[FPSPACE] Now the Russian asteroid mission is a "secret plan"

[Peter Pesavento]

Here's the latest article

 

http://rawstory.com/2009/12/russia-secret-plan-save-earth-asteroid-official/

 

Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official

By Ron Brynaert <http://rawstory.com/2009/author/ronbrynaert/> 

Wednesday, December 30th, 2009 -- 10:25 am

 

MOSCOW - Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for
saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in
26 years, the head of Russia's space agency said Wednesday.

"We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical
council to look at what can be done" to prevent the asteroid Apophis from
slamming into the planet in 2036, Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia
radio.

"We are talking about people's lives," Perminov was quoted by news agencies
as telling the radio station.

"Better to spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for
preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of
thousands of people are killed," he said.

The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350 metres (1,150 feet) in
diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when
it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.

Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be
an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space
experts.

Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new "space
apparatus" designed solely for the purpose of diverting Apophis from a
collision course with Earth safely.

"There won't be any nuclear explosions," Perminov said. "Everything will be
done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this."

In a statement dated from October and posted on its website, the US space
agency NASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated "a
significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in
2036."

"Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the
probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped
from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million," NASA said.

RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000 kilometres
(18,600 miles) of Earth in 2029 -- closer than some geo-stationary
satellites -- and could shift course to hit Earth seven years years after
that.

 

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