Questions tagged [near-earth-object]
Questions about Near-Earth Objects or NEO for short, a term describing meteoroids, asteroids, comets, man-made spacecraft, space observatories, and space debris whose orbit brings them into proximity with Earth. See also: [near-earth-asteroid]
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How can uncertainty about the position of an object decrease over time?
The Near-Earth Objects Coordination Centre predicts future close approaches with Earth, for example these approaches for 2010RF12. For example, the time uncertainty of the 2022-09-23 closest approach ...
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What is the inertial heliocentric reference system used by NASA JPL to calculate the ephemerides of Near Earth Objects?
I'm using the website of NASA JPL Horizon system at this link Small-Body Database Query
to download a database of orbital elements for NEOs (asteroids and comets).
Although I checked the Horizons ...
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Are pictures of Earth' space junk realistic?
Every time I look at a picture that shows the amount of space junk I'm baffled. I can't for the life of me think how anything else being launch into orbit actually makes it without hitting anything ...
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What is NEOCam's (now NEO Surveyor) strategy for scanning the sky? Need to consider in which coordinate system?
In Survey Simulations of a New Near-Earth Asteroid Detection System it can be seen that Infrared astronomer Amy Mainzer gave the scanning strategy of the horizon in a paper, but I am very confused ...
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Has there ever been an instance of asteroid discovery by radar; seen first by radar rather than being observed after optical discovery?
In a discussion below this answer to Can we use something like RADAR to detect asteroids? I'm complaining that the answer is essentially wrong;
Yes, radar is one of the useful tools for detecting and ...
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How will NEO Surveyor manage 82 gigabits/day of data? How will it process it, what fraction will be sent to Earth and how it compares to TESS & GAIA?
Wikipedia says says:
NEO Surveyorformerly called Near-Earth Object Camera (NEOCam), then NEO Surveillance Mission, is a planned space-based infrared telescope designed to survey the Solar System for ...
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Puzzler: Why higher solar phase angle (SPA) allows for many more feasible FastKD (kinetic deflection) communications satellite “hijacking” missions?
Space.com's advert-laden Repurposed communications satellites could help save humanity from an asteroid impact ends with:
The study results were presented at the Planetary Defence (sic) Conference ...
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What asteroids have the least delta-v to reach?
I think the question needs very little clarification - specific asteroids and/or their asteroid orbit type would answer it. My own interest is in what would best suit targeting for asteroid mining on ...
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Earth Live Video Feed in HD?
Is there any space agency that provides a live video of Earth, in HD? Preferably without anything man-made in the way (e.g some ISS robotic arm)?
I want to create a live HD wallpaper of Earth, so I'm ...
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Do all dangerous asteroids first pass through keyholes?
Scitech Daily's MIT Engineers Devise the Best Way to Deflect an Incoming Planet-Killer Asteroid
Now MIT researchers have devised a framework for deciding which type of mission would be most ...
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How do we know what percentage of NEOs we've discovered?
I stumbled upon this answer: https://space.stackexchange.com/a/41535/10334
It states the percentage of NEOs we have already discovered.
Seeing this I've asked myself: How do we know what percentage ...
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Are the estimated chances of Bennu hitting Earth in the next 200 years still about "1 in 1410" now that OSIRIS REx has scanned it?
This 2016 answer to Does Bennu pose a risk to Earth? And how can OSIRIS-REx's mission save us? says:
Does Bennu pose a risk to Earth?: recent calculations produced a cumulative probability of 1 in ...
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What is the "interesting story" on the limitations of NASA's current near Earth object survey network"?
Axios' NASA emails reveal agency's surprise at asteroid's near-miss of Earth cites Buzzfeed's A “Sneaky” Asteroid Narrowly Missed Earth This Summer. Internal Emails Show How NASA Scientists Totally ...
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What are monostatic radar observations, and how will Deep Space Network's DSS-13 be used to observe asteroid 1999 WK4's flyby of Earth?
NASA JPL page https://echo.jpl.nasa.gov/asteroids/1999KW4/1999KW4_planning.2019.html says of the radar observations during the close approach of asteroid 1994 KW4 (in part):
Update on 2019 May 22: A ...
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Separating fact from fiction, how to get from this radar image to this GIF?
The NBC News article Mile-wide asteroid and its tiny moon to zoom past Earth this weekend; Dubbed 1999 KW4, the "binary" space rock will skim past our planet harmlessly at a distance of 3 million ...
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How will the "fleet of small asteroid hunters" proposed by the B612 Foundation & York Space Systems work?
The June 2018 news item in Science To find small asteroids that could hit Earth, private foundation embraces small satellites says:
On 10 May, B612 announced a partnership with York Space Systems, a ...
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Could Starman get ejected from the Solar System?
This is not about a prediction of Starman's fate, although it might be interesting to find it so.
This is about any object having similar aphelion and perihelion values to Starman (Elon Musk's Tesla ...
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Yikes! How did we miss 2017 VL2?
The Tech Times article NASA Fails To Spot Whale-Sized Asteroid That Skimmed Past Earth says that Asteroid 2017 VL2 passed the Earth within about 120,000 km, or about 1/3 the distance of the Moon on ...
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Is it possible to calculate NEO position with NASA near-Earth object data?
I am using the NASA NEO object data:
listing of NEOs;
specific NEO Data.
Given the information in this JSON data, is it possible to calculate the position of the NEO in relation to Earth? It doesn'...
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Why has the Earth-Sun libration point L1 been chosen over L2 for NEOCam (now NEO Surveyor) to detect new NEOs?
above: Profoundly not-to-scale illustration of NEOCam in an orbit around the Sun-Earth libration point L1, about 1.5 million kilometers from Earth. Presumably Sun-shield and Earth-shield block light (...
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How will OSIRIS-REx scan and characterise the near-earth asteroid Bennu?
The 34 day launch window for the OSIRIS-REx probe will open in about five weeks (early September 2016), and it's approach to the near earth asteroid 101955 Bennu (provisional designation 1999 RQ36) is ...
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Why do (did) they think WT1190F is low density?
A piece of space debris WT1190F is in the news in part because it has been far from earth (farther than lunar distance) in the past but will should have already re-enter earth's atmosphere in a few ...
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Have there been any documented mini-moons since 2006 RH120?
The conference call with Bill Bottke (MP3 plus other documents) about "minimoons" presents an alternative to Asteroid Redirect first got me interested in orbital mechanics. The idea is that there are ...
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Asteroid 2013 TX68 March 5, 2016 close approach, and calculating with Skyfield
This NASA webpage describes the close approach of asteroid 2013 TX68 on March 5, 2016 and shows a probability distribution of the point of closest approach based on the only data available at this ...
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Mining a near-Earth passing asteroid with profit?
The answer by PearsonArtPhoto in this question got me thinking, particularly this line:
Asteroids would be cheaper to go to than the Moon
I suppose the subject here are asteroids that pass in the ...
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Understanding gravitational keyhole analysis for Near-Earth Objects
I've been studying the resonant return and gravitational keyhole analysis for NEOs and using the extension of Öpik's theory of close encounters (aka Öpik-Valsecchi theory, Valsecchi et al., Astron ...
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Are NMAs (Near Mars Asteroids) common and useful for exploration?
Thousands of NEAs have been observed out of estimated 285,000 larger than 40 meters. A handful of Martian trojans have been found, but should there be more or fewer NMAs than NEAs?
NEAs can become ...
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Extinction asteroid (10-100 km) impact avoidance
With the present "state-of-the-art" of space technology what is possible to do to avoid an Earth impact by rocky bodies 10 km to 100 km in diameter?
Is there any international project to develop a ...
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Does the Earth have any Trojan asteroids?
Are there any known Trojan objects residing in the Sun-Earth L4 (SEL4) and L5 (SEL5) Lagrange points, also named "Greek" and "Trojan" groups, respectively?
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Why does NASA plan to put a meteoroid in Lunar orbit instead of Earth orbit?
NASA is working on an asteroid retrieval mission. A small asteroid will be moved into Lunar orbit where it will be visited by space walking astronauts. Since it will be only max seven meters in ...
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