May 06, 2019
Good Morning,
There is a possible asteroid threat on the Earth. No, it's not the plot of a movie! It's serious business. Don't worry, NASA is all over it!
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Learn about this and more interesting stories from the scientific community in today's issue.
Until Next Time,
Erin
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*-- NASA chief calls for global effort to study asteroid threat --*
NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine has called for more global participation in efforts to deflect asteroids that could collide with Earth.
Bridenstine spoke to the 2019 Planetary Defense Conference in Washington, D.C., on Monday morning in an event that was streamed live online. The conference was organized by the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety.
"We have to use our systems our capabilities to ultimately get more data and we have to do it faster," Bridenstine said. "We need more partners from all over the world."
The conference featured world experts on what is known about potentially hazardous asteroids and comets and how rockets or spacecraft might alter a collision course with Earth.
Bridenstine said asteroid redirection is "not about movies" and not about Hollywood, but it is about "protecting the only planet we know."
"One of the reasons we have to take this seriously is the giggle factor," he said.
NASA already has an asteroid deflection test mission -- Double Asteroid Redirection Test -- scheduled for launch from California in 2021 aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket.
The DART spacecraft is designed to collide with a small moon of the asteroid Didymos in 2022, with a mission cost of $69 million.
Members of the International Association for the Advancement of Space Safety are tracking an asteroid, 99942 Apophis, which will pass by Earth on April 13, 2029, closer than where weather satellites orbit.
According to the association, It will be bright enough to be visible with an unaided eye for several hours around the closest approach. Named after the ancient Egyptian spirit of evil, darkness and destruction, it is estimated to be about 1,115 feet in diameter.
"If it were to hit, it would cause major damage to our planet and likely to our civilization as well.
Fortunately, Apophis will not hit Earth in 2029, but the closeness of its approach will provide an
excellent opportunity to study and perhaps send a spacecraft to this potentially hazardous
Asteroid," said a news release from the international association.
Bridenstine said he was glad the association was publicizing the Apophis event, so that the public and leaders in Congress appreciate the opportunity it represents to study a near-earth object or NEO.
He said the European Space Agency is a leader in the effort, and Russia is very aware of the issue because of large meteor events there in 1908 and in 2013.
The latter event, the Chelyabinsk meteor, exploded in the sky over Russia, sending out heat and shock waves that blew out windows, injured hundreds of people and set off alarms over a large area. That meteor was 66 feet across.
Larger asteroids or meteors could destroy an entire state or entire European country, Bridenstine said.
NASA's Launch Services Program at Kennedy Space Center in Florida will manage the SpaceX launch service for DART. The DART Project office is located at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, and is managed by the Planetary Missions Program Office at Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, for NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office in Washington.
*-- Scientists accidentally designed an incredibly accurate ozone detector --*
Researchers originally designed the ROZE instrument to detect hydroxyl, which rids the atmosphere of methane. But tests showed the instrument was surprisingly good at measuring ambient levels of ozone -- better than the best available commercial ozone detectors.
"When we started this development effort, ozone was the farthest thing from our minds," NASA research scientist Tom Hanisco said in a news release.
In his attempts to track hydroxyl levels, Hanisco deployed a technique known as gas filter correlation spectroscopy, which works by filtering out the wavelengths that interact with -- or, are absorbed by -- hydroxyl.
An air leak in the device's cavity, which scientists intended to fill with hydroxyl, caused technical difficulties. Instead of producing hydroxyl, the instrument produced ozone.
"Ozone interfered, but we did a few quick numbers to see actually how much ozone we could see. As it turned out, the instrument was supersensitive to this molecule," Hanisco said.
When Hanisco and his research partners conducted tests, they determined the re-named Rapid Ozone Experiment instrument was 100 times more precise than the best ozone-detecting devices.
In the stratosphere, ozone is essential. The molecule blocks ultraviolet rays. Closer to Earth's surface, in the troposphere, ozone is a pollutant. It's presence aggravates respiratory diseases that are responsible for thousands of deaths every year.
Ozone is produced in the troposphere when pollutants emitted by cars, power plants and other industrial sources react with nitrogen oxides in the presence of sunlight.
Hanisco expects the new ozone-measuring technology to be used to measure the precise movements of ozone, in order to more accurately estimate the lower atmosphere's ozone budget.
"EPA has models that can predict how much ozone will form," NASA scientist Reem Hannun said. "But these models don't really know how fast it's being deposited. If we don't know the rate, we can't accurately model how ozone moves from one area to the next, or how long it will stick around once formed."
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