PLEASE NOTE:
*
CCNet 86/2003 - 15 October 2003
MISSION POSSIBLE: ASTEROID TUGBOAT BACKED FOR TRIAL RUN
-------------------------------------------------------
Why be at the mercy of a menacing asteroid that has Earth in its
cross hairs?
Now an expert team of astronauts and space scientists has
blueprinted a safety
strategy for Earth: an asteroid tugboat. The group says NASA is
already working
on the right recipe of technologies to make the tug a reality. It
would be the
greatest public safety project in history. Furthermore, they
propose a mission
to demonstrate the asteroid-tug concept by 2015.
--Leonard David, Space.com,
15 October 2003
(1) MISSION POSSIBLE: ASTEROID TUGBOAT BACKED FOR TRIAL RUN
Space.com, 15 October 2003
(2) THE ASTEROID TUGBOAT
Scientific American, November 2003
(3) THE 2003 LEONID METEOR SHOWER
NASA Science News for October 10, 2003
(4) VOTE FOR SOHO'S TOP 10 IMAGES
Pål Brekke <pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov>
(5) SILVERPIT CRATER: A BRITISH DISCOVERY WITH HELP FROM THE
YANKS
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
(6) NEW U.S., LATE PLEISTOCENE IMPACT CRATER
Paul V. Heinrich <lenticulina1@yahoo.com>
(7) EPHESOS
Göran Johansson <swe99acad@tjohoo.se>
(8) AND FINALLY: METEOR STRIKE CAN BRING WINDFALL TO HOMEOWNERS
Washington Post, 12 October 2003
============
(1) MISSION POSSIBLE: ASTEROID TUGBOAT BACKED FOR TRIAL RUN
Space.com, 15 October 2003
http://www.space.com/businesstechnology/technology/asteroid_tug_031015.html
By Leonard David
BOULDER, Colorado -- In the grand cosmic scheme of things, it's
only a matter of time. Our planet is bound to tangle with an
Earth-crossing asteroid, an event sure to make a mess. Some of
these space rocks could demolish a city. Other monster boulders,
the really big bruisers, could snuff out our civilization.
But why be at the mercy of a menacing asteroid that has Earth in
its cross hairs? Now an expert team of astronauts and space
scientists has blueprinted a safety strategy for Earth: an
asteroid tugboat. The group says NASA is already working on the
right recipe of technologies to make the tug a reality. It would
be the greatest public safety project in history. Furthermore,
they propose a mission to demonstrate the asteroid-tug concept by
2015.
Details of the asteroid tug are unveiled in the November 2003
issue of Scientific American.
Lead author of the article is former astronaut, Rusty
Schweickart, Apollo 9's lunar module pilot that put the Moon
landing craft through its paces high above Earth in March 1969.
Other contributors are Piet Hut, Professor of Interdisciplinary
Studies at the Institute for Advanced Study in Princeton, New
Jersey, and asteroid specialist, Clark Chapman of the Southwest
Research Institute here in Boulder.
One more co-author is NASA astronaut Edward Lu. He is now
resident onboard the International Space Station and, in fact,
e-mailed final article edits on behalf of his fellow writers
while circling Earth.
The asteroid tug test project is dubbed the B612 mission. That's
the name of the asteroid in The Little Prince, the well-known
young person's book by Antoine de St. Exupery. In fact, late last
year, Schweickart, Lu, Hut and Chapman formed the B612
Foundation, a nonprofit group dedicated to developing and
demonstrating the capability to deflect asteroids from Earth.
The premise behind the proposal, however, is no child's play.
It's a way to ward off the doomsday rock that will sooner or
later terrorize humanity.
Ugly date with Earth
Over the years, numbers of schemes to deal with bully asteroids
have been proposed. Among them is blasting the beast to
smithereens via a nuclear bomb. Another thought is planting a
nuclear device on one side of the asteroid, then detonating the
bomb to accelerate the space rock slightly in the opposite
direction.
"The problem, however, is that the results are neither
predictable nor controllable," Schweickart and his
colleagues suggest. Also, such an explosion could split the
asteroid into pieces, leaving multiple headaches of heavenly
flotsam.
Then there's the kamikaze approach. Just crash a large robotic
spacecraft into a worrisome asteroid at high speed. This too has
its problems. Namely, you could just spin the body or knock off a
small chip.
Other ideas are reviewed by the B612 think team and are
highlighted in the Scientific American article. In their view, an
asteroid is a "push over"… push it just enough to
miss an ugly date with Earth.
Given enough warning time, an asteroid tugboat could nestle up to
the mini-world, then provide long stints of gentle pressure. The
tug would nudge the asteroid ever so slightly, but enough to
shift the space rock's orbit so an Earth collision is averted.
Mission possible
The B612 test mission to deflect an asteroid could use Variable
Specific Impulse Magnetoplasma Rocket (VASIMR) engines. The
VASIMR propulsion unit employs radio waves to ionize a gas and
accelerate the plasma to even higher exhaust velocities. Veteran
shuttle astronaut, Franklin Chang-Diaz, is exploring this novel,
low-thrust propulsion technology.
Other equipment ideal for steering into the B612 project is
scattered throughout NASA. Specifically, the space agency's
Prometheus Project to design a space-rated nuclear reactor is a
plus for any asteroid deflection scheme. Work is underway for a
Prometheus flagship mission - the Jupiter Icy Moons Orbiter
(JIMO). Hardware stemming from JIMO, the nuclear power plant,
radiator panels, a lengthy truss, and other equipment could help
nurture the asteroid tug into being.
The practice B612 mission would verify maneuvering around a
target asteroid, rendezvousing with and then attaching itself to
the body. No easy set of job tasks.
Additionally, the tug would have to hold tight to its target
asteroid. Procedures to deal with a spinning body would have to
be ironed out. Once secure to the space rock -- some 655 feet
(200-meters) wide -- the tug must use onboard engines for months
to accelerate the asteroid in the desired direction.
According to Schweickart and his fellow asteroid tug advocates,
the training mission would have a price tag of about $1 billion.
They believe that this extraterrestrial exercise could be
accomplished by 2015.
"By practicing an asteroid deflection, the B612 mission
would show whether the asteroid-tug concept is feasible and, if
so, how it should be refined in the event of a real impact
threat," the study team writes.
Schweickart told SPACE.com that the B612 proposal is meant to
educate public and political communities to the fact that
Earth-approaching asteroids are a natural, environmental threat.
"Unlike earthquakes, hurricanes, etc., we can actually do
something about them. The capability to take this action is
within reach of today's -- or tomorrow's -- technology," he
said.
Schweickart said the cost of a trial-run asteroid tug mission is
quite modest and well within the capability of the NASA budget to
handle.
"However, the expenditure necessary to establish an
operational system it will require both money and international
coordination," Schweickart added, "and both will
require a level of determination and commitment that may be hard
to come by without strong and clear demand by the general
public."
False alarms
Just how much serious attention can the B612 proposal hope to
garner?
One factor that might cause more a yawn than action is the number
of on-again/off-again threats from the sky. Those are the already
numerous predictions and projections that later turned out not to
be sure bets.
"Of course, we want our response to the impact threat to be
part of a serious, objective approach to a considered evaluation
of what the threat is," explains asteroid specialist, Clark
Chapman.
"So we don't like the irresponsible treatment of the threat
by some individuals and some -- especially British -- news media,
although we understand the psychological difficulties of dealing
with tiny probabilities of horrible events," Chapman said.
On the other hand, he noted that "any news is good
news".
"I am not specifically aware of important decision-makers
holding views that have explicitly changed -- in either direction
-- as a result of the false alarms," Chapman explained.
Wanted: serious consideration
The general message from B612, Chapman concluded, is to try and
develop, with private funds, an exciting and important
demonstration project that will robustly bring everyone up the
learning curve of what to do if a threatening Near Earth Object
is eventually found to be heading Earth's way.
"We hope that public concerns about this issue can be
translated into real financial contributions to bring these
concepts to a point where we could expect serious consideration
by one or more space agencies…agencies that have not yet
officially put asteroid mitigation into their plans,"
Chapman noted.
Chapman said that NASA's current Prometheus Project looks like an
approach to deep space missions that would be particularly well
suited to the B612 proposal.
"Obviously, beyond the mere demonstration of engineering
that could conceivably 'save the planet' -- or at least a small
part of the planet -- there would be dramatic opportunities to
learn about how to deal with a nearly gravity-free body in
space," Chapman said, "both to scientifically study
asteroids and meteorite parent bodies and to consider eventual
asteroid mining operations."
Copyright 2003, Space.com
========
(2) THE ASTEROID TUGBOAT
Scientific American, November 2003
http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000EB755-511C-1F7F-911C83414B7F0000
To prevent an asteroid from hitting Earth, a space tug equipped
with plasma engines could give it a push
By Russell L. Schweickart, Edward T. Lu, Piet Hut and Clark R.
Chapman
On an average night, more than 100 million pieces of
interplanetary debris enter Earth's atmosphere. Luckily, most of
these bits of asteroids and comets are no bigger than small
pebbles; the total weight of the 100 million objects is only a
few tons. And our planet's atmosphere is thick enough to vaporize
the vast majority of these intruders.
So the debris usually streaks harmlessly overhead, leaving the
bright trails popularly known as shooting stars.
When bigger objects slam into the atmosphere, however, they
explode rather than vaporize. In January 2000, for example, a
rock about two to three meters wide exploded over Canada's Yukon
Territory with a force equivalent to four or five kilotons of
TNT. This kind of event occurs once a year, on average. Less
frequently, larger rocks produce even more powerful explosions.
In June 1908 a huge fireball was seen descending over the
Tunguska region of Siberia. It was followed by an enormous blast
that flattened more than 2,000 square kilometers of forest. The
consensus among scientists today is that a rocky asteroid about
60 meters in diameter exploded some six kilometers above the
ground with a force of about 10 megatons of TNT. The blast wave
devastated an area approximately the size of metropolitan New
York City....continued at Scientific American Digital
FULL ARTICLE CAN BE BOUGHT at http://www.sciam.com/article.cfm?chanID=sa006&colID=1&articleID=000EB755-511C-1F7F-911C83414B7F0000
=========
(3) THE 2003 LEONID METEOR SHOWER
NASA Science News for October 10, 2003
http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/10oct_doubleleonids.htm?list20392
An unusual double Leonid meteor shower is going to peak next
month over parts of Asia and North America.
October 10, 2003: The Leonid meteor shower is coming. Twice.
Bill Cooke of the Space Environments Group at the NASA Marshall
Space Flight Center explains: "Normally there's just one
Leonid meteor shower each year, but this year we're going to have
two: one on Nov. 13th and another on Nov. 19th."
Both are caused by comet Tempel-Tuttle, which swings through the
inner solar system every 33 years. With each visit the comet
leaves behind a trail of dusty debris--the stuff of meteor
showers. Lots of the comet's old dusty trails litter the
mid-November part of Earth's orbit.
"Our planet glides through the debris zone every year,"
says Cooke. "It's like a minefield. Sometimes we hit a dust
trail, sometimes we don't." Direct hits can spark a meteor
storm, which is defined as more than 1000 shooting stars per
hour. "That's what happened in, for example, 1966 and
2001," says Cooke. "Those were great years for
Leonids."
"This year we're going to brush past two of the trails--no
direct hits," he says. Even so, "we might have a nice
display."
The first shower is expected on Nov. 13th around 17:17 UT. For
about three hours centered on that time Earth will be close to
some dust shed by Tempel-Tuttle in the year 1499. Sky watchers in
Alaska, Hawaii and along the Pacific rim of Asia are favored.
They'll see anywhere from a few to 40 meteors per hour--"if
they can avoid the glare from that night's gibbous Moon,"
cautions Cooke. A good strategy for moonlit meteor observing:
travel to high altitudes where the air is clear or stand in the
shade of a tall building or hillside.
FULL STORY at http://science.nasa.gov/headlines/y2003/10oct_doubleleonids.htm?list20392
========
(4) VOTE FOR SOHO'S TOP 10 IMAGES
Pål Brekke <pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov>
SOHO will be celebrating the 8th Anniversary of its launch on 2
December 2003.
To help commemorate this event, a Top 10 list of SOHO's images
will be featured
on the SPACE.com astronomy web site, with a related article about
SOHO's
achievements. We want you to help us decide which images to
feature. On our
voting page you will see 30 thumbnails of our favorite SOHO
images (click on any
of them to make them larger). All you have to do is tell us
which five of the
images you like the most. Just click in the
"VOTE" box under five of these
images, then click "Submit votes". The voting
will end on 17 November. The
results will be posted on 25 November on SPACE.com, and will be
available here a
day later.
Full story and how to vote here. You can win som nice prizes by
participating.
http://sohowww.nascom.nasa.gov/hotshots/
=====================================================================
Dr. Pål Brekke |
Tel: +1-301-286-6983
SOHO Deputy Project Scientist |
Mob: +1-301-996-9028
European Space Agency |
Fax: +1-301-286-0264
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
| pbrekke@esa.nascom.nasa.gov
Mail Code 682.3, Bld. 26, Room G-1 |
Greenbelt, MD 20771, USA. | http://soho.nascom.nasa.gov/
=====================================================================
=============
(5) SILVERPIT CRATER: A BRITISH DISCOVERY WITH HELP FROM THE
YANKS
Michael Paine <mpaine@tpg.com.au>
Dear Benny
See these articles
regards
Michael Paine
http://www.edge.ou.edu/news/SilverpitCrater.PDF
(600K PDF)
SILVERPIT CRATER: A BRITISH DISCOVERY WITH HELP FROM THE YANKS
Richard R. Donofrio, Research Associate, Petroleum and
Astrogeology,
Exploration and Development Geosciences [EDGe], University of
Oklahoma,
Norman, Oklahoma, August 2003
It has been one year since the announcement of the Silverpit
discovery
in the British journal, Nature. EDGe would like to set the record
straight about a key cross-section, which was used in the
Silverpit
interpretation. Briefly, to review the events that led to the
Silverpit
discovery, it appears that two British geoscientists, Simon
Stewart of
British Petroleum and Phillip Allen of Production Geoscience
Ltd., were
working on some reprocessed North Sea seismic and noticed an
unusual
buried structure. They were perplexed, until they came across an
article
written by this author. Two months after the announcement of the
Silverpit discovery in the August 1, 2002 issue of Nature (“A
20-km-diameter multi-ringed impact structure in the North Sea”),
Phillip
Allen mentioned in correspondence,“I owe you one. It was
only when
someone (Simon Stewart I think) showed me your illustration in
[sic] Oil
& Gas Journal (1998) that I was convinced that we had an
impact!” We
Yanks are proud to say that the article Mr. Allen is referring to
has
been available here at EDGe News for the past five years,
courtesy of
the U.S. Oil & Gas Journal. It is a cover-story article
showing an
impact collision into an ocean, which appeared in the May 11,
1998
issue. The illustration of interest shows the structural profile
of a
complex-type impact crater, which was used by the Brits to
interpret the
Silverpit seismic. The article was first published a year earlier
under
a different title by the Oklahoma Geological Survey in Circular
100,
1997 (the impact structure papers in that circular are from a
1995
symposium at the University of Oklahoma). For some reason, the
Brits in
their Nature publication did not show the illustration or mention
the
Oil & Gas Journal or Oklahoma Geological Survey articles.
EDGe thanked
Mr. Allen for his compliment about the illustration back in
November
2002 in the notes of an online article titled “Bay of Biscay
Feature:
Multiringed?” (see EDGe News link at end). The Bay of Biscay
article
contains seismic cross-sections of Silverpit. Readers can compare
these
to the Oil & Gas Journal and Oklahoma Geological Survey
impact crater
illustrations (the best comparison is with images of similar
scale and
inclination). We’ve seen many different structural and
seismic profiles
of astroblemes over the years, but Silverpit is multi-ringed and
captivating. EDGe is developing a synthetic seismic profile of
Silverpit
for a later article, and we look forward to sharing our expertise
in
astrogeology with our fellow Brits and others.
c2003 EDGe
(See also other news items at http://www.edge.ou.edu/news/
)
http://pippo.ingentaselect.com/vl=32258692/cl=71/nw=1/rpsv/cw/mal/15311074/v3n2/s10/p271
A Hydrothermal System Associated with the Siljan Impact
Structure,
Sweden - Implications for the Search for Fossil Life on Mars
Tomas Hode, Ilka von Dalwigk, Curt Broman
Astrobiology Volume: 3 Number: 2
Page: 271 -- 289
Abstract: The Siljan ring structure (368 ± 1.1 Ma) is the
largest known
impact structure in Europe. It is a 65-km-wide, eroded, complex
impact
structure, displaying several structural units, including a
central
uplifted region surrounded by a ring-shaped depression.
Associated with
the impact crater are traces of a post-impact hydrothermal system
indicated by precipitated and altered hydrothermal mineral
assemblages.
Precipitated hydrothermal minerals include quartz veins and
breccia
fillings associated with granitic rocks at the outer margin of
the
central uplift, and calcite, fluorite, galena, and sphalerite
veins
associated with Paleozoic carbonate rocks located outside the
central
uplift. Two-phase water/gas and oil/gas inclusions in calcite and
fluorite display homogenization temperatures between 75°C and
137°C.
With an estimated erosional unloading of ~1 km, the formation
temperatures were probably not more than 10-15°C higher. Fluid
inclusion
ice-melting temperatures indicate a very low salt content,
reducing the
probability that the mineralization was precipitated during the
Caledonian Orogeny. Our findings suggest that large impacts
induce
low-temperature hydrothermal systems that may be habitats for
thermophilic organisms. Large impact structures on Mars may
therefore be
suitable targets in the search for fossil thermophilic organisms.
Copyright © by Mary Ann Liebert, Inc. 2003
=========== LETTERS ===========
(6) NEW US, LATE PLEISTOCENE IMPACT CRATER
Paul V. Heinrich <lenticulina1@yahoo.com>
Benny Peiser
Your listmember might be interested in
the article "Possible Meteorite Impact
Crater in St. Helena Parish, Louisiana"
that can be found at:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/2003/heinrich/index.htm
the original article can found on pages
3 - 5 of the June 2003 issue of
Louisiana Geological Survey News at:
http://www.lgs.lsu.edu/old/june2003.pdf
http://www.lgs.lsu.edu/newsletter.htm
Since the above article was published,
in situ shocked quartz has been found
samples from highly fractured Citronelle
Fm. lying beneath rim deposits.
A full paper will be published in the
2003 volume Transactions of the Gulf
Coast Association of Geological Societies.
An abstract of the paper can be found
in "Abstracts (By Author) Gulf Coast
Association of Geological Societies
53rd Annual Convention, Baton Rouge, LA,
October 22-24, 2003 Hosted by Baton
Rouge Geological Society" at:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/gcags2003/index.htm
and under "Origin of a Circular
Depression and Associated Fractured
and Shocked Quartz, St. Helena Parish,
LA by Paul V. Heinrich" at:
http://www.searchanddiscovery.com/documents/abstracts/gcags2003/heinrich.pdf
Yours,
Paul V. Heinrich
Baton Rouge, LA
=========
(7) EPHESOS
Göran Johansson <swe99acad@tjohoo.se>
Dear Benny,
On October 9, Daniel Fischer asked for comments about the
possibility that Ephesos was
founded after a meteorite impact. The following is from a posting
by myself on January 30
last year.
"But from summer, 3rd year of Murshilish II, we have an
interesting story. It is quoted
in Younger, Ancient Conquest Accounts, page 208. The king was
marching with his army towards
the west when they observed a meteor. The city Apasa (Ephesus?)
was struck by it."
This should be about 3320 years ago. If Ephesos and Apasa were
the same cities, then Ephesos
was founded before a memorable impact.
Göran Johansson
swe99acad@tjohoo.se
==========
(8) AND FINALLY: METEOR STRIKE CAN BRING WINDFALL TO HOMEOWNERS
Washington Post, 12 October 2003
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13698-2003Oct11.html
By Lee Hockstader
NEW ORLEANS -- So a meteorite crashes through your roof,
pulverizes a bedroom upstairs, obliterates a powder room
downstairs and splinters into pieces in the crawl space beneath
your house.
Now what?
You are not necessarily having a bad day. Provided you are not
flattened like a pancake, you might even get rich. But you may
want to start screening your calls and doing some homework,
because you have just become a bit player in a
multimillion-dollar enterprise -- the strange, impassioned,
big-budget commerce in interplanetary objects.
That is what Roy and Kay Fausset, owners of a New Orleans gift
shop, have been learning since they came home from work on Sept.
23, opened the front door and were confronted by what insurers
would regard as "an act of God."
FULL STORY at http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A13698-2003Oct11.html
-----------
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