1.7 miles long, this unusually long space rock is currently expected to make a fly-be of Earth on May 31st at 2:59 AM. Asteroid 1998 QE2 will be passing us at a SAFE distance of 3.6 million miles – that’s about 15 times the distance between Earth & the moon.
What is different about this rock? Well, it is covered in a black gunk. It is theorized that this ‘gunk’ is due to the comet that originated it having flown to close to the Sun, but as we are unsure of its origins. It is hoped that this observational opportunity will give us the chance to learn.
This asteroid is the extinction kind and though it will miss us by a decent distance this time, we are sure to butt heads again soon! 1998 QE2 will pass again in 2119. Hopefully be then we are either prepared or have left the neighborhood!
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Who is Osiris? The god of the afterlife, the underworld and the dead. Although his realm was the afterlife, the Egyptians viewed him as benign and that one day he would rise from the dead and bring with him the kings that had passed as well. What is OSIRIS? That is NASA’s mission set for 2016 where they will take off, visit the Asteroid 1019ST Bennu and study it completely. Intended is mapping the rock through the use of visible, invisible & x-ray spectrums. Once they have done that a sample collector will land and scoop several grams of material before returning to Earth. The trip back is expected to take 2 years and land the sample in the Utah desert by 2023.
Additional mission specs indicate that the asteroid that may threaten earth in 2169 & 2199 and so the calculations are to be shored up at that time as well. –A thought. Maybe we could use a craft that came apart, one piece would return the sample to Earth and the other would alter the trajectory so that instead of shoring up calculations, they are no longer a concern.
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One more NASA & the Asteroid story. The year is purported to be 2019 and the plan? The plan is for a robotic space ship to lasso an asteroid and drag it back and leave up in space near the moon. At that time the Orion capsule with several Astronauts on board would explore the Asteroid. This is to speed up the original plan as by bringing the asteroid here to Earth, the astronauts can begin much sooner than if they took the trip out to the asteroid and did the research there.
If you are biting your lips with concern over their plan going awry, perhaps you need more details. The size of the asteroid they are looking to bring back to our area of space is about 25 feet. This is not only smaller than the rock that hit Russia. Still concerned? Don’t be. Should the asteroid inadvertently enter Earth’s space, an asteroid of that size would burn up in the atmosphere.
NASA always has redundancy and cross-application sorts of missions. This in mind, perhaps this asteroid is expected to be mined for Carbon for the Carbon Nano-Tubes necessary for the Space Elevator. Needed is a 10 meter diameter cable to be formed from Carbon ribbon, so they could certainly use more raw materials!
Needed would be a C-Type Asteroid (Carbonous) and actually that sort might be the more interesting kind to view up close as it is believed that they are made of primitive material that has not altered, been heated or cooled, since their formation back when they were first formed. (Say about 4.6 billion years ago)
If you aren’t impressed over the plans, you should be. NASA & the people of Earth are reaching farther and doing more than they ever could before. (insert AWESOME! Here)
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