Asteroid on collision path with Earth

Email this storyPrint this story 7:25AM Tuesday February 20, 2007
By David Usborne

The United Nations will shortly be asked to take on a new and unfamiliar mission - to save the Earth,
not from drought, war or disease, but from the cataclysm that could occur following a direct hit by an
asteroid.

A group of former astronauts and cosmonauts is warning that at least one asteroid already identified in
outer space is on a path that could indeed see it colliding with our planet in 2036.

They say work should begin now on considering a strategy to protect humankind from this and other
asteroids.

Specifically, members of the Association of Space Explorers are planning a series of meetings over the
next two years, to be attended by diplomats, astronomers, astronauts and engineers, to draft an
international treaty on address the threat.

It will be presented to the UN for adoption in 2009.

"You have to act when things look like they are going to happen - if you wait until you know for
certain, it's too late," Dr Russell Schweickart, an Apollo 9 astronaut, told a conference of the American
Association for the Advancement of Science in San Francisco.

"We believe there needs to be a decision process spelled out and adopted by the United Nations." The
United States Congress recently instructed Nasa to increase its efforts to identify asteroids that could
pose a threat to Earth.

As of now, the agency is monitoring the paths of 127 so-called near-Earth objects (NEO) that have the
possibility of striking the planet.

Among prominent figures who have been asked to participate in drafting a UN treaty are Lord Rees,
the English Astronomer Royal as well as Roger Bonnet, the ex-director of science at the European
Space Agency and the former British ambassador the UN, Sir Crispin Tickell.

Underscoring the peril, an asteroid named Apophis risks passing very close to Earth on 13 April, 2036.

Astronomers warn that as of now, there is a 1 in 45,000 chance of a direct hit.

Its impact would be enough to wipe out a country as large as England.

Debate over how best to deflect any asteroid headed to our planet echoes the science-fiction scripts of
Hollywood films like 'Armageddon', which precisely told the story of an asteroid and the derring-do of
astronauts sent on a mission to destroy it before it reached Earth's atmosphere.

Dr Edward Lu told the conference that notions of smashing asteroids before they reach Earth are risky.

"There is a random element to them," he said.

"Things like hitting them with a bomb or flying a spacecraft into them - you just do not know what the
results of that are going to be." Scientists now favour deploying so-called 'Gravity Tractors', small
spacecrafts that would travel close to a speeding asteroid and, with their own gravitational pull, try to
drag it onto a different path.

- INDEPENDENT