High Odds of Oncoming Asteroid Impacting Mars
“These odds are extremely unusual. We frequently work with really long odds when we track … threatening asteroids,” said Steve Chesley, an astronomer with the Near Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. “We’re used to dealing with odds like one-in-a-million. Something with a one-in-a-hundred chance makes us sit up straight in our chairs.”
On January 30, 2008, there will be a one in 75 chance of a newly discovered asteroid, the Asteroid 2007 WD5, impacting Mars in the area where the twin rover Opportunity has been exploring since 2004. Currently located between Earth and Mars, was formerly given the odds of one out of 350, but on December 20, 2007, these odds were raised dramatically with latest tracking methods.
The Asteroid 2007 WD5 was first discovered last November, and is fast approaching Mars at about 30,000 per hour, according to the United States National Aeronautics and Space Administration. First sighted in November, there has been continuous tracking of the asteroid which measures 160 feet across, estimated upon impact to leave a half-mile-wide crater at the exploration area of the Mars’ equator.
The is a similar situation compared to the Arizona space rock when it hit Earth about 50,000 year ago, when it was previously estimated hitting the planet at 34,000 miles per hour, an estimation based on calculations from the speeds of larger meteors in relation to Earth. But in actuality, half the original 300,000-ton meteor was still intact when it hit the Earth at 26,800 mph.
The rover Opportunity is not the only one in trouble if the meteor hits this area, but also the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and many other spacecraft that are in position to study any orbital impact data. “An impact that we could witness/follow-up with MRO would be truly spectacular, and could tell us much about the hidden subsurface that could help direct a search for life or life-related molecules,” said John Rummel, NASA’s senior scientist for astrobiology at the agency’s Washington, D.C., headquarters.
More refined observations are being developed by the astronomers at New Mexico Tech’s Magdalena Ridge Observatory, with recent data estimating the odds of impact being lowered to one in 28 odds. The impact of the likely strike zone is estimated to be at the Martian equator, with a possible explosion occurring under the pressure they create as they enter the Martian atmosphere—similar to the Earth atmosphere—with a chance of the meteor hitting the ground intact making a single crater, or a series of clusters.
This entry was posted on Saturday, January 5th, 2008 at 12:22 pm and is filed under Space Agency News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can leave a response, or trackback from your own site.
