Asteroid Hunters Want To Launch Private Telescope

AP) ^ | June 28, 2012 9:35 AM

[BenLurkin]

Who will protect us from a killer asteroid? A team of ex-NASA astronauts and scientists thinks it’s up to them.

In a bold plan unveiled Thursday, the group wants to launch its own space telescope to spot and track small and mid-sized space rocks capable of wiping out a city or continent. With that information, they could sound early warnings if a rogue asteroid appeared headed toward our planet.

So far, the idea from the B612 Foundation is on paper only.

Such an effort would cost upward of several hundred million dollars, and the group plans to start fundraising. Behind the nonprofit are a space shuttle astronaut, Apollo 9 astronaut, former Mars czar, deep space mission manager along with other non-NASA types.

Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of the solar system some 4.5 billion years ago. Most reside in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter but some get nudged into Earth’s neighborhood.

NASA and a network of astronomers routinely scan the skies for these near-Earth objects. And they’ve found 90 percent of the biggest threats — asteroids at least two-thirds of a mile across that are considered major killers. Scientists believe it was a 6-mile-wide asteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs.

But the group thinks more attention should be paid to the estimated half a million smaller asteroids — similar in size to the one that exploded over Siberia in 1908 and leveled more than 800 square miles of forest.

“We know these objects are out there and we can do something to prevent them” from hitting Earth, said former Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, who helped establish the foundation a decade ago.

Last month, Planetary Resources Inc., a company founded by space entrepreneurs, announced plans to extract precious metals from asteroids within a decade.

[cripplecreek]

Seems like I just read about a new unknown mineral being found in a meteorite. Some type of titanium oxide I believe.