Asteroids are considered relics of the development of planet and potential danger to earth and moon. Scientists are currently observing thousands of chunks that can get too close to our planet – and plan for an emergency.
You can become a great danger to the earth. The extinction of the dinosaurs and the devastation of entire areas probably go to their account. Hundreds of thousands of the chunks that are left over to planet are still flying around in the vastness of our solar system. Tens of thousands are known that could also cross the orbit of our home planet and the moon or come close.
Experts do not currently see great dangers that the earth is hit by a larger asteroid. The Jet Propulsion Laboratory from the US space agency NASA classified the probability that the Asteroid “2024 YR4” in 2032 will in the meantime hire up to 3.1 percent.
But later it came to the conclusion that he would not meet her. Even, according to the chief coordinator for the asteroid defense of the European space agency ESA, Richard Moissl, has been excluded with the latest data that the asteroid will hit our home planet.
“But since then, the probability of impact on the moon has risen, now around four percent,” says Moissl on the occasion of the international day of asteroids on June 30th. In any case, the approximately 60 meter tall chunks will fly past close to the moon. If he falls on the satellite, it would be a huge spectacle. He would most likely do this on the side of the earth. “That means you could most likely observe it from the earth when good weather is.”
“Nothing happens on Earth, except that we have a nice spectacle,” says asteroid expert Detlef Koschny, who also holds the professorship for lunare and planetary exploration at the Technical University of Munich. “Of course he does not change the moon track, he is too small for that.” He would probably beat a crater of a few 100 meters or even two kilometers. Experts can only research what exactly will happen from 2028, because the asteroid is currently out of view.
There are several examples of the enormous devastation of the danger from space, even if most smaller boulders burn up. A chunk of ten to 15 kilometers could have been responsible for the extinction of the dinosaurs. On June 30, 1908, an approximately 40 to 50 meter asteroid went down over Siberia and bent millions of trees on an area almost as large as Saarland in the Tunguska region.
With a view to this event, the United Nations later excluded the Asteroid Day to draw attention to the dangers and opportunities through the celestial bodies. In February 2013, a 20 -meter celestial body exploded over the city of Tscheljabinsk. Around 1,500 people were injured by the pressure wave and splintering glass.
Researchers are working on asteroid defense programs
According to Moissl, the Moissl destructive power is already nationally large from 100 to 150 meters. Then it is no longer about a population center, but also about the whole surrounding area and the infrastructure. “You would try to ward off.” From 50 meters you already have a good chance of influencing such an object.
There is a first mission to distract asteroids. In September 2022, the NASA probe “darts” hit a double-sized oid and changed the path of the small dimorphos around the larger didymos. In the coming year, the ESA mission “Hera” will arrive there and scientifically examine the impact. “By data from ‘Hera’, we can then understand much better how we have to tackle it in an emergency because we just learn much better what happened there,” says Moissl.
According to Koschny, it is about the questions, how much has the train changed? What is the mass of the asteroid? How efficient was that moving? It is also important for possible defense missions to know how much mass it takes for a distraction.
In addition, the space travel agencies monitor so -called Near Earth Objects, i.e. asteroids that could come close to the earth on their orbit. “At the moment, now, almost 38,500 are known,” says Moissl. Telescopes in space are also planned, with which asteroids coming from the sun can also be better discovered. In the future, a new telescope with a wide field of vision is to serve as asteroid hunters from Sicily.
Asteroids are also to be further researched. In 2029, the approximately 350 meter asteroid apophis will pass the earth at just 32,000 kilometers away. This is almost nothing in the vastness of the solar system. There could also be a mission on the flight.
“You can see it with the naked eye,” says Koschny. But he also comes into the appeal of the earth and with it there could be rock slide or the asteroid is deformed. “And of course this is scientifically exciting again and, above all, important for this topic of planetary defense, to know how firm are asteroids.”
“The advantage or the exciting thing about the asteroids is that, like the comets, there are also remnants from the formation of the solar system,” says Koschny. The two key questions are for him, where did all the water come from and why could life be created so quickly? The water couldn’t have been on earth. It was so hot at the beginning that everything would be evaporated.
And the emergence of life? “There is the idea that some carbon chains, organic molecules, the lego bricks, so to speak, for life, that they have been brought out of space and then already delivered on site, again by comet and asteroids.”
DPA/ LPI
