Note: this topic is from 10/11/2017. Thanks MtnClimber.
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Posted on 10/11/2017 7:26:47 PM PDT by MtnClimber
A house-size asteroid will give Earth a near-miss on Thursday, giving experts a rare chance to rehearse for a real-life strike threat as it passes inside the moon’s orbit.
Dubbed 2012 TC4, the space rock will shave past at an altitude of less than 44,000km (27,300 miles) – just above the 36,000km altitude at which hundreds of geosynchronous satellites orbit the Earth.
That represents about an eighth of the distance between the Earth and the moon.
Nasa’s Mike Kelley, who leads the exercise to spot, track and intimately probe the transient visitor, insisted there was “no danger. Not even for satellites”.
“We’ve now been observing TC4 for two months, so we have very accurate position information on it, which in turn allows very precise calculations of its orbit,” which will not cross that of Earth nor its satellites, he told AFP.
As its name suggests, the object was first spotted five years ago when it called on Earth at about double Thursday’s projected distance, before disappearing from view.
It is 15 to 30 metres (50 to 100ft) wide – about the size of the meteoroid that exploded in the atmosphere over Chelyabinsk in central Russia in 2013, with 30 times the kinetic energy of the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima.
The resulting shockwave blew out the windows of nearly 5,000 buildings and injured more than 1,200 people.
(Excerpt) Read more at theguardian.com ...
Detroit?
Funny...
That would be awesome.
The Cube becomes a vaporized pancake inside of a new crater!
If we could get control of the trajectory of several, we could send them to Mecca, Medina, Damascus, Tehran, Dome of the Rock etc...
“Detroit”
I don’t think it fair to leave out Hollywood, San Fran, and UN?
Forget it!
Those types are so bright, they would en-mass just turn around and worship the new crater where the cube once was.
No. But Detroit was the first that popped into what passes for my mind. There are other worthy candidates.... Martha’s Vineyard? World Bank HQ?
This is fun.
The point of Mars is that Earth can not be “secured”.
Rehearse? What are they going to do?
Target practice to prepare for the big one? Don’t let the opportunity go to waste!
If it is that close, it could sustain some damage
Note: this topic is from 10/11/2017. Thanks MtnClimber.
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