Moonpig Share Discussion Threads

[ariane] 14/1/2009 08:06

January 13, 2009 - 8:48 PM
Science squares up to asteroid threat
Image caption: Experts say that if the 390-metre wide rock struck the Earth it would trigger a massive tsunami (imagepoint)War, collapsing banks and melting polar ice caps aside, humans should count their blessings – at least the planet hasn't been wiped out by a giant asteroid. Yet.
The issue of errant space rocks has become a disquieting one for some of the world's top scientists, who in December asked the United Nations for $100 million (SFr112 million) per year to establish detection mechanisms and more for vessels to fend off the danger from space.

Astronomers say cataclysmic impacts, such as that which is believed to have wiped out the dinosaurs, occur every 60 million to 100 million years – and that Earth is overdue.

A private organisation called the International Panel on Asteroid Threat Mitigation, led by former United States astronaut Russell Schweikart, has calculated the probability of an asteroid larger than 45 metres in diameter striking the earth to be two or three times per 1,000 years.

"We know that Earth has been hit by large objects in the past and it will be hit in the future," said Ingo Leya, a meteorite expert at Bern University's space research and planetary sciences department. "The last time was 75 million years ago, so it's time."

The call for cash comes as both amateur and professional astronomers turn their eyes to the sky: the Swiss launch of the International Year of Astronomy is scheduled for the beginning of February.

But Leya says chances are actually quite slim that there will be a major disaster within our lifetime.

"Fortunately, the bombarding decreased at the beginning of the solar system exponentially," he said.

Massive blowback
"At the moment we know that there are up to 200,000 objects floating around with diameters of up to a few hundred kilometres," Leya told swissinfo. "And usually they stay in their orbits, but the orbits are not stable."

In 2004 an asteroid called Apophis travelled at a trajectory that led scientists to believe there was as high as a 2.7 per cent chance of it colliding with the Earth in 2029.

Those projections were eventually reduced to a one in 45,000 chance and experts say that even if the 390-metre wide rock struck the Earth, it would kill around ten million people in Central America or trigger a massive tsunami but would not wipe out life on Earth.

An asteroid with a diameter of between ten and 40 kilometres, depending on its composition, would produce a massive blowback of atmospheric pressure as it hurtled toward Earth and explode some 20 kilometres above the surface, creating a cloud of dust that would leave the planet without sunlight for four to five years.

« The most important issue is timing. You must know if you have ten years, 15 years or just ten months. »

Axel Deich, chief executive of Oerlikon Space The Earth would suffocate, it would get cold and life would end.

Most experts agree it is better to divert an asteroid than destroy it. Ideally, authorities would attach a solar sail or a super-efficient plasma engine to an asteroid somewhere in deep space. By nudging an asteroid by the smallest of margins, scientists could rule out the possibility of a collision.

"For me, this is very, very exotic," said Axel Deich, the chief executive of Zurich-based Oerlikon Space, a major supplier to the European Space Agency (Esa).

"Solar sails have been developed," he added. "In principle, it's available but I think just to imagine that this type of technology could be fixed to an asteroid, would be very complicated."

Technology shortfall
Apart from the complexities linked to fixing a sail to a rotating asteroid would be the task of actually getting it into space. Today's generation of spacecraft lacks the capacity to transport anything close to a one-square-kilometre foil into deep space.

"At the moment, we have no proper rocket to bring a lot of material outside the earth's gravitational field. And you need a lot," Leya said.

"The most important issue is timing," according to Deich. "You must know if you have ten years, 15 years or just ten months."

With ten to 15 years to play with, engineers might be able to develop vehicles capable of carrying these types loads into outer space. But it takes years to launch a mission, even if most components are already developed, Deich says.

"For a typical mission, you have to qualify the technology, and I would recommend to test it. It takes between six and ten years," he said. Even when Esa developed its Ariane 5 launch vehicle, it borrowed the most critical part, the engine, from the Ariane 4. Developing the new launcher nevertheless took four years.

"The only technology that is available on the spot is ballistic missiles," Deich told swissinfo.

"I think if [the asteroid] is very close to our planet, then nothing else than nuclear... could be envisaged."

swissinfo, Justin Häne

HOLLYWOODAs Earth faced obliteration by an asteroid in the 1998 film Armageddon, authorities dispatched an oil rig worker to land on it and insert a nuclear weapon. In the end, the hero perished in a nuclear blast but the asteroid was destroyed and the world saved.

Ingo Leya of Bern University says that strategy would be "far out of reach" of today's technology. He agrees that sending up a ballistic missile with a nuclear would be more realistic. "Better having some smaller pieces hitting the earth than one big one."

The most effective approach would be what amounts to a game of cosmic billiards, says Axel Deich of Oerlikon. A rocket carrying a large ballast would travel into space, slam into an asteroid and divert its course.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

ASTEROIDSMost asteroids float in a belt between Jupiter and Mars. As the objects bump into each other and because of their interaction with Jupiter, orbits can become elliptical and cross Earth. Solar winds also play a factor, kicking asteroids out of their regular orbits.

Models used by scientists consider the gravitational field for all the planets in the solar system and help with projections for 10-20 years.

The mass of the asteroid belt is around 4% of the mass of the moon, and much of that is made up by a few large rocks.

Roughly 40,000 tons of meteorite material hit the Earth each year. Most of that is dust.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

INTERNATIONAL YEAR OF ASTRONOMYThe International Year of Astronomy is organised by the International Astronomical Union and Unesco, the cultural body of the United Nations. It will highlight the 400th anniversary of Galileo's first use of an astronomical telescope.

The organisers hope to increase awareness, empower astronomical communities in developing countries, develop science education, strengthen ties among scientists and improve the gender balance.

Switzerland's national opening ceremony is on February 5.

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------

LINKSAsteroid impact simulation: YouTube (
International Year of Astronomy (
Oerlikon Space (
Space Research and Science Department, Bern University (
Asteroid Threats: A Call For Global Response (PDF) (

--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


--------------------------------------------------------------------------------


URL of this story:

[imabastard] 10/11/2008 21:58

'Shall I contemplate the moon,
Should I bathe within it's stare,
Can I grasp this bright balloon,
Resting weightless in the air ?'


Mtg - checked August/September/October - full moons are all down days and therefore refutes the theory.

Still laughing at the fact that you actually created the thread !

[m.t.glass] 10/11/2008 17:55

(Advfn appear to delete the content from threads neglected too long. So I'm dragging a few of them up from the cellar just to save them. Even if the population at large hasn't shown any inclination to do so)

[grupo guitarlumber] 24/10/2007 12:21

China launches first lunar orbiter
Date : 24/10/2007 @ 12:18
Source : TFN


China launches first lunar orbiter




BEIJING (Thomson Financial) - China today launched its first lunar orbiter
in an event broadcast on national television, with the mission a key step in the
nation's plans to put a man on the moon by 2020.
Chang'e I took off around 6:05 pm (1005 GMT) from a launch centre in
southwestern China's Sichuan province for what is slated to be a one-year
expedition to explore and map the moon.
"The operation is normal," voices in the control room repeatedly said on the
television broadcast in the minutes shortly after the launch.
After the rocket carrying the satellite moved above the clouds and out of
television camera range, the broadcast showed computer simulation images of it
heading east over Taiwan.
The expedition, costing 1.4 bln yuan (184 mln usd), kicked off a programme
that aims to land an unmanned rover on the moon's surface by 2012 and put a man
on the moon by about 2020.
It came after Japan last month launched its first lunar probe and ahead of a
similar mission planned by India for next year.
China has hailed the lunar orbiter as the third major milestone event for
the nation's space programme, after developing rockets and satellites since the
1970s and sending men into orbit in 2003 and 2005.
The first crucial stage during the satellite's 380,000-kilometre journey to
the moon will be leaving Earth's orbit on Oct 31.
It is then slated to enter a lunar orbit on Nov 5 and transmit first images
of the moon to Earth in late November.

[e-mail]
afp/ra

[ariane] 14/9/2007 05:46

Google backs private Moon landing
Search giant Google is offering a $30m prize pot to private firms that land a robot rover on the Moon.
The competition to send a robot craft to the Moon is being run with the X-Prize Foundation.

To claim the cash, any craft reaching the lunar surface must perform a series of tasks such as shoot video and roam for specific distances.

Firms interested in trying for the prize have until the end of 2012 to mount their Moonshot.

High flier

In a statement announcing the competition, Google and the X-Prize Foundation said it had been created in a bid to stimulate research into low-cost robotic exploration of space.

The top prize of $20m will be given to the private firm that soft lands a rover on the Moon which then completes a series of objectives.

These include roaming the lunar surface for at least 500m and gathering a specific set of images, video and data.

A prize of $5m will be given to the second firm that manages to reach the Moon with a rover that roams the surface and shoots some pictures.

Google said it would give bonuses of $5m if the rovers complete other objectives such as travelling further on the Moon, taking pictures of Apollo hardware, finding water-ice and surviving the freezing lunar night.

Rovers taking part must be fitted with high-definition video and still cameras.

"We are confident that teams from around the world will help develop new robotic and virtual presence technology, which will dramatically reduce the cost of space exploration," said Dr Peter Diamandis, chairman of the X-Prize Foundation in a statement.

Great test

The prize will be on offer until 2012. After that a smaller sum of $15m will be offered and, if the cash goes unclaimed, the competition will end in 2014.


Sending a robot rover to the Moon is a formidable task - involving far greater hurdles than the first X-Prize competition. Indeed, sending any sort of craft to the Moon would normally require the funding support of national or international space agencies.
The prize is the third offered and administered by the X-Prize Foundation.

The first was run to encourage private space travel. The $10m (£4.9m) Ansari-sponsored prize was won in October 2005 when the SpaceShipOne rocket plane climbed to an altitude of 100km twice inside seven days.

In October 2006, the X-Prize Foundation created the $10m Archon X-Prize for Genomics, which will be given to the first private research group to sequence 100 human genomes in 10 days.


Story from BBC NEWS:


Published: 2007/09/13 17:34:25 GMT

[ariane] 20/4/2007 14:08

Last Updated: Friday, 20 April 2007, 00:22 GMT 01:22 UK

E-mail this to a friend Printable version

UK tests Moon lander technology
By Jonathan Amos
Science reporter, BBC News, Vienna



Soft landing technology needs to be developed


Enlarge Image

British engineers are designing a Moon landing mission that would also test key technologies to take to Mars.

The MoonTwins concept would put two probes on the lunar surface - one at each pole - to do science experiments.

The work is being undertaken by the aerospace company Astrium at the request of the European Space Agency.

Esa plans eventually to go to the Red Planet to retrieve rocks for analysis on Earth, and the Moon is seen as a good place to develop the know-how.

"A Mars sample return mission would be very challenging and MoonTwins would help us understand some of the technology elements that would be needed," Mike Healy, director of space science at Astrium, told BBC News.

The agency expects to fly a demonstrator in the period 2015 to 2018. It will run a number of design phases before deciding on a final architecture.

'Moonquakes'

In the MoonTwins (Moon Technological Walk-through and In-situ Network Science) scenario, the two spacecraft would be launched on the same rocket but would make their own way to the Earth's satellite.


Humans may be drawn to Shackleton Crater


More details


In lunar orbit, they would practise coupling - a manoeuvre that would be required on any multi-stage Mars mission - before making their way down to the Moon's surface.

Again, the emphasis is on technology demonstration with each craft commanded to make a soft, controlled landing at a precise polar location.

It is also envisaged each probe would carry a seismometer. By sensing "moonquakes" they would provide scientists with a new way to study the satellite's interior.

It is expected, though, that the twins would be large enough to hold additional instruments.

"They won't have a roving capability but it's likely they would be able to do a short ascent, perhaps to hop to a new location," said Dr Healy.

Water source?

The Moon is about to become a popular destination for exploration. Both the Japanese and the Chinese will despatch missions this year.

They will be followed in 2009 by the Indians and the Americans, who have two missions in preparation.


Astrium is already involved in development for a Mars rover


Wheels turn on rover project
Mars moon 'could be key test'

It is probable astronauts will be back on the surface by about 2020. At least one of the MoonTwins would be targeted at what could become a key location for human habitation - the so called Peak of Eternal Light.

This is close to the rim of Shackleton Crater at the south pole. The peak experiences near-continuous sunlight, making it an excellent location to site solar power units.

The crater itself has the opposite conditions - it is in permanent shadow.

"It's a good place to go because there could be hydrogen there," explained Esa's top Moon scientist, Dr Bernard Foing.

"It's an open question as to whether that hydrogen is in the form of water-ice or if it is simply solar wind hydrogen - elemental hydrogen in the lunar soil. But even if you've just got hydrogen, if you mix it with oxygen you can make water."

Step by step

Dr Foing said Esa would be looking at a number of proposals from different groups before settling on a final mission destination and design.

European space ministers would be asked to approve the final details, he added.

A Mars sample return mission, to bring Martian soil and rock back to Earth for analysis, is a high priority in Europe's space objectives.

It will be one of the most complex planetary missions ever proposed. All the stages of the mission must be faultless:


Send a spacecraft to Mars and land safely
Drill under the surface to collect a range of samples
Seal samples in a container
Launch the samples into Martian orbit
Transfer the samples to an Earth-return vehicle
Travel back to Earth
Land safely on Earth
Ensure 100% planetary protection with no contamination of Mars or Earth - or of the samples on landing
The cost of mounting such an exercise means Europe will only do it in a partnership, most probably with the US.

The technology demonstrator will help determine which aspects of the mission will be built in Europe and which will be left to the partner.

Esa's future missions have been a topic of discussion here at the European Geosciences Union General Assembly meeting.

[ariane] 03/3/2007 08:19

Stay up late for the spectacular moon show
02/03/07
By Paul Sutherland

A total eclipse of the moon will make primetime viewing for the whole of Britain tomorrow night.

And experts say it could be the most spectacular for years.

Britain and Europe are ideally placed to see the full moon slowly move completely into the dark shadow of the Earth.

The eclipse will turn its brilliant white light into a magical reddish-orange glow as the moon shines solely with sunlight that has been scattered through the Earth's atmosphere and on to the lunar surface.

The appearance of the moon at this time varies according to how much dust is in our upper atmosphere.

Ian Morison, of Jodrell Bank observatory in Cheshire, said: "After the eruption of Mount Pinatubo in the Philippines 1991, which released large amounts of volcanic ash into the atmosphere, the eclipsed Moon was nearly invisible.

"But as the Earth has not had a major eruption for some years, we can expect an impressive sight tomorrow."

Robin Scagell, Vice President of the Society for Popular Astronomy, said: "This will be one of the best lunar eclipses for Britain for years.

"If the clouds stay away, it will be fascinating to watch the moon's graceful movement through the shadow of the Earth and check its coppery glow."

The moon will first enter a band called the penumbra just after 8.18pm but the dimming will be very slight.

The main eclipse begins just after 9.30pm when the moon starts to enter the dark central region of the Earth's shadow.

By 10.45pm the moon will be covered and this total eclipse lasts until nearly 11.58pm.

It will then appear to glide free of the central shadow, leaving completely just after 1.11am on Sunday. It then drifts through the penumbra again, leaving just before 2.24am.

[waldron] 19/2/2007 12:04

Last Updated: Sunday, 18 February 2007, 12:57 GMT

E-mail this to a friend Printable version

Astronauts should 'ski the Moon'
By Jonathan Fildes
Science and technology reporter, BBC News, San Francisco




Harrison Schmitt moves across the lunar terrain towards the Moon buggy

Astronauts heading to the Moon should learn the art of cross-country skiing, a scientist who flew on the last lunar Apollo mission claims.
Harrison Schmitt, part of the 1972 Apollo 17 crew, said it would allow them to explore faster and more easily. Addressing scientists in San Francisco, he said his knowledge of Nordic skiing had allowed him to glide effortlessly across the dusty lunar surface.

The US space agency (Nasa) will send manned missions to the moon by 2020.

"When you're cross-country skiing, once you get a rhythm going, you propel yourself with a toe push as you slide along the snow," explained Dr Schmitt.

"On the Moon, in the main you don't slide, you glide above the surface. But again, you use the same kind of rhythm, with a toe push."

Speed skate

Talking at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual meeting, Dr Schmitt said that because gravity was just one-sixth that of Earth, astronauts would not need skis themselves.

"Poles would be nice to have for stability," said Dr Schmitt, the first and only scientist to land on the Moon.

To stop, a lunar explorer would just have to dig into the powdery lunar dust, he said.

"The debris layer is very soft - you can dig your heels in very easily," he added.

Dr Schmitt's recommendation is based on personal experience.

Video footage taken on the third and final excursion of his mission saw Dr Schmitt using his preferred technique to negotiate a boulder field near the Van Serg crater.

"You'd be amazed how fast I'm going," he recalled

The geologist estimates that he could travel between 10 and 12km/h (6-7mph), a speed he believes could make him the fastest man on the Moon.

Lunar hop

He said that he had developed the technique after watching other Apollo astronauts and that he had tried to encourage the other two members of the Apollo 17 crew to learn Nordic skiing during training.

"I tried to convince my pilot colleagues to take a few weekends off to learn cross-country skiing because that is the way to move rapidly and easily with little energy expenditure across the surface of the Moon," said Dr Schmitt.

But Eugene Cernan and Ronald Evans did not take the advice. For the landing it was Cernan who accompanied Dr Schmitt to the surface.

He, like other moonwalkers, adopted a "bunny hop technique, where they hopped with both feet", observed the only geologist to visit the Moon.

Dr Schmitt believes his method could be useful for future explorers, particularly when they have to move quickly during an emergency.

He envisages a more flexible space suit to facilitate the athletic movements.

And once the Moon is colonised, Dr Schmitt believes that skiing could become an ideal past time for the lunar pioneers.

In particular, the Apollo 17 landing site on the mountainous eastern rim of the Sea of Serenity would make an ideal alpine skiing spot, he said.

"I think there are some excellent downhill skiing areas there."

[mr ashley james] 10/12/2006 03:24

LOL!, As If!

[Abuse team] 10/12/2006 00:42

Post removed by ADVFN

[waldron] 05/12/2006 09:15

chuckle

prefer to believe there was a real moon landing.

don't confuse me with facts,i've made up my mind.

enjoy your week joe.