NASA warns about the asteroid Apocalypse five days before the end of the world – RIA Novosti

10:2205.11.2016

(updated: 10:33 05.11.2016)

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MOSCOW, 5 Dec – RIA Novosti. Astronomers and programmers, NASA has established an early warning system “asteroid attack”, which can almost guaranteed to detect any asteroid, approaching at a dangerously close distance, five days before its approach to Earth, according to Universe Today.

In the last few decades, scientists around the world actively monitor the near-earth asteroids and hold a kind of cosmic census, trying to figure out how dangerous they are for humanity. Asteroids in near-earth space so much that astronomers had to create a special scale to assess how likely they fall to the Ground.

Despite all this and the huge number of asteroids discovered in recent years using ground-based telescopes and infrared space Observatory WISE, many of the larger asteroids and countless smaller objects the size of Chelyabinsk meteorite that fell to Earth in February 2013 remain open and not humanity.

As reported by NASA back in 2011 at the first presentation of the catalog of NEOWISE, today there are only about five thousand asteroids about one hundred meters, while their total number is estimated at tens of thousands. The number of smaller objects within the main asteroid belt may be more and more to reach a million.

For this reason, NASA, Roscosmos and other space agencies are actively working to develop detection system asteroids before approaching the Earth, and reflect on the creation of means of “space defense”.

the First product of this kind was the Scout system, developed at NASA and successfully tested in late October and early November. Using the automatic telescope PAN-STARRS, it could detect the asteroid 2016 UR36 five days before his rapprochement with the planet, calculate the diameter from 5 to 25 meters and to determine the distance at which it will close, about 1.3 the distance between the Moon and Earth.

Five days may seem like an excessively short period, insufficient to even send a mission with Bruce Willis in a potentially hazardous asteroid, but previously, scientists could see that the space of “killer” only for a couple of hours before his fall to the Ground. For five days, at least, it is possible to assess the impact from a fall and to take appropriate measures to save the inhabitants of the area where it hits.

In 2018, NASA will orbit a clutch of microsatellites NEA Scout that will help ground the “scout” to fill the gaps in knowledge about asteroids like the Chelyabinsk. When such an object will approach the Earth, one of the probes will fly up to it, will make detailed images of its surface and “feel” it to investigate the structure of mineral resources and chemical composition.