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There's a mountain-size asteroid on a potential collision course with Earth, and NASA plans to pay it a visit.
The asteroid 1999 RQ36 made headlines last week with the announcement that the space rock could hit our planet in 2182. But a handful of scientists have had their eyes on this asteroid since 2007, planning a sample-return mission designed to help us better predict—and avoid—impact hazards.
Originally posted by moosevernel
i think this is all just speculation anyway, nobody can predict if and when an event like this may happen or what affects it would have, all we can do is make educated guesses ...which are just that..guesses
i think we would only know if it was definately going to hit us far too late for us to do anything about it although any type of research in to asteroids and comets can only be beneficial so the findings will be interesting yet i dont believe they will help at all in the event of a pending collision
moosevernel
Originally posted by moosevernel
reply to post by Ex_MislTech
i concede that maybe we could predict if and when it will hit..
as for slowing it down adding a sail would do nothing in the vaccum of space as there is no air to catch the sails and slow it down.... am i wrong..?
[edit on 9-8-2010 by moosevernel]
NASA has successfully tested deployment technologies on small scale sails in vacuum chambers.[22] On February 4, 1993, Znamya 2, a 20-meter wide aluminized-mylar reflector, was successfully tested from the Russian Mir space station. Although the deployment test was successful, the experiment only demonstrated the deployment, not propulsion. A second test, Znamaya 2.5, failed to deploy properly.