The asteroid tag has no wiki summary.
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Ways to spot a comet or asteroid?
How do we spot a comet or asteroid if it does not emit light or pass infront of an object which emits light?
And if such an object would be on a crash course with our planet how early would we be ...
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How “big” objects can WISE and NEOWISE detect?
I mean WISE is monitoring near-Earth objects, but cannot see the latest Russian meteor and others. Why can it not detect small objects?
What is the limit of it's infrared detectors?
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Stresses in asteroid during close flyby
The acceleration of an asteroid (such as 2012DA14) as it approaches earth is proportional to the reciprocal of distance $r$ from earth center, squared. the derivative of the acceleration, or jerk, is ...
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What are the odds of 2012 DA14 hitting a satellite or the moon?
Asteroid 2012 DA14 will pass by close to Earth. Very close. So close, in fact, that it's inside the orbit of the moon and even inside the orbit of geostationary satellites, as shown by this ...
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How a spacecraft travelling near light speed avoid asteroids?
How would a spacecraft traveling near light speed avoid a (relatively dense group of) asteroids? Or suppose such spacecraft is designed, how would the physics work for steering it inside such a ...
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Minimum size of an asteroid to actually impact earth
From what I understand, an object entering the atmosphere will start to burn up from the tremendous resistance of the atmosphere. Presumably, for asteroids under a certain size, they will burn up ...
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Tunnel through Ceres
Question edited:
If you dig a tunnel through a large asteroid like Ceres along its axis of rotation and jumped in then what would be the first thing to stop you from falling back and forth along the ...
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Impact of Apophis
I read about the near-earth asteroid 99942 Apophis. It is in the first place of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (visiting earth at an altitude of about 36,000km on 2028). But, scientists have ...
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Can a large thermonuclear bomb be used for planetary defence?
How effective would a thermonuclear device of 47 megatons or higher like the zsar bomba be in space?
Could we use as planetary defence on somthing like an asteroid as long as it is detected in time ...
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Calculating distance to an asteroid on a given day
I'd like to calculate the distance between the Earth and an asteroid at a given date. Is this possible using the data from JPL's small-body database? Is there a better way?
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Interstellar bodies
As a solar system evolves the planets interact, and in trying to achieve a harmonious state some bodies are ejected. Space is big, but I have heard that some meteorites have been found with anomalous ...
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Can a minimum ultimate tensile strength (UTS) for an asteroid be established based on its diameter and rotation?
I found it fascinating that many asteroids rotate with a period of just seconds. For this fast of a rotation on this size of object, I thought that would actually cause significant acceleration on the ...
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What is the fate of the asteroid belt?
From what I understand the asteroid belt never formed into a planet because Jupiter threw off the gravity of all the small objects and they never could gather to form a planet. As described here: Why ...
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Comet versus asteroids versus meteors
What are the differences between Comet versus asteroids versus meteors in practical terms?
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Is the Apophis asteroid a concern?
I was watching the TED lecture How to defend Earth from asteroids , and the speaker Phil Plait spoke of the possibility of this asteroid hitting Earth. He also said something about a Mayan legend. He ...
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How bright will an asteroid be?
In the news, it has been stated that there will be a fairly large asteroid passing fairly close to Earth soon. I've been trying to find a good observation guide, including determining how bright it ...
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Are there Trojan family or Hilda family satellites locked in Earth's orbit?
Jupiter has many Trojan asteroids located at Lagrangian points L4 and L5 and Hilda asteroids dispersed between points L3, L4, and L5.
Does the Earth have similar satellites? If so, how many?
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What conditions should an asteroid or comet impact need to meet in order to start an impact winter?
Is there a way to calculate if an impact from a given asteroid (say 5 miles in diameter, solid rock to which we know the mass) would start an impact winter? If yes, I would like to see a real example ...
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The orbit of 2010 TK7
Having just heard about the asteroid 2010 TK7 in Trojan asteroid seen in Earth's orbit by Wise telescope, I want to know more about its orbit. The BBC article says it moves above and below the ...
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Vesta dwarf planet status
Now that we have close-up photos of Vesta, which the IAU had previously said was a candidate dwarf planet, when is the IAU going to decide the issue? Personally, Vesta doesn't look round enough to me.
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Why did the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter form as it did?
I'm curious about why the asteroid belt wasn't pulled by Mars's or Jupiter's gravity or formed into either moons or planets. Why did it form into an asteroid belt instead?
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Can Vesta dominate the orbits of other asteroids?
I think I remember a talk where a professor said that Vesta is a particularly important asteroid because its gravity is strong enough to perturb other asteroids.
In spite of Vesta's size, this effect ...
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What is the average distance between objects in our asteroid belt?
We've all seen scifi movies with asteroid belts that require "great skill" to fly through, but how dense is the asteroid belt really?
How much of the belt could you see from the surface of a given ...
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What are the chances that a deadly asteroid will hit Earth in the next decade?
What are the chances that an asteroid that will kill multiple people will hit Earth in the next decade?
