2d ago

In emergency decision, James Webb telescope will study 'city-killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 before its close approach to Earth

www.livescience.com In emergency decision, James Webb telescope will study 'city-killer' asteroid 2024 YR4 before its close approach to Earth

In a rare "time-critical" decision, the James Webb Space Telescope will study the true size of the "potentially hazardous" asteroid 2024 YR4 twice over the next few months. The asteroid has a roughly 2.3% chance of impacting Earth in 2032.

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91 comments

Can it direct the asteroid to mar a Lago?
- I don't believe it is a possible target given how the orbital disk of the asteroid intersects with the surface of the earth. That's of we don't change the orbit, if we decide that is necessary, we'll probably try to get a complete miss instead of just changing the impact site.
  DON'T LOOK UP
- DC, please. Move all the good museums and historical stuff first, but don't tell the administration.
- Or at the people forcing politics into every-single-discussion.
  
  politics has an ugly way of forcing itself into your life, if you don't already think about it.
  
  Well, this administration has been forcing politics into NASA by cutting funding and making all female/POC/LGBT employees unsafe/invisible. It’d be lovely if NASA was free from politics, but as we saw from Trumps last appointment of the totally unqualified Bridenstone, politics is shoving its ugly dick into science.
  
  Unfortunately in a worst case scenario this gets very political, if we do something about it in advance an impactor probe should do the job, if we decide to play the 1/50 odds and lose then the most effective short notice method is a nuke. Not a direct strike but a near detonation which vaporizes a section of the surface of the object with the outgoing plasma effectively functioning as a massive thruster. Actually doing this is not trivial but not hard either (from an engineering standpoint), the tricky part would be actually managing to launch it without every nation on earth that happens to have a beligerant leader saber rattling and stone walling the prospect of a launch until its too late even for a nuke to do any good.
  
  I hope we didnt cut all of NASAs funding yet. I'd hate to leave that worst case scenario to Musk or Boeing to handle.
  
  Hey now if anyone can make a rocket explode its those guys.
  
  Ok, whatever dude.
  
  Ikr, I have a bunch of terms on my filter list but then its in the comments anyway
  
  I have separate filter lists for both, posts and comments but I need to keep adding new ones every day. I guess "Mar a lago" is the one I'm adding today.
  
  I'm talking about it right now in this reply but not giving you any keywords. Muhaha.
  
  the correct name is Mar-a-Lago, make sure to include that one, too!

91 comments