Asteroids: treasures of the past and a threat to the future (Forwarded)

ESA News
http://www.esa.int

3 April 2006

Asteroids: treasures of the past and a threat to the future

If a large asteroid such as the recently identified 2004 VD17 -- about
500 m in diameter with a mass of nearly 1000 million tonnes -- collides
with the Earth it could spell disaster for much of our planet. As part
of ESA's Near-Earth Object deflecting mission Don Quijote, three teams
of European industries are now carrying out studies on how to prevent this.

ESA has been addressing the problem of how to prevent large Near-Earth
Objects (NEOs) from colliding with the Earth for some time. In 1996 the
Council of Europe called for the Agency to take action as part of a
"long-term global strategy for remedies against possible impacts".
Recommendations from other international organisations, including the UN
and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD),
soon followed.

In response to these and other calls, ESA commissioned a number of
threat evaluation and mission studies through its General Studies
Programme (GSP). In July 2004 the preliminary phase was completed when a
panel of experts appointed by ESA recommended giving the Don Quijote
asteroid-deflecting mission concept maximum priority for implementation.

Now it is time for industry to put forward their best design solutions
for the mission. Following an invitation to tender and the subsequent
evaluation process, three industrial teams have been awarded a contract
to carry out the mission phase-A studies:

* a team with Alcatel Alenia Space as prime contractor includes
subcontractors and consultants from across Europe and Canada; Alcatel
Alenia Space developed the Huygens Titan probe and is currently working
on the ExoMars mission

* a consortium led by EADS Astrium, which includes Deimos Space from
Spain and consultants from several European countries, brings their
experience of working on the design of many successful ESA
interplanetary missions such as Rosetta, Mars and Venus Express

* a team led by QinetiQ (UK), which includes companies and partners in
Sweden and Belgium, draws on their expertise in mini and micro
satellites including ESA's SMART-1 and Proba projects

This month the three teams began work and a critical milestone will take
place in October when the studies will be reviewed by ESA with the
support of an international panel of experts. The results of this phase
will be available next year.

No reason for panic -- yet

The risk is still small however, and may decrease even further when new
observations are carried out. Still, if this or any other similar-sized
object, such as 99942 Apophis, an asteroid that will come close enough
to the Earth in 2029 to be visible to the naked eye, collided with our
planet the energy released could be equivalent to a significant fraction
of the world's nuclear arsenal, resulting in devastation across national
borders.

Luckily, impacts with very large asteroids are uncommon, although
impacts with smaller asteroids are less unlikely and remote in time. In
1908 an asteroid that exploded over Siberia devastated an unpopulated
forest area of more than 2000 km2; had it arrived just a few hours
later, Saint Petersburg or London could have been hit instead.

Fossils of the Solar System

Asteroids are a part of our planet's history. As anyone visiting the
Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, USA or aiming a small telescope at
the Moon can tell, there is plenty of evidence that the Earth and its
cosmic neighbourhood passed through a period of heavy asteroid
bombardment. On the Earth alone the remains of more than 160 impacts
have been identified, some as notorious as the Chicxulub crater located
in Mexico's Yucatan peninsula, believed to be a trace of the asteroid
that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Collisions have shaped the history of our Solar System. Because
asteroids and comets are remnants of the turbulent period in which the
planets were formed, they are in fact similar to 'time capsules' and
carry a pristine record of those early days. By studying these objects
it is possible to learn more about the evolution of our Solar System as
well as 'hints' about the origins of life on Earth.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one of these primitive building
blocks and will be visited by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft in 2014, as a
part of a very ambitious mission -- the first ever to land on a comet.
Rosetta will also visit two main belt asteroids (Steins and Lutetia) on
its way to comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission will help us to
understand if life on Earth began with the help of materials such as
water and organisms brought to our planet by 'comet seeding'.

ESA's Science programme is already looking at future challenges, and its
Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan has identified an asteroid surface sample
return as one of the key developments needed to further our
understanding of the history and composition of our Solar System.

Work still in progress

Asteroids and comets are fascinating objects that can give or take life
on a planetary scale. Experts around the world are putting all their
energy and enthusiasm into deciphering the mysteries they carry within them.

With an early launch provisionally scheduled for 2011, Don Quijote will
serve as a 'technological scout' not only to mitigate the chance of the
Earth being hit by a large NEO but also for the ambitious journeys to
explore our solar system that ESA will continue to embark upon. The
studies now being carried out by European industry will bring the Don
Quijote test mission one step nearer.

Note for editors

Don Quijote is a NEO deflection test mission based entirely on
conventional spacecraft technologies. It would comprise two spacecraft
-- one of them (Hidalgo) impacting an asteroid at a very high relative
speed while a second one (Sancho) would arrive earlier at the same
asteroid and remain in its vicinity before and after the impact to
measure the variation on the asteroid's orbital parameters, as well as
to study the object. Secondary mission goals have also been defined,
which would involve the deployment of an autonomous surface package and
several other experiments and measurements.

For more information please contact:

Andrés Gálvez
Advanced Concepts and Studies Office
Andres.Galvez @ esa.int

Related links

* NEO
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/NEO/index.html
* First International Conference on Impact Cratering in the Solar System
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=TOP &page=craters
* Two asteroid flybys for Rosetta
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=34848

[NOTE: Images supporting this release are available at
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMC43NFGLE_index_1.html ]

Britain was hit by lumps of ice on the 6 February 2006 at 12 noon. I was
out in the street in London when suddenly there were loud explosions all
round with flashes in the sky. One exploded directly above me. I looked up
to see an orange fireball (I thought thats the sun, dont look) then I moved
under a streetlamp and the light brightened up the street. A man across the
street I had spoken to about the explosions fell over and just faded away
leaving a pile of clothes. A young attractive woman wearing red walking
towards me must have stripped because of the heat and ran nude in front of
me, fell over and just faded away. I think she was screaming but I could
not hear anything because of the roar or the explosion. A dog walking in the
middle of the road just faded out.

One of the explosions hit me in the chest and knocked me down.

They went on 15 minutes, every 30 seconds and then stopped.

A few days later I was in my front room and a huge heavy explosion occured
that shook the ground and there was a flash in the sky, to the north and
then some particulate rain came down, like white flecks.

On thursday I went to East Grinstead feeling ill and I had a sun tanned
face. I went to hospital (oh they said did you cause that explosion at East
Grinstead?) but they sent me to an emergancy place 16 miles away by taxi
(£20) and there I collapsed. I had dioreha and felt ill. They said the
radiation burn was not to bad and I had some heart procedure done by a
famous heart surgeon who was visting that day. He said something about a
bullet in my heart. A heart valve and three stents or something. I was given
vitamins and after 6 hours I took a train from Tonbridge Wells to London,
and on the way some more explosions shook the train with huge flashes in the
sky.

I vaguely remember that a few days before I had found a hydrogen bomb in the
dining room of a house near me and I put the safety pin back in that the
bomber had left on the table, there were five more round London, and others
over the country the delivery men had left a list of their deliver addresses
on the table before they left. I think they were all 20 Megaton.

I heard stories of the British army collecting lorryloads of these bombs and
taking them for disposal.

I have heard that the Bullring in Birmingham had taken a ground burst and
that trains don't go to Birmingham any more and that roads to Birmingham are
blocked with piles of earth and rock and the huge crater there is a tourist
attraction.

I understand too that Coventry and Manchester are similar.

None of this makes any sense and basicly I don't believe any of it, it is
just plain silly my mind is playing tricks on me.

The fall on the 6 of Feb was predicted by a poster, the same poster
predicted a for more serious fall on the 8 August, this is an update on
previous calculations of the 15 August and the 16th August. All in 2006.

The august fall is predicted as a long chain the lumps of ice like a string
of beads a million miles long and will bombard the earth in a wide swathe
around the equator for about a fortnight.

I still dont believe any of it and the posters are believed to be getting
messages from flying saucers, like Maia, but in view of the accurate
pediction of the 6 Feb 12 gmt I am getting quite frightened.

I am not the predictor, I am just another person who is bit worried.

If you survive then you are a survivor otherwise you are not. Thats it.

I would have thought a radar station like fylingdales could pick up this
object and make an accurate prediction so evacuations could take place.

Sorry, I cannot vouch for what I said but I think its true.
--
Chris
"Andrew Yee" ""ayee \"@ nova.astro.utoronto.ca" wrote in message
news
ESA News
http://www.esa.int

3 April 2006

Asteroids: treasures of the past and a threat to the future

If a large asteroid such as the recently identified 2004 VD17 -- about 500
m in diameter with a mass of nearly 1000 million tonnes -- collides with
the Earth it could spell disaster for much of our planet. As part of ESA's
Near-Earth Object deflecting mission Don Quijote, three teams of European
industries are now carrying out studies on how to prevent this.

ESA has been addressing the problem of how to prevent large Near-Earth
Objects (NEOs) from colliding with the Earth for some time. In 1996 the
Council of Europe called for the Agency to take action as part of a
"long-term global strategy for remedies against possible impacts".
Recommendations from other international organisations, including the UN
and the Organisation for Economic Cooperation and Development (OECD), soon
followed.

In response to these and other calls, ESA commissioned a number of threat
evaluation and mission studies through its General Studies Programme
(GSP). In July 2004 the preliminary phase was completed when a panel of
experts appointed by ESA recommended giving the Don Quijote
asteroid-deflecting mission concept maximum priority for implementation.

Now it is time for industry to put forward their best design solutions for
the mission. Following an invitation to tender and the subsequent
evaluation process, three industrial teams have been awarded a contract to
carry out the mission phase-A studies:

* a team with Alcatel Alenia Space as prime contractor includes
subcontractors and consultants from across Europe and Canada; Alcatel
Alenia Space developed the Huygens Titan probe and is currently working on
the ExoMars mission

* a consortium led by EADS Astrium, which includes Deimos Space from Spain
and consultants from several European countries, brings their experience
of working on the design of many successful ESA interplanetary missions
such as Rosetta, Mars and Venus Express

* a team led by QinetiQ (UK), which includes companies and partners in
Sweden and Belgium, draws on their expertise in mini and micro satellites
including ESA's SMART-1 and Proba projects

This month the three teams began work and a critical milestone will take
place in October when the studies will be reviewed by ESA with the support
of an international panel of experts. The results of this phase will be
available next year.

No reason for panic -- yet

The risk is still small however, and may decrease even further when new
observations are carried out. Still, if this or any other similar-sized
object, such as 99942 Apophis, an asteroid that will come close enough to
the Earth in 2029 to be visible to the naked eye, collided with our planet
the energy released could be equivalent to a significant fraction of the
world's nuclear arsenal, resulting in devastation across national borders.

Luckily, impacts with very large asteroids are uncommon, although impacts
with smaller asteroids are less unlikely and remote in time. In 1908 an
asteroid that exploded over Siberia devastated an unpopulated forest area
of more than 2000 km2; had it arrived just a few hours later, Saint
Petersburg or London could have been hit instead.

Fossils of the Solar System

Asteroids are a part of our planet's history. As anyone visiting the
Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona, USA or aiming a small telescope at the
Moon can tell, there is plenty of evidence that the Earth and its cosmic
neighbourhood passed through a period of heavy asteroid bombardment. On
the Earth alone the remains of more than 160 impacts have been identified,
some as notorious as the Chicxulub crater located in Mexico's Yucatan
peninsula, believed to be a trace of the asteroid that caused the
extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.

Collisions have shaped the history of our Solar System. Because asteroids
and comets are remnants of the turbulent period in which the planets were
formed, they are in fact similar to 'time capsules' and carry a pristine
record of those early days. By studying these objects it is possible to
learn more about the evolution of our Solar System as well as 'hints'
about the origins of life on Earth.

Comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko is one of these primitive building blocks
and will be visited by ESA's Rosetta spacecraft in 2014, as a part of a
very ambitious mission -- the first ever to land on a comet. Rosetta will
also visit two main belt asteroids (Steins and Lutetia) on its way to
comet 67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko. The mission will help us to understand if
life on Earth began with the help of materials such as water and organisms
brought to our planet by 'comet seeding'.

ESA's Science programme is already looking at future challenges, and its
Cosmic Vision 2015-2025 plan has identified an asteroid surface sample
return as one of the key developments needed to further our understanding
of the history and composition of our Solar System.

Work still in progress

Asteroids and comets are fascinating objects that can give or take life on
a planetary scale. Experts around the world are putting all their energy
and enthusiasm into deciphering the mysteries they carry within them.

With an early launch provisionally scheduled for 2011, Don Quijote will
serve as a 'technological scout' not only to mitigate the chance of the
Earth being hit by a large NEO but also for the ambitious journeys to
explore our solar system that ESA will continue to embark upon. The
studies now being carried out by European industry will bring the Don
Quijote test mission one step nearer.

Note for editors

Don Quijote is a NEO deflection test mission based entirely on
conventional spacecraft technologies. It would comprise two spacecraft --
one of them (Hidalgo) impacting an asteroid at a very high relative speed
while a second one (Sancho) would arrive earlier at the same asteroid and
remain in its vicinity before and after the impact to measure the
variation on the asteroid's orbital parameters, as well as to study the
object. Secondary mission goals have also been defined, which would
involve the deployment of an autonomous surface package and several other
experiments and measurements.

For more information please contact:

Andrés Gálvez
Advanced Concepts and Studies Office
Andres.Galvez @ esa.int

Related links

* NEO
http://www.esa.int/SPECIALS/NEO/index.html
* First International Conference on Impact Cratering in the Solar System
http://www.rssd.esa.int/index.php?project=TOP &page=craters
* Two asteroid flybys for Rosetta
http://sci.esa.int/science-e/www/obj...objectid=34848

[NOTE: Images supporting this release are available at
http://www.esa.int/esaCP/SEMC43NFGLE_index_1.html ]

This sounds just like another report recently which never happened.

Saul Levy


On Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:51:13 GMT, "Chris"
wrote:

Britain was hit by lumps of ice on the 6 February 2006 at 12 noon. I was
out in the street in London when suddenly there were loud explosions all
round with flashes in the sky. One exploded directly above me. I looked up
to see an orange fireball (I thought thats the sun, dont look) then I moved
under a streetlamp and the light brightened up the street. A man across the
street I had spoken to about the explosions fell over and just faded away
leaving a pile of clothes. A young attractive woman wearing red walking
towards me must have stripped because of the heat and ran nude in front of
me, fell over and just faded away. I think she was screaming but I could
not hear anything because of the roar or the explosion. A dog walking in the
middle of the road just faded out.

One of the explosions hit me in the chest and knocked me down.

They went on 15 minutes, every 30 seconds and then stopped.

A few days later I was in my front room and a huge heavy explosion occured
that shook the ground and there was a flash in the sky, to the north and
then some particulate rain came down, like white flecks.

On thursday I went to East Grinstead feeling ill and I had a sun tanned
face. I went to hospital (oh they said did you cause that explosion at East
Grinstead?) but they sent me to an emergancy place 16 miles away by taxi
(£20) and there I collapsed. I had dioreha and felt ill. They said the
radiation burn was not to bad and I had some heart procedure done by a
famous heart surgeon who was visting that day. He said something about a
bullet in my heart. A heart valve and three stents or something. I was given
vitamins and after 6 hours I took a train from Tonbridge Wells to London,
and on the way some more explosions shook the train with huge flashes in the
sky.

I vaguely remember that a few days before I had found a hydrogen bomb in the
dining room of a house near me and I put the safety pin back in that the
bomber had left on the table, there were five more round London, and others
over the country the delivery men had left a list of their deliver addresses
on the table before they left. I think they were all 20 Megaton.

I heard stories of the British army collecting lorryloads of these bombs and
taking them for disposal.

I have heard that the Bullring in Birmingham had taken a ground burst and
that trains don't go to Birmingham any more and that roads to Birmingham are
blocked with piles of earth and rock and the huge crater there is a tourist
attraction.

I understand too that Coventry and Manchester are similar.

None of this makes any sense and basicly I don't believe any of it, it is
just plain silly my mind is playing tricks on me.

The fall on the 6 of Feb was predicted by a poster, the same poster
predicted a for more serious fall on the 8 August, this is an update on
previous calculations of the 15 August and the 16th August. All in 2006.

The august fall is predicted as a long chain the lumps of ice like a string
of beads a million miles long and will bombard the earth in a wide swathe
around the equator for about a fortnight.

I still dont believe any of it and the posters are believed to be getting
messages from flying saucers, like Maia, but in view of the accurate
pediction of the 6 Feb 12 gmt I am getting quite frightened.

I am not the predictor, I am just another person who is bit worried.

If you survive then you are a survivor otherwise you are not. Thats it.

I would have thought a radar station like fylingdales could pick up this
object and make an accurate prediction so evacuations could take place.

Sorry, I cannot vouch for what I said but I think its true.

The incident I personally witnessed is true and a minute or two later a
friend rang me from Worcester Park, about two miles south and said that a
similar thing was happening and people were dying around him, he took
shelter (he is a weapons person) and survived. There is no increased
radiation and no fall out.

I met a person in shop selling newspapers who said his wife was a casualty.

I have asked a friend to go to Birmingham New Street to check (I expect it
to be normal) but another friend went to Durham by train and said the train
was delayed two hours by a diversion and said something about devastation in
the North of England that had challanged his faith in Christ.

I have no knowlege of the prediction of the 8 August, but several people
have been hospitalised because they believe they have "messages" to warn the
human race.

However in the past these messages have always been about nothing at all.

I just don't know.

--
Chris
"Saul Levy" wrote in message
...
This sounds just like another report recently which never happened.

How did you check? The religious authorities will never admit such a
terrible disaster and neither will most governments. People in the disaster
area are dead and cannot report it and outside there is no sign of anything
and no communication has been shown on TV.

However it all seems perfectly normal round here, there is no shortage of
fuel, electricity or food and all my telephone calls have worked.

I do not know of anyone who is not around now but I cannot tell because that
person might just be away.

Like Maia, she was with me one day, we went to the doctor and she never came
back. I have had other similar reports filtering through. The silence of
the lambs. I heard of her execution on TV. I don't know why.

There was a big fireball seen over England in around 1300, seen by the moors
in spain and wiped out half the English population at the time, but English
church leader will not admit to it ("stones do not fall from the sky, there
are no stones in the sky. People do not come from the sky, there are no
people in the sky") They are prepared to kill over this sort of thing, the
dissapeared are increasing, one churchman told me that executions are
running at 5000 a month.


Saul Levy


On Mon, 03 Apr 2006 19:51:13 GMT, "Chris"
wrote:

You are a wacko! These events are not occuring, period!

Saul Levy


On Tue, 04 Apr 2006 16:34:18 GMT, "Chris"
wrote:

The incident I personally witnessed is true and a minute or two later a
friend rang me from Worcester Park, about two miles south and said that a
similar thing was happening and people were dying around him, he took
shelter (he is a weapons person) and survived. There is no increased
radiation and no fall out.

I met a person in shop selling newspapers who said his wife was a casualty.

I have asked a friend to go to Birmingham New Street to check (I expect it
to be normal) but another friend went to Durham by train and said the train
was delayed two hours by a diversion and said something about devastation in
the North of England that had challanged his faith in Christ.

I have no knowlege of the prediction of the 8 August, but several people
have been hospitalised because they believe they have "messages" to warn the
human race.

However in the past these messages have always been about nothing at all.

I just don't know.

"Chris" wrote in message
.uk...

On thursday I went to East Grinstead feeling ill and I had a sun tanned
face. I went to hospital (oh they said did you cause that explosion at
East Grinstead?)

I am in East Grinstead every Friday and there
have been no explosions there at all. You need
to seek medical advice, everything you have
posted is imaginary.

George