Tag an Asteroid and Win 50,000 Bucks!

A pretty small prize, one would say, especially considering the implications of a large asteroid hitting the Earth in the near future. We may at least stay calm until the day of 13. April 2036, that is. This is the date when the largest asteroid orbiting through the close vicinity of the Earth may execute a fly-by around the planet and fade harmlessly in the distance, or it might decide to hurdle towards the surface of the Earth. Funny date though, I guess we'll find out if the superstitions related to the date of 13 are true or not in about 28 years. One thing is for certain, though: if they are true, the whole mankind will have a really crappy day.

Apophis has a chance of 1 in 45,000 to collide with the Earth. However, this estimation is not accurate enough, due to uncertainties related to the asteroid's orbit through the solar system. Determining its orbit through classical techniques, on the other hand, is inefficient, thus the Planetary Society initiated a project, which had the role of developing a viable plan to keep track of asteroids that may pose a potential threat to Earth, and life in general.

For such an engineering feat, the Planetary Society offered prizes totaling about 50,000 US dollars. The winners of the contest have been announced this Tuesday. The top prize of the competition went to the SpaceWorks Engineering and SpaceDev. SpaceWorks Mark Schaffer team investigator, while the first place in the student category was awarded with 5,000 dollars to the Georgia Institute of Technology. The work for the Pharos mission at the Georgia Institute of Technology was conducted by engineering student Jonathan Sharma.

Bruce Betts, director of projects of the Planetary Society, considers to be a pity that such projects have only been initiated now. We are risking a great deal by standing here doing nothing in the face of imminent danger. At least the dinosaurs had no chance to stand against extinction, but we do and have been doing mostly nothing to prevent future out of space threats.

The contest was based on the case of the asteroid Apophis, albeit the Planetary Society argues that the missions proposed by the winning teams could eventually be modified and adapted to any kind of potential dangerous asteroids. Remember, this is only related to monitoring the asteroid's orbit, the deflection of the object is yet another topic of discussion.

The next encounter with Apophis will be somewhere in the year 2029, but it is clear that it will miss Earth by about 29,470 kilometers. The approach in 2036, however, is unpredictable. If its orbit is slightly perturbed until the 2029 fly-by, the extra gravitational influence exerted by our planet could put it on a path that will send Apophis on a collision course seven years later.

Asteroid Apophis was discovered in late 2004 and measures only 250 meters. That's small comparing with the Earth's size, but it's large enough to trigger a mass extinction of life, similar to that experienced nearly 65 million years ago.

The winning design chosen by the Foresight team consists in sending an orbiter around the asteroid, with the role of establishing a radio beacon which could be subsequently monitored to determine the asteroid's orbit. In comparison, the winner project of the student section proposes an orbiter equipped with four instruments, a multispectral imager, near-infrared spectrometer, laser rangefinder and a magnetometer, to keep track of the rogue body.



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