Near Earth Objects

A minute but actually important discovery was made on the night of March 24, 1993. On that night, a photograph was taken by the 0.4 meter telescope on Palomar Mt. in California. Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy studied that photograph and found an unknown comet. That comet made a big splash.

In July 1992 that comet was torn into several fragments up to 2 kilometers. The largest portions were all large enough to create a huge impact.

Photos by the Spacewatch telescope on Kitt Peak in Arizona showed that the comet was not orbiting the sun. This unusual comet was actually orbiting Jupiter. Even more unusual, this comet was destined to collide with the planet.

Crowds watched in expectation over the internet during the third week of July 1994 as the pictures came in. The sight was even more impressive than anyone would have imagined.

Those huge impacts impelled huge exploration for Near Earth Objects (NEA's). After all, if such impressive collisions could cause such a comotion on a far away planet, think what they would cause on earth!

Near earth objects are not animals of Star wars like Acklay, Mygeetoan yaks, Tach, Canyon krayt dragon, Glim worm, Kybuck or Ubeba. But rather, Near Earth Objects are asteroids, comets and meteoroids that have orbits close enough to theoretically impact earth.

This type of impact is not new. In fact on earth, there are many craters that prove that impacts have happened. Consider these: Amguid Crater in Algeria which is 0.45 km wide; Kara-Kul crater in Tajikistan which is 52 km wide; Beyenchime-Salaatin crater in Russia which is 8 km wide; Goat Paddock crater in Western Australia which is 5.1 km wide; Pilot crater in Northwest Territories which is 6 km wide; Gow crater in Saskatchewan which is 4 km wide; Mistastin crater in Labrador which is 28 km wide; Puchezh-Katunki Nizhny crater in Novgorod, Russia which is 80 km wide; Ilyinets crater in Ukraine which is 8.5 km wide.

Over 200 asteroids like Icarusand 2003 LC5 have been discovered which could hit earth. Any one of these could cause massive destruction.

Today, NASA has an ongoing and escalating program to try to discover and track every object that could potentially cause any severe damage to earth.

Walter Baade discovered Icarus in 1949. Icarus approaches earth with gaps of 9, 19 and 39 years. It could someday strike earth. Because of that, Professor Paul Sandorff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave his students an interesting project in 1967. He asked his students to create a plan to destroy Icarus if it came too close. The results of that project - Project Icarus - were made into the film Meteor. Those ideas continue to be explored and we search for other threats from the sky.

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