Apophis Tracking Mission Options

[hendric]

While a tagging mission tells us where Apophis will be in the future, I think that information can be just as easily acquired by telescopes during the close approaches. We've already landed on two asteroids (Hayabusa and NEAR Shoemaker), so I'd consider a "tagging" mission to not gain us any ability or knowledge we don't already have. A redirection mission lets us get experience doing deflections, and gives us the opportunity to learn about the gotchyas before they happen during a critical encounter. For instance, I'm wondering how much a "gravity tractor beam" mission would need to worry about heat exposure from the asteroid, a la Chandrayaan-1, esp. since many Earth-crossers go significantly closer to the Sun. Or how hard would station-keeping be near a giant rotating potato? Etc.

[Holder of the Tw...]

Apophis is schedueled for additional radar ranging by Goldstone, and probably Aricebo, in January 2013. Everyone is keeping a close eye on it. The threat in 2029 is gone, and the one in 2036 is one chance in 250,000.

Sending a deflection mission out to it, at this time, is a very bad idea. We need to know more about the asteroid itself before you could even start to plan a mission. The potential for making the situation worse, instead of better, exists if you don't have this rock thoroughly studied and modeled.

[nprev]

I can see some rationale for this mission as a technology demonstrator. However, yeah, it'd be much more prudent to try this on a rock that's not an Earth-crosser (& make sure that the experiment didn't subsequently make the target a new Earth-crosser!)

[vjkane]

I can see some rationale for this mission as a technology demonstrator. However, yeah, it'd be much more prudent to try this on a rock that's not an Earth-crosser (& make sure that the experiment didn't subsequently make the target a new Earth-crosser!)

C'mon. You don't want experimental validation for whether an impacting asteroid could have killed off the dinosaurs?

[ElkGroveDan]

C'mon. You don't want experimental validation for whether an impacting asteroid could have killed off the dinosaurs?

There are no dinosaurs on the Moon, and look at all the evidence of impacts. That's good enough for me.

[vjkane]

There are no dinosaurs on the Moon, and look at all the evidence of impacts. That's good enough for me.

No one doubts that impacts happen, just whether the global effects are dino-strophic enough to kill off lots of species and families of species. Still lots of arguments on that one.

I sort of view it like the hole in the wing of Columbia. Until they did the test that proved that foam could bust a hole, there were lots of doubters despite the loss of the shuttle. So a good asteroid strike could settle this other debate. If there are any sentient survivors, of course.