redneckj wrote:
"Rick" wrote in message
...

"Jim Oberg" wrote in message

...

Small asteroid misses Earth by only four thousand miles


http://www.newscientist.com/news/news.jsp?id=ns99996307


Jim Oberg asks -- were there any other possibile sensors
thatr might have detected (but not identified) this bogie?
Visual? Radar? IR?

Depends where it's coming from. Earthbound visual detectors
are useless for objects approaching from the daylight side of
Earth, since no reflected sunlight is visible. Radar and IR are
better, but not many have enough resolving power to detect a
5-10m object.

Something that size didn't/doesn't pose anything but a very
localized risk anyway.

Rick


Sounds like an ideal type body for asteroid material return.
300-1,000 tons of material if you can figure a capture
to orbit method.




Went by kind of quickly: V inf was 10.84 km/sec and V perigee 13.39 km/sec
V circular orbit at that altitude is 5.57 and escape 7.87 km/sec. You
would need 5.23 km/sec delta vee or more to capture it.

http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/cgi-bin/neo_...how=1&from=120

There are much nicer asteroids in terms of delta vee. The above website
allows you to sort close approaches by relative velocity, distance, etc.


--
Hop David
http://clowder.net/hop/index.html