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

[agzak at optonline.net]

Good practice for Russia would be to launch anything beyond Earth orbit in the next decade, before making stupid statements to even more stupid reporters :)

Anatoly Zak
http://www.russianspaceweb.com



----- Original Message -----
From: LARRY KLAES <ljk4 at msn.com>
Date: Wednesday, December 30, 2009 6:32 pm
Subject: Re: [FPSPACE] Now the Russian asteroid mission is a "secret plan"
To: Peter Pesavento <pjp961 at svol.net>, "fpspace at friends-partners.org " <fpspace at friends-partners.org>

> I thought astronomer had determined that this particular space rock 
> would not hit our planet any time soon after all?
> 
> A deflection mission would be good practice though. 
> 
> Larry
> 
> Sent via BlackBerry by AT&T
> 
> -----Original Message-----
> From: Peter Pesavento <pjp961 at svol.net>
> Date: Wed, 30 Dec 2009 16:42:10 
> To: <fpspace at friends-partners.org>
> Subject: [FPSPACE] Now the Russian asteroid mission is a "secret plan"
> 
> Here's the latest article 
>   
> http://rawstory.com/2009/12/russia-secret-plan-save-earth-asteroid-
> official/ <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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