There are rumors going around that the asteroid that may (but probably won’t; the odds recently dropped slightly) smack into Mars on January 30 might be the lost Mars Observer, a NASA probe that malfunctioned just as it was to enter Mars orbit. I strongly doubt this to be the case; the orbit is wrong for a Mars probe; tracing backwards, the orbit hasn’t come close to Earth for many decades.
It’s tempting, though; the size of an object is judged by how bright it is, how far it is, and an assumed reflectivity. A rock is dark, while ice is bright; so for an object at a certain distance and brightness, it would be bigger if it were made of rock than if it were made of ice (you need more surface area of rock to make it as bright as a smaller object made of ice).
Metal is shiny, so a smallish spacecraft would look like a much bigger rock when observed from Earth. Still, I really think we have just a rock here. And I really don’t think it’ll hit.
But if it does…
January 4th, 2008 at 7:30 am
But if it does we party?
I really hope it does but then again I know it’s pretty hopeless
January 4th, 2008 at 7:36 am
[insert whackjob NWO conspiracy about bombarding Mars with failed satellites that have accreted material to become largish-asteroid mass]
Poor Mars. It has no friends. Everyone wants it to get smacked.
January 4th, 2008 at 7:43 am
I would like to see it get smacked, it would be even better if it got smacked near a rover that could record it!
Won’t happen, but man what luck if it did…
January 4th, 2008 at 7:44 am
If the asteroid ends up failing to hit Mars, what about the possibility of engineering a collision? Would the NASA and the scientific community go for a proposal to send a spacecraft to a rock in order to divert it onto a collision orbit with the Mars? Would the resulting data be worth it?
January 4th, 2008 at 8:05 am
Given the recent faux pas with Rosetta(?) being confused with an asteroid, this kind of rumor should’ve been expected. I would be curious to know where MO went after its flyby…
January 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am
But if it does, the Vatican won’t see it coming:
http://news.independent.co.uk/europe/article3307586.ece
January 4th, 2008 at 8:07 am
Thank you. That sir, was the second funniest thing I’ve read this morning. It’s shaping up to be a pretty hilarious day already.
I love Fridays.
January 4th, 2008 at 8:54 am
Perhaps every mission sent to Mars should include a small, rocket-powered projectile that can be fired at the planet for no other purpose than going “BOOM”. A lottery can be held to determine who gets to press the button (via phone or computer). With enough participants, we can stimulate public interest in planetary exploration AND pay for the missions! Of course, there is the issue of essentially vandalizing another planet…
January 4th, 2008 at 10:30 am
One of my professors actually proposed a mission that would fire a copper sphere, propelled to high velocities and heated by atmospheric insertion, into the surface of Mars in the hopes of revealing (and vaporizing) any subsurface water ice, while an orbiter would then observe the resulting ejecta/potential geyser. Getting below the surface is the only way to really tell, since other means of spectroscopic remote sensing can’t sufficiently penetrate, and knocking a huge crater into Mars seems to be the fastest way to go about it.
However, now that Nature is doing it for us, I think the proposal would either be seen as superfluous or (hopefully) the hints of data we get would whet some appetites and propel (so to speak) the project further.
Not sure where it currently stands, but here’s some details:
http://www.spaceref.com/news/viewpr.html?pid=18860
January 4th, 2008 at 11:21 am
# Alex Asked:
>>>”If the asteroid ends up failing to hit Mars, what about the possibility of engineering a collision?”<<<
An imaginative idea but we actually don’t have the technology to do that and the funds needed for such a thing are probably better spent on preventing a big rock from eventually hitting us.
New Mars probes and landing future rovers with more sophisticated instruments may not seem as immediately dramatic but in the longer run could lead to more exciting discoveries than engineering a big boom on Mars.
January 4th, 2008 at 11:43 am
Even if 2005 WD5 doesn’t hit Mars, will there be any chance that orbiting probes could get a look as it goes by? It would be like a free trip to an asteroid.
January 4th, 2008 at 12:00 pm
Good point zeb.
An interested, if unexpected, bit of science.
Oh, and we don’t just want to get a look at it. We want to get a really, really good look at it. Kind of like a “don’t click the shutter until you see the whites of its eyes” look at it.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:03 pm
Janie:
I live to serve.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:14 pm
Okay, so you’re pretty much ruling out the Mars Observer. However, could the object be Amelia Earhart’s plane? That’s never been found, either.
January 4th, 2008 at 2:44 pm
Bring on the Myth Busters, they always guaranteed to give you a “big bang.”
If it is the lost MO its close pass of Mars would have altered its orbit. Has that been taken into account?
January 4th, 2008 at 3:57 pm
> Okay, so you’re pretty much ruling out the Mars Observer. However, could the object be Amelia Earhart’s plane? That’s never been found, either.
So that’s where Hoffa’s body got to!
January 4th, 2008 at 4:37 pm
Here’s a question…
If during the Rosetta Earth flyby in March 2005 the probe passed 1,900 km from Earth and was an apparent magnitude of 8 or 9 (as per ESA)….
And if Mars is 92 million km from Earth now….
And 2007 WD5 is reasonably close to Mars….
Then wouldn’t that whole “inverse square” thing make Mars Observer a tad dimmer?
January 4th, 2008 at 7:15 pm
It just occurred to me in the last 2 days to wonder,,,How the heck can planets in this system end up rotating counter clock-wise AND revolving counterclock wise(perspective from the northern solar pole). One would think that as the planets acreat material from the stellar disk, they would end up rotating in a direction opposite to their direction of revolution, since the inner portion of the acreation disk has a higher angular momentum than the material in the outer portion of the disk, as it accumulates on the acreating object, transfer of momentum should produce spin opposite to the direction of revolution????
Clue me in to what I’m missing,,,
GAry 7
January 5th, 2008 at 8:07 am
The material the growing planet runs into that is closer to the sun is moving faster, so tends to rotate the planet counterclockwise as seen from its north pole. There’s a good explanation of this, with a diagram, in Stephen H. Dole’s 1964 book, “Habitable Planets for Man” (NY: Blaisdell). Don’t remember the page number offhand.
January 5th, 2008 at 9:41 am
BArton, that should be clockwise, because the planet has a Velocity of say, 18 miles/sec, while the inner debris has a velocity of 18+ miles/sec. As the inner debris impacts the proto planet, it should spin the planet in the clockwise direction.
GAry 7
January 6th, 2008 at 3:48 pm
Concerning the possibility of 2007 WD5 being Mars Observer …
Overall brightness and average albedo are one set of variables, without enough information to clearly solve the mathematics for a unique solution. But since most artificial satellites are highly irregular in shape, and include substantial solar power panels and other engineered structures. Intuitively, that makes me expect that the light curve from such an artefact would be highly irregular, and to a significant degree, predictable.
If I recall correctly, this is already done to a degree in the prediction of Iridium flares, so I could see that some of the necessary ground work has been done. Given the known structure of the lost satellite, a range of plausible light curves could be predicted, which would give an idea of what to look for if another suspect turns up.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:33 pm
Amelia Earhart is in the Delta Quadrant. Voyager runs into her – not the Voyager 10, I mean, but the 24th century starship of the same name.
As a couple dozen dirty-minded Renaissance artists showed us, Mars needs women.
January 6th, 2008 at 6:53 pm
I think we’ve been through this: the Pope’s actual palace is not a world-class place to operate telescopes professionally, anyway. I think their actual serious astronomy is mostly in South America or Mexico or Arizona or something.
January 7th, 2008 at 7:45 am
Gary Ansorge writes:
[[BArton, that should be clockwise, because the planet has a Velocity of say, 18 miles/sec, while the inner debris has a velocity of 18+ miles/sec. As the inner debris impacts the proto planet, it should spin the planet in the clockwise direction.]]
I think you might have that wrong. From the frame of reference of the planet, it isn’t moving at all. Counterclockwise around the sun is “forward.” Debris hitting on the “left” — closer to the sun — hits harder, debris hitting on the “right” hits less hard. Consequently the net torque should be counterclockwise as seen from the north pole. I wish I could do diagrams on this thing…
January 8th, 2008 at 11:40 pm
I thought the ‘Mars Observer’ probe exploded ..
So in inanswer (ithink) toTom’s question :
# Tom on 04 Jan 2008 at 8:05 am :
“I would be curious to know where MO went after its flyby…?”
Bits of it went here …
…. and here
… and there
…. and wa-aay over there!
I liked the idea someone mentioned here of seeing if the probes already orbiting Mars (Mars Odyssey, Mars Reconnisance Orbiter, Mars Express, etc ..) can get a good look at it whether hitting or missing. Great thinking.
I very much doubt its the Mars Observer’s remains … or Ameilia Airhart’s (spelling?) … but Hoffa’s body? Hmmn … maybe!
January 16th, 2008 at 3:21 am
The odds were 1 in 25 on 12/28/07; 1 in 28 on 1/2/08; 1 in 40 on 1/8/08 and 1 in 10,000 on 1/9/08.
1 in 40 to 1 in 10,000 in one day?
I think I’ll activate the Bad Astrology Credo here and state with all certainty that 2007 WD5 will track the bottom of Valles Marineris like a ball bearing up a pinball chute.
Of course, that’s just me, but then again, Andy Puckett, the asteroid’s pre-discovery imager, sure did move from Chicago to Anchorage awfully fast…
January 25th, 2008 at 12:29 pm
Hey dudes,
Forget it abt colliding with mars, its not interested in mars anymore coz its heading straight for us! Well if it is gonna hit and missed mars at Jan 30 , can anyone tell me the approximate days left for it to collide here
.. coz if its less and hittin my area.. time to party!
January 30th, 2008 at 4:35 pm
Hmm there are some rumors about WD-5…missed Mars but now it have some chance to hit us, I mean ‘earth’. Is that true ?
And sorry about my English