{"id":701,"date":"2012-10-31T15:53:34","date_gmt":"2012-10-31T07:53:34","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=701"},"modified":"2012-10-31T15:53:34","modified_gmt":"2012-10-31T07:53:34","slug":"paintballing-apophis","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/?p=701","title":{"rendered":"Paintballing Apophis!"},"content":{"rendered":"

Before I started blogging, I wrote emails to a group of friends, interested in science. Several of these emails I have, after editing, entered as posts for my blog.
\nThe first email (and now the first post on this blog) was about Apophis<\/a>, an asteroid, that will pass Earth in 2029 at a close distance, and might (with a chance of 1 to 250.000) collide with Earth 7 years later, in 2036<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This is an artist impression of Apophis, diameter ~ 270 m with an estimated mass of 27 megatonnes.<\/p>\n

A collision with the earth would be a catastrophe. The impact would be the equivalent of 900 megaton TNT, ~ 60.000 Hiroshima atomic bombs.<\/p>\n

 <\/p>\n

When Apophis was discovered in 2004, there was a brief period of concern that this asteroid might hit Earth in 2029. It will not, and even in 2036 the chance is almost neglegible<\/p>\n

But there are thousands of asteroids with orbits that may bring them close to Earth, so called NEA<\/a>‘s, and NASA has an observation program<\/a> to monitor them.<\/p>\n

What to do when an asteroid is discovered which is on a crash course with Earth? We will have to deflect it! How? Many solutions have been proposed. Send a rocket to the asteroid and detonate a nuclear bomb, or let the rocket crash itself against the asteroid. Or use a strong laser beam to deflect the course.When you do this while the asteroid is still far away, a tiny change in course could be sufficient.<\/p>\n

For a couple of years already a yearly competition “Move an Asteroid<\/a>” is organised by the Space Generation Advisory Council<\/a> , for students and young (space) professionals.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

This year the competition was won by a MIT graduate student, Sung Wook Paek.<\/p>\n

His winning proposal:<\/p>\n

Launch a rocket, with a cargo of 5000 kg of pellets, filled with white paint. When near the asteroid, fire two salvos of pellets, timed in such a way, that the (spinning) asteroid will be completely covered with a very thin layer of white paint.<\/span><\/p>\n

Here are two screenshots of a YouTube clip<\/a>, published by MIT. In the left picture two pellet clouds are approaching the asteroid.\u00a0 In the right picture one cloud has painted one half of the asteroid white already.<\/p>\n

\"\"<\/a><\/p>\n

The colliding pellets will change the course of the asteroid a little bit. That is not new, but the white paint is. The photons from the sun will reflect against this bright white surface, and this results in (additional) radiation pressure<\/a>. Also a tiny effect, so this kind of action should be taken, many years before the asteroid comes close to the earth.<\/p>\n

Cosmic paintball, what a nice idea!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Before I started blogging, I wrote emails to a group of friends, interested in science. Several of these emails I have, after editing, entered as posts for my blog. The first email (and now the first post on this blog) … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[8,7],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-701","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-astronomy","category-science"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_shortlink":"https:\/\/wp.me\/p2LqIR-bj","jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=701"}],"version-history":[{"count":32,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":738,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/701\/revisions\/738"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=701"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=701"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/stuif.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=701"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}