Podcaster: Dr. Al Grauer
Title: Travelers in the Night Eps. 95E & 96E: Mining Asteroids & How Close Will It Come To Us?
Organization: Travelers in The Night
Link : Travelers in the Night ; @Nmcanopus
Description: Today’s 2 topics:
- Science fiction writers have long imagined human space colonies which use the resources they find. Dana Stabenow’s Star Svensdotter Series is an excellent recent example.
- The goal of the NASA Near Earth Object Program is to provide an early warning should an asteroid be found to be on a path bringing it close to planet Earth.
Bio: Dr. Al Grauer is currently an observing member of the Catalina Sky Survey Team at the University of Arizona. This group has discovered nearly half of the Earth approaching objects known to exist. He received a PhD in Physics in 1971 and has been an observational Astronomer for 43 years. He retired as a University Professor after 39 years of interacting with students. He has conducted research projects using telescopes in Arizona, Chile, Australia, Hawaii, Louisiana, and Georgia with funding from NSF and NASA.
He is noted as Co-discoverer of comet P/2010 TO20 Linear-Grauer, Discoverer of comet C/2009 U5 Grauer and has asteroid 18871 Grauer named for him.
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Transcript:
95E: Mining Asteroids
Science fiction writers have long imagined human space colonies which use the resources they find. Dana Stabenow’s Star Svensdotter Series is an excellent recent example.
Dr. Martin Elvis at the Harvard-Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge is bringing a scientific analysis to the concept of mining platinum and water from asteroids. He has developed a simple formula to determine the number of Earth approaching asteroids which are accessible with current rocket technology. He estimates that there are 10 known asteroids which could be commercially mined for the platinum group metals. He also finds approximately 9,000 small and 18 football field sized water bearing, accessible, asteroids. Dr. Elvis points out that his numbers are conservative and uncertain.
The number of commercially mineable asteroids can be increased by improved rocket speeds and by finding and determining the properties of many more of the millions of small objects that come within range of our telescopes.
Several companies including Planetary Resources and Deep Space Industries are undeterred by the difficulties and are currently pursuing commercial mining of Earth approaching asteroids. Japan is launching a spacecraft to blast an asteroid with a cannon and return samples of it to Earth.
It will take major, risky investments over many years to develop the capability to use asteroids to enable humans to explore our neighbourhood in space. Asteroid mining may seem far fetched, however, many of the things that we are doing today were science fiction a few years back.
96E: How Close Will It Come To Us?
The goal of the NASA Near Earth Object Program is to provide an early warning should an asteroid be found to be on a path bringing it close to planet Earth. I am a member of the University of Arizona, Catalina Sky Survey. Our team operates two telescopes in the Catalina Mountains near Tucson, Arizona. We discover Earth approaching objects by measuring their motion relative to other objects in space and sending our results to the Minor Planet Center where they are posted on a public website. Other observers around the globe measure the new objects motion and position and post their observations on the Minor Planet Center’s Near Earth Object Confirmation Page. All of these observations are used to calculate the new object’s path around the Sun. Its orbit along with our knowledge of the Earth’s path around the Sun allow researchers at the Minor Planet Center, Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Sormano Astronomical Observatory, and other locations to predict when and by how much the new object will miss the Earth. These calculations are typically carried out to 100 years in the future. Until this entire process is complete we don’t know how close an asteroid or comet will come to planet Earth.
So far we have found two small asteroids before they entered the Earth’s atmosphere where they broke up into harmless pieces.
My friends often ask for an early warning of impending doom. As you can see our work is an open book. Look at the Near Earth Object websites and you will know about any close approaches as soon the calculations are made.
For Travelers in the Night this is Dr. Al Grauer.
End of podcast:
365 Days of Astronomy
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