Large Asteriod May Collide with Mars
Published on 28 Dec 2007 at 11:37 pm.
1 Comment.
Filed under Astronomy, Mars, Research, Space.
There is now a 4 percent chance that the large asteriod 2007 WD5 may collide with the planet Mars in January 2008. While there is a 96% chance that the asteriod will miss, these odds are much larger than usual for large asteriod impacts. If the impact is to occur, it will be on 2008 January 30 at 10:56 UT (2:56 a.m. PST) +- a few minutes.
If this asteriod were heading toward Earth, we would be worried. The fact that it may hit Mars provides a potential scientific opportunity to monitor a large impact on a terrestrial world from the several space probes currently orbiting Mars, or from the ground-based rovers. The event would be comparable to the impact of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 on Jupiter in July 1994.
The asteriod, which was discovered on November 20, 2007 by the NASA-funded Catalina Sky Survey, recently passed the Earth at a distance of 5 million miles and is currently heading toward Mars at a speed of 27,900 miles per hour. If a collision were to occur, it will produce a crater similar in size to Barringer Meteor Crater in Arizona with a blast of about 10-15 megatons of TNT, which is similar to the Tunguska Airburst in 1908.
The Near-Earth Object Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory monitors the orbits of known large near-Earth asteroids. Here are two of their articles on this potential collision.
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news153.html
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/news/news151.html
Kevin Knuth
Albany NY
joe on 1 Jan 2008 at 12:58 pm: 1
Isn’t this asteroid the same size of the meteor that hit AZ 50,000 years ago?