.NASA has tested one of those options in a <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-crashes-dart-spacecraft-into-asteroid-to-test-planetary-defense-2022-9">mission that punched an asteroid</a> and dramatically changed its path in 2022, just to prove the technique could work.<div type="image" title="sequence of images showing asteroid from a distance then close up then video cutting out" height="1000" width="2000" msid="111347087" hostid="261"></div>In the simulation, experts wanted more information to understand their anti-asteroid options.Unfortunately, the fictional space rock was about to <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/comet-neowise-surprise-appearance-earth-unprepared-for-asteroids-2020-7">pass behind the sun and disappear</a> from view for seven months. To avoid wasting precious time, scientists would have to send a spacecraft to the asteroid to learn more about it.That's where they feared politics would get in the way. Participants weren't sure Congress would fund the mission unless the asteroid was a certain threat — not a 72% chance of threat.So far, NASA has not discovered any large asteroids on track to impact Earth.But scientists have identified fewer than 11,000 near-Earth asteroids that are at least 140 meters (460 feet) wide — big enough to crush a city. They believe there are 15,000 of them in our vicinity, meaning more than a quarter of city killers remain undiscovered.<h2 id="8dbc0625-4426-4bc0-ba2d-99b4f3dc63a5">NASA could plan a mission just in case</h2>Binzel says NASA could get political and bureaucratic barriers out of the way now, before any asteroid threats are identified, by developing a reconnaissance mission to have on standby."It's an adult thing to do that can protect us from becoming surprised," he said.The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine made a similar recommendation in its last decadal survey of planetary science priorities.In that 2022 <a target="_blank" href="https://nap.nationalacademies.org/resource/26522/interactive/">report</a>, the Academies said that NASA should "develop an approach for a rapid-response, flyby" spacecraft to closely study newly-discovered threats. That way, it could launch a reconnaissance mission in less than three years if it became necessary. The Academies also recommended a demonstration to practice reconnaissance on a real asteroid.So why isn't NASA working on that right now?"It's not in the budget," Binzel said.First NASA has to make a proposal for such a mission, with a thumbs up from the White House, and then Congress would have to authorize and fund it."If there's an asteroid out there with our name on it, it's already there," Binzel said. "Fortunately, the chance in the next century or so is incredibly small. But it's not zero."

NASA simulated an incoming asteroid impact, and the biggest roadblock to action was penny pinching

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Billionaires, like Elon Musk and Jeff Bezos, and their <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-helping-private-companies-build-business-moon-make-lunar-billions-2023-6">space businesses are racing to the moon.</a></li><li>A few treaties have set norms for space exploration between countries, but there are no hard rules.</li></ul>The <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/barack-obama-jeff-bezos-space-exploration-colonization-save-earth-2024-3">space business</a> is in bloom and, so far, it's largely unregulated.A commercial <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intuitive-machines-ceo-safety-switch-almost-lost-odysseus-moon-landing-2024-2">spacecraft touched down on the moon</a> for the first time last month, in a NASA-sponsored mission by the Houston-based company Intuitive Machines.Then last week, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-starship-elon-musk-rocket-launch-flight-three-2024-3">SpaceX's Starship mega-rocket finally launched into space</a> and cruised above Earth without exploding.<div type="image" title="A video still shows SpaceX's Starship starting its launch to space. The behemoth mega-rocket is engulfed in smoke in flames as it takes off." height="1080" width="1920" msid="108733448" hostid="261" sizebytes="36012"></div>Both achievements were major leaps forward for NASA's new moon program, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface using Starship. In fact, NASA's biggest plans — to replace the aging space station, establish a permanent base on the moon, and send astronauts to Mars — depend on companies like SpaceX or <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-risk-blue-origin-rocket-2021-6">Jeff Bezos's Blue Origin</a>.But the billionaires helming those companies have even bigger plans.<a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/spacex-paid-250000-to-a-flight-attendant-who-accused-elon-musk-of-sexual-misconduct-2022-5">Elon Musk</a> has said he plans to fly 1,000 Starships to build and populate a city on Mars. Bezos envisions a trillion people living in giant space stations across the solar system.Other space startups have ambitions including asteroid mining, in vitro <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/space-tourists-sex-pregnancy-risk-2023-8">fertilization (IVF) in space</a>, and <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/voyager-station-first-ever-space-hotel-set-open-in-2027-2021-3">space hotels</a>.<div type="image" title="An artist's concept of what lunar mining could look like. An astronaut is seen taking measurements in the foreground while rovers and various instruments are in the background of the illustration. The scene is set on the surface of the moon." height="675" width="1200" msid="108733450" hostid="261" sizebytes="46098"></div>What's to stop companies from putting giant advertisements on the face of the moon? Or industrializing <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/blueprints-giant-telescopes-moon-nasa-astronomers-2024-2">craters that scientists want to use for telescopes</a>? Or mining a single <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-visit-psyche-asteroid-worth-more-than-entire-world-economy-2023-10">asteroid for $100 quintillion</a> worth of precious metals, bringing it back to Earth for sale, and destabilizing the global economy? What will keep the budding deep-space industry in check?"There isn't anything specifically enforceable," Mai'a Cross, a professor of international affairs and diplomacy at Northeastern University, told Business Insider.There are no laws or regulations for <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/moon-missions-why-astronauts-have-not-returned-2018-7">moon landings</a> or asteroid mining. As space startups and billionaires vie for a foothold on the moon and beyond, experts say governments probably need to start setting some ground rules."We're going to have to figure out how we want to operate, what rules we want to live by, and what the framework is going to look like," George Nield, former associate administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration's Office of Commercial Space Transportation, told Business Insider.<h2>The new space economy needs room to grow</h2><div type="image" title="the moon bright round blotchy cratered disc in the blackness of space" height="1986" width="1986" msid="108733452" hostid="261" sizebytes="220948"></div>NASA doesn't want to run the show anymore. Instead, <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/jeff-bezos-offers-cover-costs-blue-origin-nasa-contract-spacex-2021-7">NASA wants to be one of many customers</a> leasing spots in private companies' rockets, spaceships, space stations, and lunar habitats."We want to really try to grow the lunar economy and have these companies be successful," Joel Kearns, deputy associate administrator for exploration at NASA's Science Mission Directorate, said in a press briefing ahead of the <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/intuitive-machines-im-1-odysseus-moon-lunar-landing-mission-nasa-2024-2">Intuitive Machines mission</a>.So far, the US government has deliberately avoided regulating the emerging space economy, for fear of suffocating it before it takes off.The FAA is quite active in regulating passenger safety on airplanes, for example, but has <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/blue-origin-employees-letter-new-shepard-rockets-not-safe-2021-9">no rules for spaceflight passenger safety</a>, even as Blue Origin, SpaceX, and Virgin Galactic fly tourists to the edge of space or around the planet.<div type="image" title="Virgin Galactic founder Richard Branson in flight" height="900" width="1600" msid="108733454" hostid="261" sizebytes="74372"></div>"We do need much more regulation than currently exists," Cross said."It is also in the interest of the private companies to call for this regulation sooner rather than later, because they don't want to start investing and taking action on things that, down the road, will be deemed illegal," she added.For now, only a handful of international agreements outline what is and isn't acceptable in space, and they have no teeth.<h2>Space treaties help, but they aren't enforceable</h2>Space diplomacy started with the 1967 Outer Space Treaty.<div type="image" title="historical photo of president lyndon b johnson sitting at a long desk on a stage with other men in suits representing the united kingdom and u.s.s.r. signing a treaty" height="1500" width="2244" msid="108733455" hostid="261" sizebytes="149826"></div>Among other things, the treaty asserts that nobody can claim territory or sovereignty in space, nobody can put nuclear weapons in space, and that states are responsible for the space activities of even their non-government actors — such as companies or nonprofits."It's a pretty strong agreement. But like most international law, there is actually no significant way to enforce those norms," Cross said.In 2020 NASA introduced the Artemis Accords as a fresh agreement for the new lunar exploration era.Signed by 36 countries so far (but <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-artemis-accords-deep-space-exploration-moon-mars-asteroids-comets-2020-10">not Russia or China</a>), the Accords call for nations going to the moon and beyond to be peaceful, help astronauts in distress, share scientific data, avoid junking up the moon and its orbit, and mine space resources sustainably.Those treaties are for nations, though. In 2022 the Hague Institute for Global Justice started a similar agreement for commercial entities.Called The Washington Compact, this treaty for space commerce reflects many of the same principles as the Outer Space Treaty. A series of space startups, civil-society organizations, consultants, and two former NASA administrators have signed it. SpaceX and Blue Origin have not signed on.<h2>In the absence of space law, peer pressure can help</h2>Still, shared norms and treaties can be powerful even without enforcement. Companies operating on the moon will have a strong incentive to play nice with each other: It's good for business.<div type="image" title="Jeff Bezos wearing a cowboy hat and blue Blue Origin jumpsuit" height="2011" width="3000" msid="108733456" hostid="261" sizebytes="117448"></div>"Sure, we can pretend we don't have any regulations, but then your mining operation is going to get ruined when somebody drives their rover too close or, whatever you set up, your telecommunications platform is going to get messed up because somebody else decided to build something right next to you," Michelle Hanlon, executive director of the Center for Air and Space Law at the University of Mississippi School of Law, told Business Insider."It's going to be much, much more to your benefit, and to your shareholders' benefits, if you can manage to get along with your neighbors," she added.What's more, companies that want to leapfrog from the moon to Mars will need the moon's resources to get there. That's a built-in incentive not to over-mine or crowd the moon's orbit.<div type="image" title="An artist's rendering shows several Starships landing on Mars, next to colonies of humans, in a theoretical future." height="1152" width="2047" msid="108733458" hostid="261" sizebytes="72360"></div>Limited capacity should also hold most companies back from going rogue for a while. Intuitive Machines could only go to the moon with the help of its investors, NASA, and customers who paid to put their projects on the lander."In these early phases, everything will be so experimental that working together will be necessary," Cross said. "This wouldn't just be one space billionaire with one project."Even SpaceX's plans for fully private missions, so far, are basically joy rides bankrolled by other billionaires: Jared Isaacman and Yusaku Maezawa."That doesn't necessarily solve all the problems, but it does kind of weaken the sense that this is just someone like Elon Musk, really, determining all of the norms and rules in space," Cross said.<h2>Setting rules while the space titans are still 'Star Trek geeks'</h2><div type="image" title="william shatner talks to jeff bezos" height="1570" width="2861" msid="108733459" hostid="261" sizebytes="127742"></div>The US is at the forefront of commercial space exploration, putting Congress in a prime position to lead the way on what the rules should be.Half of global private space investment is in US companies, the US International Trade Commission <a target="_blank" href="https://www.usitc.gov/publications/332/executive_briefings/ebot_us_private_space_launch_industry_is_out_of_this_world.pdf">reported</a> in November. Seven of the world's 10 biggest commercial space operators are based in the US, according to the Organisation for Economic Co-operation and Development.As the industry plows forward, Congress is starting to consider the issue. In November, two Republican representatives introduced a bill that would create a certification process for commercial space missions, adding to the FAA's launch licensing and the Federal Communications Commission's regulation of satellite transmissions, SpaceNews <a target="_blank" href="https://spacenews.com/new-commercial-space-bill-addresses-mission-authorization-and-ssa/">reported</a>.In another vein, last year <a target="_blank" href="https://www.businessinsider.com/florida-bill-protect-rocket-billionaires-crew-injury-death-musk-besos-2023-5">Florida passed a bill to protect space companies</a> and their owners from getting sued over spaceflight passenger death or injury."I think, frankly, government is struggling to keep pace with industry," Nield, the former FAA official, said of the overall regulatory landscape.It may be wise to catch up while the entrepreneurs vying for space seem to be truly passionate about it — "Star Trek geeks," in Hanlon's words."Right now you have a pretty small community of people who are like-minded," Hanlon said. "We really need to take advantage of this sort of camaraderie that we have, and try to build some of these frameworks before we start getting the bad actors who are really just in it for the money."

Billionaires going to space aim to industrialize the moon, asteroids, and Mars. It's time to set some ground rules.

The 10 biggest asteroids that pose a threat to Earth in 2020

The 10 biggest asteroids that could crash into Earth in 2019

<ul><li>The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (<keyword id="6360409" type="UNKNOWN" weightage="20" keywordseo="Nasa">NASA</keyword>) has ruled out two potentially hazardous asteroids as a threat to Earth.</li><li>Asteroids 2010 CO1 and 2000 QW7, though large in size, are not a collision course for Earth.</li><li>But in little over a month, asteroid 1998 HL1 -- bigger than Burj Khalifa -- will be flying by.</li></ul>Two asteroids are coming awfully close the planet on 14 September 2019 but the Planetary Defence Coordination Office has ruled them out as a threat. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been tracking asteroid 504800 (<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/The-10-biggest-asteroids-that-could-crash-into-Earth-in-2019/504800-2010-CO1/slideshow/70686170.cms">2010 CO1</a>) and 467317 (<a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/The-10-biggest-asteroids-that-could-crash-into-Earth-in-2019/3467317-2000-QW7/slideshow/70686174.cms">2000 QW7</a>). Its calculations show that there is no chance of these space rocks posing a threat to Earth. These aren’t small asteroids either. The first space rock, asteroid 2010 CO1, between 120 meters to 260 meters in diameter. That’s bigger than the tallest statue on Earth — the Statue of Liberty in India. The second one, asteroid 2000 QW7, is even bigger with a diameter of 290 meters to 650 meters. Even China’s Shanghai Tower falls short at 632 meters, even though it’s the tallest building in the country and the third tallest in the world. But, in just a little over a month, there’s an even bigger asteroid heading Earth’s way. On 25 October 2019, an asteroid named <a href="https://www.businessinsider.in/The-10-biggest-asteroids-that-could-crash-into-Earth-in-2019/162082-1998-HL1/slideshow/70686183.cms">162082 (1998 HL1)</a>, with its massive diameter of 440 meters to 990 meters, is scheduled to fly past the planet. The asteroid would be taller than the Burj Khalifa, the tallest building in the world, at its widest. Who’s got the speed? Asteroid 2010 CO1 is going to travelling at a speed of 51,696 kilometers per hour. But, asteroid 2000 QW7, will be slugging along at 23,112 kilometers per hour — less than half the speed of its counterpart. “Both of these asteroids are passing at about 14 lunar distances from the Earth, or about 3.5 million miles away, but small asteroids pass by Earth this close all the time,” said Lindley Johnson, a planetary defence officer for the Planetary Defence Coordination Office. October’s asteroid falls somewhere in between with a speed of 40,320 kilometers per hour but it will be twice as far away at a distance of 6.2 million kilometers. Earth is safe — for now NASA’s Asteroid Watch keeps an eye on all of these asteroids and has over 20,000 asteroids in its database. But only around 800 of these space rocks are actually considered to be ‘potentially hazardous’. If NASA does detect a change in their orbit at any time — and if that change poses a threat to Earth — it will flag it on the Torino scale. Depending on the threat level, the Torino scale measures the probability of an <keyword id="4678476" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Asteroid-hitting-Earth">asteroid hitting Earth</keyword> on a scale of 1 to 10.

Two potentially hazardous asteroids have been ruled out as a threat to Earth — but a bigger one is on the way

<ul><li>There are over 800 objects in space that could pose a threat to Earth. </li><li>These are the some of the biggest asteroids that could possible hit the planet in 2019.</li></ul> At any given moment, there are hundreds of asteroids in our <keyword id="52393" type="PERSON" weightage="20" keywordseo="Solar-System">solar system</keyword> that could potentially crash into the Earth. Some scientists even think that it’s all but inevitable that an asteroid will collide with the planet eventually. In order to keep that from happening, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Near Earth Orbit (NEO) Coordination Center and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are keeping a close eye in the sky. They monitor the thousands of known asteroids and meteoroids, classifying a few hundred as an ’uncertainty’ or a ‘risk’ if it’s possible that could fall to Earth. As of August, the NEO Coordination Center had 20,502 asteroids on its list with 865 on the risk list. None of the space objects on these lists are anywhere nearly as big as the asteroid that wiped Earth of the dinosaurs but some of them are definitely big enough to wipe out whole cities. If they were to break through the planet’s atmosphere, the resulting destruction could be worse than the effects of a nuclear bomb explosion, according to NASA. Here are the biggest asteroids to watch out for in 2019:

A potentially hazardous giant asteroid is set to zoom past <keyword id="6359982" type="General" weightage="100" keywordseo="earth" source="Orion">Earth</keyword> with a 37,400 km/h speed on Thursday, according to <keyword id="6360409" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="nasa" source="Orion">NASA</keyword>. The asteroid, named 418135 (2008 AG33), has an estimated diameter between 350 to 780 metres, revealed NASA's <keyword id="13734975" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="centre-for-near-earth-object-studies" source="Orion">Centre for Near Earth Object Studies</keyword> (CNEOS). NASA defines any space object that comes within 193 million km of Earth as a "near-Earth object" (NEO) and any fast-moving object within 7.5 million km as "potentially hazardous". According to the Centre, as they orbit the <keyword id="24879" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="sun" source="Orion">Sun</keyword>, the NEOs can occasionally approach close to Earth. However, it explained that a "close" passage astronomically can be very far away in human terms: millions or even tens of millions of kilometres. Asteroid 418135 is thus expected to skim past our planet without any risk of impact, <keyword id="1274891" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="live-science" source="Orion">Live Science</keyword> reported. At its closest point, the asteroid, travelling at more than 30 times the speed of sound, will come within about 3.2 million kilometres of Earth, which is roughly eight times the average distance between Earth and the Moon. Asteroid 418135 was first discovered on January 12, 2008, by asteroid surveyors at the Mt. <keyword id="13734974" type="General" weightage="50" keywordseo="lemmon-skycenter" source="Orion">Lemmon SkyCenter</keyword> observatory in Arizona and last zipped past Earth on March 1, 2015, according to CNEOS. The asteroid swings by our planet roughly every seven years, with the next close flyby predicted to come on May 25, 2029. But it may not be the biggest space rock to hurtle past Earth. Another asteroid, named 467460 (2006 JF42) is touted to be the biggest so far to zoom past Earth, the report said. The space rock has an estimated diameter between 380 to 860 metres and will be travelling at roughly 40,700 km/h when it passes Earth on May 9. Several space agencies are already working on ways to possibly deflect asteroids flying straight at Earth. Last November, NASA launched a spacecraft as a part of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test mission, which plans to redirect a non-hazardous asteroid by ramming it off course. China is also in the early planning stages of an asteroid-redirect mission. By slamming 23 Long March 5 rockets into the asteroid Bennu, the country says it would be able to divert the space rock from a potentially catastrophic impact with Earth, the report said. SEE ALSO: <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/business/startups/news/ola-may-be-rushing-into-electric-cars-when-scooters-continue-to-underperform/articleshow/91141264.cms"></a><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/tech/news/google-will-now-allow-users-to-remove-personal-information-from-their-search-results/articleshow/91142502.cms">Google will now allow users to remove personal information from their Search results</a> <a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/india/news/adani-enterprises-sets-up-a-wholly-owned-media-arm/articleshow/91128727.cms"></a><a target="_blank" class="c-link c-message_attachment__title_link" href="https://www.businessinsider.in/science/space/news/skywatching-on-april-30-venus-and-jupiter-will-look-like-they-are-about-to-collide/articleshow/91145254.cms">Skywatching on April 30: Venus and Jupiter will look like they are about to collide</a>

Potentially hazardous giant asteroid to skim past Earth on Thursday: NASA

<ul class="summary-list"><li><a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/listen-bloop-of-meteor-falling-to-mars-nasa-insight-lander-2022-9">NASA</a> is about to slam a spacecraft into an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/dinosaur-fossil-from-day-extinction-asteroid-hit-earth-scientists-claim-2022-4">asteroid</a> to nudge it into a new orbit.</li><li>The <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-launches-dart-probe-into-collision-course-with-asteroid-2021-11">Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART)</a> is practice for deflecting an asteroid away from Earth.</li></ul>NASA is about to slam a spacecraft into an <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/astronomer-discover-youngest-asteroid-pair-ever-in-our-solar-system-2022-2">asteroid</a>, obliterating the probe and nudging the space rock.The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) is aiming for an asteroid called Dimorphos, which is orbiting a giant asteroid called Didymos. By crashing into it, NASA hopes to push the smaller space rock into a new orbit closer to its parent asteroid. The impact, scheduled for Monday, is practice for deflecting dangerous asteroids away from our planet.<div type="image" title="Infographic showing the effect of DART spacecraft impact on the orbit of asteroid Dimorphos" height="1520" width="2600" msid="94501281" hostid="261"></div>Dimorphos is 163 meters (535 feet) wide — big enough to obliterate a city like New York. That's no cause for concern, since it isn't on an Earth-bound trajectory, and DART won't change its path through the solar system. But that makes it perfect practice for one of the biggest threats in our cosmic neighborhood: city-killer asteroids, clocking in at 140 meters (460 feet) or larger.Having a tried-and-true deflection method won't help protect Earth from asteroids if nobody sees them coming, though. Experts previously told Insider that <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-asteroid-simulation-reveals-need-years-of-warning-2021-5">NASA would need five to 10 years</a> to build and launch a customized mission to deflect an incoming asteroid. To date, scientists have only identified 40% of city-killer asteroids orbiting near Earth, NASA estimates. Nobody knows where the rest of them are, or where they're going.<div type="image" title="asteroid dimorphos edited next to rome Colosseum showing they are the same size" height="2418" width="2000" msid="94501283" hostid="261"></div>"Of course, you can't use any mitigation techniques unless you know where the asteroids are," Amy Mainzer, an astronomer at the University of Arizona, told Insider.In 2005, Congress mandated that NASA catalogue 90% of those 140-meter-plus asteroids. Mainzer has been working on a space telescope called Near-Earth Object (NEO) Surveyor, which is designed to fulfill that goal."This is one of the long list of risks that are out there to life on our planet," Mainzer said. "It's something we should just go cross off our list of worries. And the way we do that, is we go look for the asteroids, in my opinion."NEO Surveyor has made slow progress, though, and it just took another big hit.At the beginning of 2022, the mission got an infusion of $143.2 million to propel it toward launch. But NASA has since rescinded $33 million of that budget for this year, according to Mainzer, and slashed the project's budget by $100 million for <a href="https://www.nasa.gov/sites/default/files/atoms/files/fy23_nasa_budget_request_full_opt.pdf">2023</a>. NASA estimates that will delay the telescope at least two years, so it will launch in 2028 at the earliest."We are obviously disappointed about the budget cuts, because we know that it creates a less efficient project. It's going to make it cost more and take longer," Mainzer said.<h2>Smaller asteroids are already sneaking up on us</h2>Asteroids have already surprised humans a few times in recent years.<div type="image" title="asteroid russia Chelyabinsk" height="3744" width="5616" msid="94501284" hostid="261"></div>In 2013, a house-sized asteroid screamed into the skies above Chelyabinsk, Russia, and exploded. The blast sent out a shock wave that broke windows, damaged buildings, and injured more than 1,400 people. No one on Earth saw it coming. That same day, a <a href="https://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2013/02/15/172080937/no-link-between-meteor-that-hurt-hundreds-and-asteroid-about-to-fly-by">larger asteroid</a> came within 17,000 miles of the planet.Jim Bridenstine, who served as the Trump administration's NASA administrator, said in 2019 that the agency's <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-threat-of-meteor-crashing-into-earth-is-bigger-than-you-think-2019-5">modeling</a> suggested an event like the Chelyabinsk meteor occurs about every 60 years.But the Chelyabinsk rock was small — about 50 feet wide. In 2019, a 427-foot, <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/asteroid-flies-close-to-earth-surprising-scientists-2019-7">"city-killer" space rock</a> flew within 45,000 miles of Earth, and NASA had almost no warning about that either.<div type="image" title="people in winter coats gather around large dark rock wrapped in straps and rope" height="1665" width="2220" msid="94501285" hostid="261"></div>Then in 2020, an asteroid the size of a car passed closer to Earth than any known space rock had ever come without crashing. It missed our planet by about 1,830 miles. Astronomers didn't know the asteroid existed until about six hours after it whizzed by. Nobody saw it coming, because it was approaching from the direction of the sun.Telescopes on the ground can only observe the sky at night, which means they miss almost everything that flies at us from the sun. NEO Surveyor, from its perch in Earth's orbit, would be able to spot such space rocks. Since it would use infrared light, it could also spot asteroids that are too dark for Earth-based telescopes.<h2>The asteroid-spying telescope is suffering further delays</h2><div type="image" title="neocam asteroid hunter spacecraft discovery nasa jpl caltech" height="1476" width="1968" msid="94501286" hostid="261"></div>Mainzer first submitted the idea for an asteroid-hunting space telescope in 2006. NASA declined to take it on as a mission, funding other projects instead. She submitted proposals in 2010 and 2015 as well, but the agency kept passing.NEO Surveyor finally <a href="https://www.businessinsider.com/nasa-space-telescope-to-detect-deadly-asteroids-2019-9">became an official NASA mission</a> in 2019. Then the project languished in what NASA calls "Phase A" — a stage focusing on design and technology development. Last year, NEO Surveyor passed a key review and moved into Phase B, allowing Mainzer and her team to start building prototypes and developing hardware and software.Then Congress and President Joe Biden approved a budget of $143.2 million for the telescope in 2022 (later chopped to $110 million). That's a significant increase from the $28 million the mission received in 2021, and it allowed the team to make "significant" progress in all elements of the telescope's design, Mainzer said. But the agency's 2023 budget proposal allots just $40 million to the project. Once in orbit, NEO Surveyor is expected to spend 10 years boosting NASA's catalogue from 40% of city-killing asteroids up to 90%. After that, researchers can move on to smaller classes of asteroid, like the one that shocked Chelyabinsk."If you do a good thorough search, you might find that there are no potentially hazardous objects on the impact trajectory. And that would be great," Mainzer said. "It's reasonably straightforward to go find out the answer, so we should go do that."If the DART impact goes according to plan on Monday, NASA will be better equipped to divert any Earth-bound asteroid NEO Surveyor might discover.September 23, 2022: This story has been updated to reflect the budget cut for NASA's Near-Earth Object Surveyor project.

The asteroid NASA is about to strike poses no threat to Earth, but 60% of city-killer rocks fly under the radar

<ul class="summary-list"><li>Scientists have spotted the brightest-ever explosion recorded in the cosmos. </li><li>The explosion, AT2021lwx, has been ongoing for around three years.</li></ul>Scientists have spotted the biggest cosmic explosion ever recorded. This enormous fireball, which is about 8 billion light years away, is approximately 100 times bigger than the solar system.It is estimated to be two trillion times brighter than the sun, and about twice as hot as the surface of the sun, according to lead study author Philip Wiseman, an astronomer at the University of Southampton. "In just terms of physical size, it's just ginormous," Wiseman told Insider. It is not only very large, but also long-lasting. It has been spotted exploding for three years. Wiseman said the leading theory is that the explosion is caused by a supermassive black hole sending shock waves through a cloud of cosmic gas.<h2>An explosion on an unprecedented scale </h2><div type="image" title="A photomontage shows pictures taken at regular intervals showing the explosion evolve over time." height="1511" width="3024" msid="100183877" hostid="261"></div>When the Zwicky Transient Facility in California and the Asteroid Terrestrial-impact Last Alert System telescopes first spotted the blast, they didn't pay it much attention, said Wiseman. These telescopes, which survey the sky for comets or asteroids, see flashes from supernovae all the time. But these flashes usually die out within a couple of months. This flash lasted for more than three years. When Wiseman and his team made calculations to figure out just how big the explosion was, "we were just blown away," he said. <div type="image" title="A gif shows pictures taken at regular intervals showing the explosion evolve over time." height="416" width="833" msid="100183882" hostid="261"></div>The blast, called AT2021lwx, is ten times brighter than any supernova and three times brighter than a tidal disruption event, which is when a star falls into a black hole.The explosion is expected to continue to shine for at least another couple of years, meaning it is extremely long-lasting, Wiseman said.While it's not the brightest flash ever seen, it is "by far the most energy released" from a single explosion, Wiseman added. <h2>This may be a black hole slurping up a cloud of gas and dust</h2><div type="image" title="A yellow ring shows a black hole outlined by a bright yellow ring of dust being burnt up." height="573" width="765" msid="100183886" hostid="261"></div>There are two leading theories to explain this blast. One is that it is a star being shredded by a black hole.But for a blast of this size to happen, the black hole would have to be enormous and the star extremely energetic.The likelihood of two such objects meeting during the lifetime of that type of star is extremely small and the analysis of the light coming from the blast suggests this isn't what is happening, said Wiseman.The other theory, which is the most probable at this point, is that a supermassive black hole is gobbling up its cloud of gas and dust.Black holes are often surrounded by a ring of gas and dust. The theory is that the cloud has been knocked off of its orbit and is being absorbed by the black hole. As this is happening, shock waves are spreading through the cloud, heating it up the matter in the cloud and shooting out bright light. "It's like there's been one massive dump of material onto a black hole, completely isolated from anything else, which has never really been seen before," said Wiseman. <h2>We may be witnessing the death of a galaxy</h2><div type="image" title="An artist's impression fo a galaxy around a quasar." height="2160" width="2880" msid="100183890" hostid="261"></div>Studying this event could teach us a lot about black holes. For instance, this event could provide clues about where light comes from when black holes are very bright, something that scientists are still puzzled by. Wiseman hopes this explosion might also inform how galaxies change and die.Theoretically, there's no reason for galaxies to stop growing. Galaxies "should keep on forming new stars and keep on forming new stars, because there's a constant supply of gas from the cosmic web," he said."But at some point, a lot of galaxies die and just stop making new stars," and it's not clear why, he said. One theory is that explosions could emerge from the black hole to stop gas from falling into the black hole. It's possible that what we're seeing is one of those explosions. "This might be that this is how centers of galaxies are actually regulated and change over time," said Wiseman. "You need many of these over time to cumulatively build up the energy that is being blown out into the galaxy. On a time scale of millions of years, you can start actually blowing the galaxy to pieces," he said. Right now, the explosion is so bright that it's not possible to see a galaxy around the black hole. But as it dims, Wiseman hopes the galaxy will appear, shedding light on how galaxies regulate. In the coming years, the team is hoping to turn telescopes like Hubble and JWST to get a better look.

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