Asteroid Juno

This artist's concept of asteroid 3 June shows the "bite" taken out of the asteroid by an impact. (David A. Aguilar, Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics)

Images of asteroid 3 Juno taken with the 100-inch Hooker telescope at Mt. Wilson Observatory show what appears to be a 60-mile-wide crater. The crater is visible as a darkened area in the lower left quadrant in the 833 nm and 934 nm images. The material excavated by the collision that produced the crater "bite" has low reflectance, especially at the wavelength of 934 nm. An adaptive optics system provided a remarkably clear view of Juno's surface by reducing interference from the Earth's atmosphere. (Sallie Baliunas et al.)

From the the NASA JPL News Release...

Juno, one of the first asteroids discovered, is thought to be the parent of many of the meteorites that rain on Earth. The asteroid is composed mostly of hardy silicate rock, which is tough enough that fragments broken off by collisions can often survive a trip through Earth's atmosphere.

Though pockmarked by bang-ups with other asteroids, Juno is large; in fact, it is the tenth largest asteroid. It measures about 234 kilometers (145 miles) in diameter, or about one-fifteenth the diameter of the moon.

The asteroid, which orbits the sun on a track between Mars and Jupiter, will be at its brightest on Sept. 21, when it is zooming around the sun at about 22 kilometers per second (49,000 miles per hour). At that time, its apparent magnitude will be 7.6, which is about two-and- a-half times brighter than normal. The extra brightness will come from its position in a direct line with the sun and its proximity to Earth. (The asteroid will still be about 180 million kilometers [112 million miles] away, so there is no danger it will fall towards Earth.)

Skywatchers with telescopes can probably see Juno from now until the end of the year, but it is most visible to binoculars in late September. On or before Sept. 21, look for Juno near midnight a few degrees east of the brighter glow of Uranus and in the constellation Pisces. It will look like a gray dot in the sky, and each night at the end of September, it will appear slightly more southwest of its location the night before. By Sept. 25, it will be closer to the constellation Aquarius and best seen before midnight.

Link: NASA JPL Article

Link: Wikipedia: 3_Juno

Winner of 2009 Move An Asteroid: Sini Merikallio (Finland) with paper entitled "Moving an Asteroid with Electric Solar Wind Sail"

Sini Merikallio of Finland wins the Move An Asteroid 2009 International Student and Young Professional International Technical Paper Competition with her paper, "Moving an Asteroid with Electric Solar Wind Sail”.

From the SpaceGeneration.org announcement:

SGAC is proud to announce the 2009 Move an Asteroid Competition winner - Sini Merikallio from Finland. Her paper "Moving an Asteroid with Electric Solar Wind Sail" can be found here. The goal of this competition was to develop innovative and credible planetary defense solutions by describing in technical detail how to move an asteroid or comet that is at least 140 meters in diameter. The prize for the competition will cover lodging and registration for both SGC'09 and IAC'09 as well as a flight to South Korea.

Sini Merikallio is working towards Ph.D. in the Modelling group at the Finnish Meteorological Institute's Department of Climate Change. She is currently modelling the atmospheric light scattering from mineral dust particles. Sini earned her M.Sc. (Tech) in electro- and material physics at the Helsinki University of Technology, Finland in 2003. Upon hearing she won the competition, Sini wrote, "I am thoroughly excited and grateful of this opportunity to represent the Electric Solar Wind Sail usage in both IAC and SGC. It will be very interesting to see the response of the scientific community on the method proposed and to discover other contestants innovative approaches on the given problem of asteroid threat mitigation. As the SGC and IAC bring together both hard-boiled scientists, students and young professionals, the ideas will no doubt fly free and I am looking forward on enlightening discussions and constructive feedback on which to build my research further. On a more personal note, I have for some time now desired to experience South Korea because of its culture that is surprisingly said to be quite similar to the culture here in Finland. During my visit I would also hope for a change to tour the Samsung Guide Dog School as my dearest hobbies include all kinds of volunteer work with guide dogs.'

Link: Move An Asteroid 2009 Winner News Announcement

Link: Merikallio, Sini, "Moving an Asteroid with Electric Solar Wind Sail,” 2009. (PDF)

Workshop on Asteroid 2008 TC3 (University of Khartoum, Khartoum, Sudan, 05-15 December 2009)

From the workshop website:

The University of Khartoum, Faculty of Sciences and Physics Department, and the SETI Institute invite planetary astronomers and meteoriticists to participate in a workshop dedicated to asteroid 2008 TC3. Asteroid 2008 TC3 was the first asteroid to be detected in space and subsequently found to impact the Earth. Fragments were recovered in the Nubian Desert of northern Sudan in the form of rare ureilite meteorites, called "Almahata Sitta".

Goal of the workshop is to discuss the results from ongoing research into the properties of asteroid 2008 TC3 when it was still in space, its nature and origin, the asteroid's impact in Earth's atmosphere, the subsequent recovery, and the analysis of the recovered meteorites. Talks on the origin of ureilites are invited, as well as discussions on how to adjust observing strategies to increase the likelyhood of future discoveries of small asteroids on a collision course with Earth.

The workshop will be held on the days of December 6 and 7, 2009. In the week following, from December 8 to 15, there will be a site visit to the area where Almahata Sitta was recovered. An effort will be made to expand the diversity of recovered materials by finding more of the fallen debris.

Link: Workshop website

June 2009 UN COPUOS Report: Section on NEOs

The Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space (COPUOS) held its fifty-second
session in Vienna from 3 to 12 June 2009. Here is a section from the report related to Near Earth Object.

United Nations Report of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space General Assembly, Official Records, Sixty-fourth Session, Supplement No. 20

Near-Earth objects

146. The Committee took note of the discussion of the Subcommittee under the agenda item on near-Earth objects, as reflected in the report of the Subcommittee (A/AC.105/933, paras. 136-148 and annex III).

147. The Committee endorsed the recommendations of the Subcommittee and its Working Group on Near-Earth Objects, which was convened under the chairmanship of Richard Crowther (United Kingdom) (A/AC.105/933, paras. 146 and 148 and annex III, paras. 8 and 9).

148. The Committee noted that the Action Team on Near-Earth Objects had convened on the margins of the fifty-second session of the Committee to further review and develop draft recommendations on the international response to the threat of Near-Earth object (NEO) impacts, for consideration by the Working Group of the Subcommittee at the forty-seventh session of the Subcommittee, in 2010.

149. The Committee noted that as part of its intersessional work, the Action Team was planning to hold a series of workshops dealing with policy, legal and operational aspects of the international response to the threat of NEO impacts. The workshops would be organized jointly with universities and space-related institutions, and their conclusions would be forwarded to the Action Team.

150. The view was expressed that the international response to the threat of NEO impacts required a multidimensional and multidisciplinary approach and decisionmaking process, involving technical, legal, humanitarian and institutional aspects. That delegation considered that the international community needed to address the technical and legal implications, and the related institutional implications, of the response to the threat of NEO impacts.

Link: UNOOSA Report (PDF)

Link: UNOOSA Reports Link

Mixotrophs May Have Helped Sunlight- Dependent Organisms Survive K-T Impact Event

Selections from the article...

A dinosaur-killing asteroid may have wiped out much of life on Earth 65 million years ago, but now scientists have discovered how smaller organisms might have survived in the darkness following such a catastrophic impact.

Survival may have depended upon jack-of-all-trades organisms called mixotrophs that can consume organic matter in the absence of sunlight. That would have proved crucial during the long months of dust and debris blotting out the sun, when plenty of dead or dying organic matter filled the Earth's oceans and lakes.

"Mixotrophs are very good at stabilizing situations by using whatever resources are there, and can often provide what resources there aren't," said Harriet Jones, a biologist at the University of East Anglia in the UK. "They're very good at coping in extreme environments, and enabling other organisms to live."

Jones and her colleagues tested the limits of mixotrophs by subjecting them to six months of low light or complete darkness. The mixotrophs not only thrived, but also surprised researchers by helping sunlight-dependent organisms also survive pitch black conditions.

Life in the Dark: How Organisms Survived Asteroid Impacts
Jeremy Hsu
Astrobiology Magazine
Space.com
10 September 2009

Link: Space.com article

Link: Wikipedia - Mixotroph

Video Interview with David French on Asteroid-Tether-Ballast System

Link: YouTube Video: David French Renaissance People

Link: Interview with David French

Link: NCState News Release

Article on Space Power Canada Meeting

Source: TYLER HAMILTON/TORONTO STAR

Selections from the article:

It sounds like something out of a sci-fi novel. Solar power plants orbiting the planet, each the size of 700 Canadian football fields, beaming clean energy down to Earth 24 hours a day so we can run our factories, charge our gadgets and keep our home appliances humming.

But for the scientists and engineers attending the International Symposium on Solar Energy from Space, a three-day conference this week in Toronto, there's nothing fictional about it. In their view, building massive space-based solar power systems represents, over the long term, one of the most effective ways of tackling the double menace of global warming and peak oil.

Scientists say the advantage of putting a solar station in space is that it would face the sun 24 hours a day and would not be limited by cloud cover or air pollution. That would allow it to continuously generate power in the same manner as nuclear and fossil-fuel plants, but without the associated waste and greenhouse-gas emissions.

The idea has been around for 40 years, attracting serious attention from NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense during the 1970s, but funding eventually dried up. It wasn't until the late 1990s that interest in the concept resurfaced, partly as a result of concerns related to global warming and energy security.

Two years ago, the Pentagon's National Security Space Office issued a report that concluded solar-based power "is more technically executable than ever before."

Former NASA executive John Mankins, now president of the Space Power Association, said he believes space-based solar power could be economically competitive with other options.

Mankins added that he believes a small 10-megawatt demonstration plan could be in orbit within the next 10 years. "It's a reasonable time frame," he said.

At the conference, Nobuyuki Kaya, vice-dean of graduate engineering at Kobe University in Japan, demonstrated how the power could be transmitted wirelessly. Assisted by a team of students, he was able to light up a cluster of red LED lights and power a simple robot by beaming energy about 10 metres across a room.

Kieran Carroll, chief technology officer for Space Canada, which is hosting the conference, said such a system could be safely designed to accept and convert large amounts of energy from space. The trick is to transmit at low intensity by sending it down on a wide beam, about 10 kilometres across.

There would have to be no-fly zones around the area, but it wouldn't fry anyone walking through it.

"The power flux density in the middle of the (receiving) field would be perfectly safe for any life," said Carroll.

"In Canada, on a winter's day, one of the big problems would be that birds would probably hover over the field to get warm."

A reality check, however, came from power developer Wael Almazeedi, who warned of the legal, financial and regulatory challenges the plan would face, as well as the difficulty of "promoting a concept based on science fiction."

"Experts meet to discuss feasibility of harvesting solar power in space, beaming it back to Earth"
09 September 2009
Tyler Hamilton
Energy Reporter
The Toronto Star

Link: Article from The Star

Article on NEOimpactor Code

Article on NEOimpactor Code developed by Nick Bailey of the University of Southampton's School of Engineering Sciences. Selections from the article:

The team used raw data from multiple impact simulations to rank each country based on the number of times and how severely they would be affected by each impact. The software, called NEOimpactor (from NASA's "NEO" or Near Earth Object program), has been specifically developed for measuring the impact of 'small' asteroids under one kilometer in diameter.

Early results indicate that in terms of population lost, China, Indonesia, India, Japan and the United States face the greatest overall threat; while the United States, China, Sweden, Canada and Japan face the most severe economic effects due to the infrastructure destroyed.

The top ten countries most at risk are China, Indonesia, India, Japan, the United States, the Philippines, Italy, the United Kingdom, Brazil and Nigeria.

Link: Daily Galaxy Article

U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee: Summary Report Talks About Human NEO Missions Through "Flexible Path" Architecture

The Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee has released its summary report. The Committee has been looking at what early human exploration options may be available to the U.S. They previously had talked about an exploration path that would allow the flexibility to go to NEOs. This architecture, referred to as the Flexible Path, is one of the options talked about in their summary report. Here are some selections from the summary report related to the "Flexible Path" architecture:

There is a third possible path for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit, which the Committee calls the Flexible Path. On this path, humans would visit sites never visited before and extend our knowledge of how to operate in space—while traveling greater and greater distances from Earth. Successive missions would visit: lunar orbit; the Lagrange points (special points in space that are important sites for scientific observations and the future space transportation infrastructure); near-Earth objects (asteroids that cross the Earth’s path); and orbit around Mars. Most interestingly, humans could rendezvous with a moon of Mars, then coordinate with or control robots on the Martian surface.

The Flexible Path represents a different type of exploration strategy. We would learn how to live and work in space, to visit small bodies, and to work with robotic probes on the planetary surface. It would provide the public and other stakeholders with a series of interesting “firsts” to keep them engaged and supportive. Most important, because the path is flexible, it would allow many different options as exploration progresses, including a return to the Moon’s surface, or a continuation to the surface of Mars.

The Committee finds that both Moon First and Flexible Path are viable exploration strategies. It also finds that they are not necessarily mutually exclusive; before traveling to Mars, we might be well served to both extend our presence in free space and gain experience working on the lunar surface.

All variants of Option 5 begin exploration along the flexible path in the early 2020s, with lunar fly-bys, visits to Lagrange points and near-Earth objects and Mars fly-bys occurring at a rate of about one major event per year, and possible rendezvous with Mars’s moons or human lunar return by the mid to late 2020s.

Link: Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee Summary Report (PDF)

Link: Review of U.S. Human Space Flight Plans Committee

Notes from International Symposium on Solar Energy from Space (Day 1, 08 September 2009)

This does not have any specific correlation to planetary defense, but a place to have notes from a conference I am attending. These are notes from the International Symposium on Solar Energy from Space. These are quick notes on things of interest (not meant to be complete). All errors are my own.

After the morning session, there was wireless power transmission demonstration from Prof. Kaya at Kobe University (along with this students).


(Day 1, 08 September 2009) Notes

- Dr. Bryan Erb, “World Energy Outlook and the Prospects for Sustainable Sources”
Multiple energy projections
Global Energy Institute – global power grids
Geothermal or ocean energy
Nuclear fusion
Power grids smarter
Unless a price of carbon of around $30/ton per CO2 tax then carbon sequestration approach will not take off.

- Wael Almazeedi, “Conquering Terrestrial Challenges to Realize Extraterrestrial Potential”
(E&Y Ent. Of the Year)
Free Access to Energy Consortium (FATE)
BTU Power (Manager): 11 GW of installed power worldwide (Kuwait)
Insufficient funding, new to adopt a new proactive approach
$33.5B for terrestrial in on eyear versus %50M in space solar power
SSP is still a concept
There have been positive developments recently but if we do not follow up with demonstration soon
Take the concept out of the lab into the business world
Electric Power Research Institute Journal, Summer 2007 (Development Phases)
Adapt to a terrestrial world even though unjust
Challenges:
1.Public perception
Not as space enthusiast, viable and attainable project
2.Clarity of purposes
Is our purpose to erect a white elephant
3.Competitive positioning
Need to reduce cost comparable to other forms without reliance on market distortion incentive (need to compete without subsidies)
Solar thermal and PV are competing, cannot compete without tariffs/credits
QGen – integrated solar thermal to conventional fuel plants
Integrated Solar Combined Cycle (hybrid plants)
Adopting a similar approach for SSP
(competition: Andasol Complex)
Main competition: Terrestrial solar thermal with storage
Look for government help
4. IP
5. Project Financing
Banks will be responsible to financing, risk averse, limited recourse basis – party given risk who can afford it, guartenned to hardware
70% debt, 30% equity, Work within project finance markets
Markets do not have capital for SSP project, capacity is not there,
Taiwan high speed rail at 18B, largest energy, $13B Qatar ebergy
TAPCP (in UAE for 3.1B) with 24 banks ($911 M – all banks, 1.2 B JBIC Japan bank equity)
Where is the money going to come from, not from government, other financing funding not available, capital intensity, cannot rely on electric utilizies (less than 2% on R&D)
Hybrid Power Demonstration Plan in Tunisia (near Tatoine), Zarzis Tunisia, concentrating solar cycle with combined cycle gas turbine plant) – far from it to get banks involved, extensive dialog with banks
6. Markets
Selling electricity to least developed, integrated technology with grids which as suffering from grids, cannot rely on electric utilities to fix the grid, worldwide government support for gird upgrades,
$13.6 Trillion power investment requirement, (
Space falls outside patent jurisdiction, pushing outer pace treaty and patent law, WIPO on compulsory licensing for green technologies, countries will have right to infringe for public good
Space-based value chain, need to articulate self-financing framework for demonstrator, dual purpose
Evolutionary approach, two paths (Concentrating solar power + steam engine path) (15/85 split for solar + fossil fuel, to 40/60 split steam cycle)

- John Mankins: “Vision and Challenge of Solar Power Satellites”Never an international assessment for SSP
Frame a reasonable technical roadmap
Technical challenges: end-to-end efficiency, total mass, cost to deploy operate (LCC)
Efficiency: 40 going to 50%,
Average cost (aerospace): 3.5E6 $/kg, 7.5xE5, 5E5 / 2) – three points
Integrated symmetrical/modular SPS
Retrodirective Phases Array (adaptive optics) – pilot signal to instruct phases
2008 WPT test in 2008, Managed Energy Technologies was prime (first test of solar power with phases array, validated send energy across 148 km, in less than 4months in less than $1M
NextGen

- Dan Fortin
President of IBM Canada
Talking about the smarter planet (mentions Friedman’s book, flattening of the earth),
Traceability of food
Stockholm example, traffic cost based upon what/were use of car including traffic pattern (reduced traffic by 20%, greenhouse emissions down 14%)
Health care: Toronto to help doctors detect subtle changes in medical conditions for premature babies
Smart Power grid: some nations further ahead (Malta building the world’s smart utility grid), manage entire public infrastructure as one,
Using biological technology to develop semi-conductor chips.
Becoming smarter requires people including leadership
On talking about outsourcing, typically people think it is labor arbitrage, as a world there is tremendous development of talent, U.S. versus India/China engineering graduating rates,
Advice on how to do global scale projects: barriers to work through (political, technical), sooner to draw global centers of excellence to subjects – that would break barriers, work in 135 countries, had 135 fiefdoms, created strong global centers of excellence, largest software research lab is in Canada, 5000 researchers, 2500 working in pods of 40-50 researchers across the world, get on top of that

- Dr. Robert Zee, Space Flight Laboratory, University of Toronto


Link: International Symposium on Solar Energy from Space