Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official

Check it out, Armageddon for real...

Link..

"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.

And here, from Yahoo News.
Yahoo

By VLADIMIR ISACHENKOV, Associated Press Writer Vladimir Isachenkov, Associated Press Writer – Wed Dec 30, 9:34 pm ET
MOSCOW – Russia's space agency chief said Wednesday a spacecraft may be dispatched to knock a large asteroid off course and reduce the chances of earth impact, even though U.S. scientists say such a scenario is unlikely.

Anatoly Perminov told Golos Rossii radio the space agency would hold a meeting soon to assess a mission to Apophis. He said his agency might eventually invite NASA, the European Space Agency, the Chinese space agency and others to join the project.

When the 270-meter (885-foot) asteroid was first discovered in 2004, astronomers estimated its chances of smashing into Earth in its first flyby, in 2029, at 1-in-37.

Good for them - even if that thing is not a 100% danger that's still money well spent and lots of lessons learnt - imagine the feather that would put in Russia's bow just saying, well yhea, but we saved the world!

Russia in secret plan to save Earth from asteroid: official

I think the Russians should be more concerned that their 'secret' plan is on Yahoo News, and how it got there.

1 in 37 chance is pretty close, 1 in 1.000.000 is what is about considered safe.
We have hade quit alot of near misses the last 10 years, and most of them have been discovered after it has passed the impact threshold, if you can call it that, in other words, it would have hit before they had discovered it..

[edit on 31/12/2009 by ChemBreather]

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