Asteroid passes through Earths GPS network

I read this article today in Position magazine, the publication of the Surveying and Spatial Sciences Institute, and the following is an on-line link to the same.

On-Line Article

This link will take you to the 4 animations;

Asteroid Animations

Aside from being excellent animations and well done Pasquale Tricarico, this got me to thinking about how well we would function with a partially or even fully disabled Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS).

The Geospatial Industry permeates through our lives and the impact of it's loss would be potentially catastrophic. Airlines would be at a standstill, albeit temporarily, even simple things like asset management and GIS would be difficult and considerably more expensive to manage. Overall I'd say it's loss would make for a more expensive, maybe simpler, world.

So, how would you manage if such an event occurred? How about, no internet or maybe limited phone systems. How about, and God forbid, NO TV for 12 months or more, holy S%$#.

Anyway, this is not really what I intended to be my first official thread but felt I had to share, I hope you enjoy the animations nevertheless.

Cheers

Personally, I would get by just fine, and I suspect everyone else would as well. Some may think they are in bad shape but they simply do not know other ways to navigate, thanks to laziness promoting technology.

We do not need GPS to get things done, it makes it easier, sure, but it is not a requirement. There are stories where people have died putting their faith in GPS.

Most of my life has been a preparation for the day our technology ceases to aid us ( whatever form that may come in, I believe it to be an inevitable reality), so I believe I would do fine. I have a course of action planned, have done research into self sustaining technologies and have participated in wilderness survival classes on more than one occasion. I would hope everyone in the world has taken these preparations, though sadly, i know this is not the case. The number one lesson life seems to be trying to teach us is: inevitably all systems fail eventually, as demonstrated by death on this level and death on a cosmic level (supernovas and such), so, while systems may benefit us all at times, the primordial laws of chaos will endlessly destroy all order, and reliance on such systems is a completely illogical approach to survival.

Take a minute to watch the animations, guys. Worth it!

Star & flag OP nice find.

Satellites?
Here is what I see happening to the satellites one day. The Earth will pass though an area of space and get peppered by millions or billions of small pea sized rocks that will act like buck shoot taking out every single thing in orbit. Once one satellite is chewed to bits those bit will in turn hit more satellites and so one. It soon would be rain space junk all over the planet. It could take years for all the junk to fall and clean up the orbits. Just think of no satellites for years.

reply to post by myselfaswell


The animations are great. Good find.

As for no TV for 12 months? Who cares I have not watched TV for over 2 years now. I have never had anything with GPS in it and would not want it. If I want to go somewhere i don't know I use that old technology called a map.

Have you heard of maps, directions and adresses?

second line

To all above thanks for the responses, if you didn't watch the animations I would encourage you to do so, particularly the one from the perspective of the asteroid.

Anyway, just to let you know I am a Surveyor with some considerable experience so I'll leave it to your imagination as to what I understand about maps and navigation.

I will give you one example of what I am implying, which can by the way be applied to communications satellites among others as well.

Imagine your a pilot, you've got your instrument rating but no ILS, it's night and you have no reasonable frame of reference to ground. All of a sudden your GPS receiver goes on the blink as does your backup. Unknown to you there are hundreds of other aircraft flying around completely unaware of where they are. You all have a compass and charts and yes you will have air traffic control, however, consider now your own and air traffic controls burgeoning work load do you think you will all get home safely.

Would you honestly be in a position to manage your reality in the event of even a partial system failure of some description. Is there any technology that you utterly depend upon and if there is do you have a backup plan.

Cheers

I have tired to watch the animations in both IE and FireFox and the link shows up as
http://(link%20tracking%20not%20allowed)/ncHMBB
and IE will not work and FireFox will not work. Is there another link for them?


OK, I just found a link that does work.
orbit.psi.edu...

Not sure what that other link is all about but the second link does work for me.

so is it no biggy that a 10m asteroid nearly slammed into the Earth? is that too small to have been of any real danger regarding impact?

As far as I am aware the reported asteroid (technically a meteoroid =

Asteroid 2008 TC3

And your point being, relative to the thread?.

Cheers

Detection of tiny close earth bodies has evolved tremendously in the last 15 years, and the internet announces this to pedestrian parties. All of the alarm about this sudden awareness has lead to all of this doom and gloom talk all over the place when people were ignorant of such things, it was much more pleasant to stomach.

Not pointing at you (which is why I left no comment initially), just saying. I'm getting really sick of it, but yet strangely compelled to comment once in a while.

Most all of the crap that goes on 100,000 miles plus away from us has been going on for quite sometime unnoticed and I wish it still was, unnoticed. In 1987 I got a fuzzy cable connection once or twice while watching a football game, wow, big deal. That rock that landed in Sudan did zero, in a city yes a bit more, but annual floods in Bangladesh kill thousands more, and yet, they still wont move!