ESA Planetary Defense | World Defense

ESA Planetary Defense

KimberlyD

MEMBER
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
370
Reactions
47 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
This was published on April 1, 2015. The ESA has begun working on a timeline for 2020 to launch a planetary defense system in the event of any danger approaching Earth from space.

DAHBOO777 Underground World News said:
If an asteroid were spotted headed towards Earth, what could humanity do about it? ESA's latest mission is part of a larger international effort to find out.

This month marked the start of preliminary design work on ESA's Asteroid Impact Mission, or AIM. Intended to demonstrate technologies for future deep-space missions, AIM will also be the Agency's very first investigation of planetary defence techniques.
Launched in October 2020, AIM will travel to a binary asteroid system – the paired Didymos asteroids, which will come a comparatively close 11 million km to Earth in 2022. The 800 m-diameter main body is orbited by a 170 m moon, informally called 'Didymoon'.
This smaller body is AIM's focus: the spacecraft will perform high-resolution visual, thermal and radar mapping of the moon to build detailed maps of its surface and interior structure.
AIM will also put down a lander – ESA's first touchdown on a small body since Rosetta's Philae landed on a comet last November.

 

kana_marie

MEMBER
Joined
Mar 18, 2015
Messages
273
Reactions
45 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
Oh wow! This is beautiful! I've wondered so many times why there was something in place. They have known it was a possibility for how bling now! Like, forever??
 

KimberlyD

MEMBER
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
370
Reactions
47 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
Yeah, I was surprised when I came across it. I was shocked that it was never done before already. Now my question is.... why is it that only the ESA is involved. Why is it that our NASA and Russia's RFSA are not involved? Or other space agencies around the world. They should all be working on this together.
 

vegito12

MEMBER
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
349
Reactions
41 0 0
Country
New Zealand
Location
New Zealand
It is interesting and also looks amazing and the ESA is doing, real well in making a defence system and will be interesting to see what happens when it is set up as well. It will be nice to see it being able to defending the planet from rocks or anything that can cause harm to the planet as well. I hope, that it does well and the system has a good record and also it is able to keep up with atmosphere that occurs over there.
 

kana_marie

MEMBER
Joined
Mar 18, 2015
Messages
273
Reactions
45 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
I need to look deeper into it. There is speculation that the asteroid that came really close to the earth in 2012 is coming back around in October of 2017. It's going to either hit us or barely miss us. I wonder if that was part of the motivation to get this done?
 
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
184
Reactions
40 1 0
Country
Euro
Location
Euro
I need to look deeper into it. There is speculation that the asteroid that came really close to the earth in 2012 is coming back around in October of 2017. It's going to either hit us or barely miss us. I wonder if that was part of the motivation to get this done?

There is no speculation, the asteroid will come back. But no, it will not hit us: it has been calculated to pass within a comfortable distance. And something happening in 2017 will not be stopped by a system that is planned for an initial launch in 2020...

But this does seem like a big step forward, I know a lot of countries have worked in similar concepts even decades ago but maybe this one will be the first to actually provide us with a working prototype.
 

Redheart

SENIOR MEMBER
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
1,239
Reactions
319 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
There are conspiracy theories circulating that Planet X/Nibiru is headed towards the earth and though the science community contends that such a planet/dwarf star doesn't exist, what if . . .

How effective would the ESA planetary defense be if something that huge was to be on a collision course with the earth?
 

kana_marie

MEMBER
Joined
Mar 18, 2015
Messages
273
Reactions
45 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
There is no speculation, the asteroid will come back. But no, it will not hit us: it has been calculated to pass within a comfortable distance. And something happening in 2017 will not be stopped by a system that is planned for an initial launch in 2020...

But this does seem like a big step forward, I know a lot of countries have worked in similar concepts even decades ago but maybe this one will be the first to actually provide us with a working prototype.
Well, now you've just made me sad. I hope you're happy! Lol just kidding. I missed the launch date of 2020. Obviously, I'm not very knowledgable regarding this. Assuming it works, and we see the day it has to be used, what kind of a distance are we looking at it being effective? And what kind of aftermath will we be able to expect?
 

KimberlyD

MEMBER
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
370
Reactions
47 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
There are conspiracy theories circulating that Planet X/Nibiru is headed towards the earth and though the science community contends that such a planet/dwarf star doesn't exist, what if . . .

How effective would the ESA planetary defense be if something that huge was to be on a collision course with the earth?

Not much unfortunately. The planetary defense system is set up to defend the planet against large meteors and asteroids not planets or anything of that size. Something as big as Planet X/Nibiru would have to be spotted in time for ships carrying war heads to break it up as much as possible for the defense system to work.
 

Redheart

SENIOR MEMBER
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
1,239
Reactions
319 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
If Nibiru actually does exist and it's 20 times bigger than Jupiter as it's claimed then even if all the nuclear weapons on earth were fired at it, they wouldn't have much of an effect on that giant planet. Good thing though is Nibiru doesn't exist. The ESA can do an effective job of defending the planet against most large meteors and Asteroids.
 
Joined
Jan 9, 2015
Messages
184
Reactions
40 1 0
Country
Euro
Location
Euro
There are conspiracy theories circulating that Planet X/Nibiru is headed towards the earth and though the science community contends that such a planet/dwarf star doesn't exist, what if . . .

How effective would the ESA planetary defense be if something that huge was to be on a collision course with the earth?

Seriously now, where do these conspiracy theories come from? If NASA/ESA/JAXA/Roscosmos can't spot it, then surely no geek living in his mother's basement can. These are the kind of conspiracy theories that give the whole "conspiracy theory" name a bad imagine... just people talking imaginary crap without any evidence to support it.

But I'll entertain the idea for 30 seconds. A planet, even a dwarf planet, would probably be too much to handle for such a system, especially since we are just in the beginning of developing it.
 

KimberlyD

MEMBER
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
370
Reactions
47 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
If Nibiru actually does exist and it's 20 times bigger than Jupiter as it's claimed then even if all the nuclear weapons on earth were fired at it, they wouldn't have much of an effect on that giant planet. Good thing though is Nibiru doesn't exist. The ESA can do an effective job of defending the planet against most large meteors and Asteroids.


You would not fire AT it @Redheart. Haven't you seen the movie Armageddon? You would just have to have more then one nuke drilled into the planet and them all go off at the same time, it would A) knock it off course or B) break it up enough to destroy the individual pieces by the defense system.
 

Redheart

SENIOR MEMBER
Joined
Dec 26, 2014
Messages
1,239
Reactions
319 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
I had a look around and in one article the writer claims that it would be impossible to blow up any planet, let alone earth which is very small.

Astronomer: 3 reasons we can't blow up a planet sci-fi style | Blastr
If you want to vaporize the Earth—and, really, who doesn't?—then you will need about 2 x 1032 Joules. A Joule is a tiny amount of energy, but 200,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000,000 of them add up.

But it's hard to grasp what that really means, so maybe we need to translate this into more understandable units. Hey, got a one-megaton nuclear bomb handy? You'll need 57 quadrillion (5.7 x 1016) more if you want to blow up the planet.

Yikes. The total nuclear arsenal of every nation on Earth combined is probably somewhat less than 100,000 megatons, so we come up a bit short.
Good thing though all we might ever need to blow up are meteors, asteroids.
 

KimberlyD

MEMBER
Joined
Jan 4, 2015
Messages
370
Reactions
47 0 0
Country
USA
Location
USA
I don't know... from everything I have learned I would not put it past us humans to find a way. It would take a lot though. It is not an easy task. There is also a way to cause a planet to implode... but I can't seem to find that information again. I read it years ago and thought it was interesting. There is something you have to do to get down to a certain level near the core. I wish I could remember it all.
 
Top