Asteroid Alert!

The year 2036 is going to bring an asteroid dangerously close to the Earth on April 13^th. An asteroid named Apophis is being tracked by astronomers, along with many other possible asteroids that are aimed toward our planet. The Association of Space Explorers and NASA are thinking of coming up with plans on how to avoid letting Apophis and other asteroids hit the Earth and presenting them to the United Nations in 2009. In San Francisco, an Advancement of Science conference had taken place to discuss this issue. An astronaut named Ed Lu, a veteran of the international space station, proposed the idea of letting a spacecraft go into space and use gravity to change the asteroid’s course. The name given to this idea is the Gravity Tractor. What the spacecraft would do in this plan is that it would stay in one position next to the asteroid for a few days and would apply a gentle tug to the asteroid. I just wonder if it really will make the asteroid go off its course. Ed Lu predicts that it will take about 12 days for the gravity-pulling to alter Apophis’s path, since it is around 460 feet long. The cost of this project is predicted to be around $300 million! I really hope that this plan is fool-proof and will keep our Earth from danger with all the money it is costing. If it does not, then Apophis will probably hit the Earth, even though there is a 1 in 45,000 chance of the asteroid striking the Earth, and destroy an entire city or region! I feel that the scientists should quickly think of plans on how to save the Earth and have them confirmed by the U.N. so that the plans could be put into action. I would not want to have a huge asteroid hit the homes of different people and leave a gigantic crater on the Earth’s surface as a memory of the incident. I don’t think anybody wants that to happen. Hopefully, astronomers, space researchers and the United Nations will soon think of ideas on how to keep the Earth from having a major disaster.

If you are interested in learning more about this topic, you can visit this website: http://www.cnn.com/2007/TECH/space/02/19/asteroid.deflector.reut/index.html