Sunday, March 20, 2022

EARTH DEFENSE?

by Bob Walsh

A few days ago the earth was almost destroyed.  Sort of.  But not really.

A previously unnoticed asteroid, 2022EBS, was spotted just a few hours before it hit earth.  This is the fifth time such a thing has happened since we have been keeping track.

The asteroid was about the size of a residential refrigerator (unless you are Nancy Pelosi, in which case it was a small refrigerator).  It was spotted on March 11 by the Piszkesteto Observatory in Hungary.  The observatory notified the NASA JPL NEO (near earth objects) study center of their find.  They quickly determined that the object was too small to be a significant hazard and that it would enter the earth's atmosphere near an obscure Norwegian island in about two hours.  They were right.  They got it right with a total of 14 observations over a period of 40 minutes.  

NASA is actually (supposedly) testing a planetary defense system to deal with asteroid threats to earth.  I hope that if the real deal ever comes along we have more than 2 hours warning.  Otherwise we will probably be seriously screwed.

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