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Asteroid’s sudden flyby shows blind spot in planetary threat detection

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WASHINGTON, Jan 29 (Reuters) – The discovery of an asteroid the size of a small shipping truck mere days before it passed Earth on Thursday, albeit one that posed no threat to humans, highlights a blind spot in our ability to predict those that could actually cause damage, astronomers say.

NASA for years has prioritized detecting asteroids much bigger and more existentially threatening than 2023 BU, the small space rock that streaked by 2,200 miles from the Earth’s surface, closer than some satellites. If bound for Earth, it would have been pulverized in the atmosphere, with only small fragments possibly reaching land.

But 2023 BU sits on the smaller end of a size group, asteroids 5-to-50 meters in diameter, that also includes those as big as an Olympic swimming pool. Objects that size are difficult to detect until they wander much closer to Earth, complicating any efforts to brace for one that could impact a populated area.

The probability of an Earth impact by a space rock, called a meteor when it enters the atmosphere, of that size range is fairly low, scaling according to the asteroid’s size: a 5-meter rock is estimated to target Earth once a year, and a 50-meter rock once every thousand years, according to NASA.

But with current capabilities, astronomers can’t see when such a rock targets Earth until days prior.

“We don’t know where most of the asteroids are that can cause local to regional devastation,” said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The roughly 20-meter meteor that exploded in 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia is a once-every-100-years event, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It created a shockwave that shattered tens of thousands of windows and caused $33 million in damage, and no one saw it coming before it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Some astronomers consider relying only on statistical probabilities and estimates of asteroid populations an unnecessary risk, when improvements could be made to NASA’s ability to detect them.

“How many natural hazards are there that we could actually do something about and prevent for a billion dollars? There’s not many,” said Daly, whose work focuses on defending Earth from hazardous asteroids.

AVOIDING A REALLY BAD DAY

One major upgrade to NASA’s detection arsenal will be NEO Surveyor, a $1.2 billion telescope under development that will launch nearly a million miles from Earth and surveil a wide field of asteroids. It promises a significant advantage over today’s ground-based telescopes that are hindered by daytime light and Earth’s atmosphere.

That new telescope will help NASA meet a goal assigned by Congress in 2005: detect 90% of the total expected amount of asteroids bigger than 140 meters, or those big enough to destroy anything from a region to an entire continent.

“With Surveyor, we’re really focusing on finding the one asteroid that could cause a really bad day for a lot of people,” said Amy Mainzer, NEO Surveyor principal investigator. “But we’re also tasked with getting good statistics on the smaller objects, down to about the size of the Chelyabinsk object.”

NASA has fallen years behind on its congressional goal, which was ordered for completion by 2020. The agency proposed last year to cut the telescope’s 2023 budget by three quarters and a two-year launch delay to 2028 “to support higher-priority missions” elsewhere in NASA’s science portfolio.

Asteroid detection gained greater importance last year after NASA slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid to test its ability to knock a potentially hazardous space rock off a collision course with Earth.

The successful demonstration, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), affirmed for the first time a method of planetary defense.

“NEO Surveyor is of the utmost importance, especially now that we know from DART that we really can do something about it,” Daly said.

“So by golly, we gotta find these asteroids.”

Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Andrea Ricci

Our Standards: The Thomson Reuters Trust Principles.

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Asteroid’s sudden flyby shows blind spot in planetary threat detection

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By Joey Roulette

WASHINGTON (Reuters) – The discovery of an asteroid the size of a small shipping truck mere days before it passed Earth on Thursday, albeit one that posed no threat to humans, highlights a blind spot in our ability to predict those that could actually cause damage, astronomers say.

NASA for years has prioritized detecting asteroids much bigger and more existentially threatening than 2023 BU, the small space rock that streaked by 2,200 miles from the Earth’s surface, closer than some satellites. If bound for Earth, it would have been pulverized in the atmosphere, with only small fragments possibly reaching land.

But 2023 BU sits on the smaller end of a size group, asteroids 5-to-50 meters in diameter, that also includes those as big as an Olympic swimming pool. Objects that size are difficult to detect until they wander much closer to Earth, complicating any efforts to brace for one that could impact a populated area.

The probability of an Earth impact by a space rock, called a meteor when it enters the atmosphere, of that size range is fairly low, scaling according to the asteroid’s size: a 5-meter rock is estimated to target Earth once a year, and a 50-meter rock once every thousand years, according to NASA.

But with current capabilities, astronomers can’t see when such a rock targets Earth until days prior.

“We don’t know where most of the asteroids are that can cause local to regional devastation,” said Terik Daly, a planetary scientist at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory.

The roughly 20-meter meteor that exploded in 2013 over Chelyabinsk, Russia is a once-every-100-years event, according to NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It created a shockwave that shattered tens of thousands of windows and caused $33 million in damage, and no one saw it coming before it entered Earth’s atmosphere.

Some astronomers consider relying only on statistical probabilities and estimates of asteroid populations an unnecessary risk, when improvements could be made to NASA’s ability to detect them.

“How many natural hazards are there that we could actually do something about and prevent for a billion dollars? There’s not many,” said Daly, whose work focuses on defending Earth from hazardous asteroids.

AVOIDING A REALLY BAD DAY

One major upgrade to NASA’s detection arsenal will be NEO Surveyor, a $1.2 billion telescope under development that will launch nearly a million miles from Earth and surveil a wide field of asteroids. It promises a significant advantage over today’s ground-based telescopes that are hindered by daytime light and Earth’s atmosphere.

That new telescope will help NASA meet a goal assigned by Congress in 2005: detect 90% of the total expected amount of asteroids bigger than 140 meters, or those big enough to destroy anything from a region to an entire continent.

“With Surveyor, we’re really focusing on finding the one asteroid that could cause a really bad day for a lot of people,” said Amy Mainzer, NEO Surveyor principal investigator. “But we’re also tasked with getting good statistics on the smaller objects, down to about the size of the Chelyabinsk object.”

NASA has fallen years behind on its congressional goal, which was ordered for completion by 2020. The agency proposed last year to cut the telescope’s 2023 budget by three quarters and a two-year launch delay to 2028 “to support higher-priority missions” elsewhere in NASA’s science portfolio.

Asteroid detection gained greater importance last year after NASA slammed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid to test its ability to knock a potentially hazardous space rock off a collision course with Earth.

The successful demonstration, called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), affirmed for the first time a method of planetary defense.

“NEO Surveyor is of the utmost importance, especially now that we know from DART that we really can do something about it,” Daly said.

“So by golly, we gotta find these asteroids.”

(Reporting by Joey Roulette; Editing by Andrea Ricci)

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Rubble-pile asteroids are ‘giant space cushions’ that live forever

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A diamond is forever? Tell that to a rubble-pile asteroid.

The asteroid Itokawa is a pile of rocky debris 1,640 feet (500 meters) long. Some call it peanut-shaped; Others say it resembles a sea otter, complete with a head, neck and body. Whatever Itokawa may look like, new research suggests that it has remained pristinely intact — despite incessant asteroid bombardment in the inner solar system — since it formed more than 4.2 billion years ago. The finding may be crucial for any future mission designed to protect Earth from a rubble-pile asteroid, the researchers argue.

“In short, we found that Itokawa is like a giant space cushion, and very hard to destroy,” Fred Jourdan, an astronomer at Curtin University in Australia and the lead author of the new paper, said in a statement. 

Related: The greatest asteroid missions of all time!

The team calculated Itokawa’s age using specks of asteroid dust that were scooped by the Japanese Hayabusa spacecraft and brought back to Earth in 2010. By analyzing the dust particles, Jourdan’s team found that Itokawa is almost as old as the solar system itself. In the new paper, the team explains how Itokawa has survived countless asteroid collisions over 4.2 billion long years. 

Although researchers already knew that a catastrophic collision destroyed Itokawa’s parent body, this is the first time that Itokawa’s precise age and resilience have been directly studied.

A “giant space cushion”

The team behind the new research studied the texture and composition of three tiny dust particles collected from Itokawa’s surface. The scientists used a radioactive dating method called argon-argon dating to measure Itokawa’s age, which they clocked at 4.2 billion years.

As part of the study, the team also measured how much the dust particles, and by extension Itokawa, had been affected by shocks from asteroid collisions. For this, the researchers used another method called electron backscatter diffraction to measure the structures and orientations of crystals embedded inside the dust particles. 

The team found that the dust particles were mostly pristine, suggesting that they were excavated from deep within the parent asteroid, likely when it broke apart during the catastrophic collision. The scientists concluded that Itokawa is extremely resilient to collisions, thanks to the asteroid’s highly porous nature.

As an amalgamation of remnants from asteroid collisions, Itokata hosts boulders of different shapes and sizes that have blended under gravity. The rubble pile is “entirely made of loose boulders and rocks, with almost half of it being empty space,” Jourdan said in the statement.

When asteroids impact Itokawa, large cavities or pores between these boulders absorb much of the resulting energy surge, protecting the asteroid’s structure from fractures. In this way, the pores help rubble piles like Itokawa survive asteroid collisions for at least 10 times longer than conventional, single-body asteroids, also known as monoliths, the researchers found.

The case for deflecting rubble-pile asteroids

The new research will help planetary defense experts, who discover near-Earth asteroids, track their paths and determine whether any threaten to collide with Earth.

The scientists say their analysis of Itokawa suggests that thanks to their resilience in the face of impacts, rubble-pile asteroids may be more common, both in the asteroid belt and near-Earth, than previously expected.

“There is more chance that if a big asteroid is hurtling toward Earth, it will be a rubble pile,” Nick Timms, also an astronomer at Curtin University, said in the same statement.

And the structure of an asteroid may make a difference if humans need to choose a strategy for deflecting a threat. For example, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission rammed into Dimorphos, a similar rubble pile that was not on a collision course with Earth, but that was a convenient target to test how humans might respond to a future threatening asteroid. The impact shortened Dimorphos’ orbit around the larger asteroid Didymos by 33 minutes, a major success for the mission.

When it collided with Dimorphos, DART transferred its energy and momentum to the asteroid. Although this method, called kinetic impact, was successful with DART, the authors of the new study warn it may be less efficient at deflecting shock-absorbent porous asteroids. 

The kinetic impactor method is also most effective when we spot asteroids on collision courses with Earth well in advance, leaving enough time for a small change in orbit to build up. If a threatening asteroid is spotted too late for the kinetic impactor approach, “we can then potentially use a more aggressive approach like using the shockwave of a close-by nuclear blast to push a rubble-pile asteroid off course without destroying it,” Timms said.

The research is described in a paper published Monday (Jan. 23) in the journal Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences (PNAS).

Follow Sharmila Kuthunur on Twitter @Sharmilakg. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom and on Facebook. 



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Asteroid 2023 BU about to pass Earth in one of closest ever encounters | Asteroids

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An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will pass Earth in one of the closest such encounters ever recorded – coming within a tenth of the distance of most communication satellites’ orbit.

Nasa said the newly discovered asteroid would pass 2,200 miles (3,600km) above the southern tip of South America at 7.27pm US eastern time on Thursday (12.27am GMT on Friday).

Nasa said it would be a near miss with no chance of hitting Earth. Even if it came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites.

Nasa’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“But despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

Discovered on Saturday, the asteroid known as 2023 BU is believed to be between 11ft (3.5m) and 28ft (8.5m) across.

It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennady Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019. Within a few days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing them to refine the asteroid’s path.

That path will be altered by drastically by Earth’s gravity as it passes. Instead of circling the sun every 359 days, it will move into an oval orbit lasting 425 days, according to Nasa.

With Associated Press

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Asteroid 2023 BU about to pass Earth in one of closest ever encounters | Asteroids

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An asteroid the size of a delivery truck will pass Earth in one of the closest such encounters ever recorded – coming within a tenth of the distance of most communication satellites’ orbit.

Nasa said the newly discovered asteroid would pass 2,200 miles (3,600km) above the southern tip of South America at 7.27pm US eastern time on Thursday (12.27am GMT on Friday).

Nasa said it would be a near miss with no chance of hitting Earth. Even if it came a lot closer, scientists said most of it would burn up in the atmosphere, with bigger pieces possibly falling as meteorites.

Nasa’s impact hazard assessment system, called Scout, quickly ruled out a strike, said its developer, Davide Farnocchia, an engineer at the agency’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California.

“But despite the very few observations, it was nonetheless able to predict that the asteroid would make an extraordinarily close approach with Earth,” Farnocchia said. “In fact, this is one of the closest approaches by a known near-Earth object ever recorded.”

Discovered on Saturday, the asteroid known as 2023 BU is believed to be between 11ft (3.5m) and 28ft (8.5m) across.

It was first spotted by the same amateur astronomer in Crimea, Gennady Borisov, who discovered an interstellar comet in 2019. Within a few days, dozens of observations were made by astronomers around the world, allowing them to refine the asteroid’s path.

That path will be altered by drastically by Earth’s gravity as it passes. Instead of circling the sun every 359 days, it will move into an oval orbit lasting 425 days, according to Nasa.

With Associated Press

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76-foot asteroid rushing towards Earth today, says NASA, reveals key details

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A 76-foot asteroid could make a close trip to Earth today and NASA has revealed the asteroid’s key details.

Earth was witness to numerous asteroid flybys last year and it seems the trend is all set to continue in 2023. NASA has warned that as many as 5 asteroids are all set to make their close approaches towards Earth in a single day, which happens to be today, January 2. Although none of these 5 space rocks are expected to impact Earth’s surface, they have still been classified as Potentially Hazardous Objects by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office which acts as a watchdog against potential asteroid threats. One of them is an asteroid named Asteroid 2022 YU3 .

Asteroid 2022 YU3 key details

NASA has warned that an asteroid named Asteroid 2022 YU3 is headed for Earth and is expected to fly closely past the planet today, January 2. It will make its closest approach to Earth at a distance of just 3.7 million kilometers. NASA says it is already on its way towards Earth, travelling at a staggering speed of 25682 kilometers per hour, which is nearly twice as fast as a hypersonic ballistic missile!

According to NASA, the Asteroid 2022 YU3 is 76 feet in width, which is the size of an aircraft! It belongs to the Apollo group of asteroids which are a group of near-Earth asteroids named after the humongous 1862 Apollo asteroid, discovered by German astronomer Karl Reinmuth in the 1930s.

Did you know?

In research published in the Monthly Notices of the Royal Astronomical Society, MIT scientists have developed a new method to study the internal structure of asteroids based on how its spin changes when it makes a close approach with a huge celestial object, like a planet. This will help in understanding the internal structure of the asteroid as well as the weight distribution, which could help in future DART Missions.

The team of MIT scientists look to apply this research on a Near-Earth Asteroid named Apophis. Although this asteroid is not expected to impact Earth anytime soon, a slight deviation in its trajectory could send it hurtling towards the planet.


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Three Giant Asteroids Will Have Close Encounter With Earth on Christmas Day

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Not one, not two but three huge asteroids are paying us a holiday visit, and are due to speed relatively near the Earth on Christmas Day. Relative to distances in the universe that is, so there is no reason to panic.

The three asteroids are named 2022 YL1, 2013 YA14 and 2022 TE14, and are estimated to measure between 124 and 278 feet, between 167 and 360 feet and between 312 and 689 feet in diameter, respectively.

Therefore, 2022 YL1 is around the same size as the wingspan of a Boeing 777, 2013 YA14 is similar in scale to an American football field, while 2022 TE14 will be around the same size as a 50-story building. We’ll call them asteroids A, B and C respectively.

Stock image of multiple asteroids approaching close to Earth. On Christmas Day, three large asteroids are forecasted to pass near our planet.
iStock / Getty Images Plus

All three asteroids orbit around the sun, occasionally passing close to the Earth. Most of the asteroids in the solar system orbit the sun in the asteroid belt, situated between Mars and Jupiter, where there are thought to be around 1.1 million.

“Asteroids are ‘bits of a planet that didn’t happen’ that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. However, as they are relatively small, asteroids can be disturbed quite easily, so they can develop orbits that cross those of planets,” Jay Tate, the director of the U.K.’s Spaceguard Center observatory, previously told Newsweek.

Each of the asteroids will pass by Earth at a distance of 0.01959, 0.00691 and 0.02872 astronomical units, as per NASA NEO Earth Close Approaches data. One astronomical unit, which is equivalent to the distance between the Earth and the sun—93 million miles miles—meaning that asteroid A will pass by at around 1,820,000 miles away from Earth, asteroid B at 642,000 miles and asteroid C at 2,670,000 miles.

While this may sound extremely far away, in terms of the solar system, the asteroids are coming fairly closer to Earth: the moon is only around 238,900 miles away, while our nearest neighbor planet, Venus, is currently 153.6 million miles away.

Many of the asteroids that pass close to Earth are classified as near-Earth objects, and are designated as such based on how close they approach and how large they are. There are about 30,000 NEOs known to us so far, some of which are also in another category called “potentially hazardous” objects. These are defined as coming within 4.6 million miles of Earth’s orbit and also measure greater than 460 feet in diameter.

Therefore, only asteroid C falls into the potentially hazardous category.

“The potentially hazardous designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact,” Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, previously told Newsweek.

Despite these Christmas asteroids’ proximity to the Earth, the chances of them or any of the other thousands of asteroids in the solar system hitting our planet are very small.

“No known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years,” states NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

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Three Giant Asteroids Will Have Close Encounter With Earth on Christmas Day

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Not one, not two but three huge asteroids are paying us a holiday visit, and are due to speed relatively near the Earth on Christmas Day. Relative to distances in the universe that is, so there is no reason to panic.

The three asteroids are named 2022 YL1, 2013 YA14 and 2022 TE14, and are estimated to measure between 124 and 278 feet, between 167 and 360 feet and between 312 and 689 feet in diameter, respectively.

Therefore, 2022 YL1 is around the same size as the wingspan of a Boeing 777, 2013 YA14 is similar in scale to an American football field, while 2022 TE14 will be around the same size as a 50-story building. We’ll call them asteroids A, B and C respectively.

Stock image of multiple asteroids approaching close to Earth. On Christmas Day, three large asteroids are forecasted to pass near our planet.
iStock / Getty Images Plus

All three asteroids orbit around the sun, occasionally passing close to the Earth. Most of the asteroids in the solar system orbit the sun in the asteroid belt, situated between Mars and Jupiter, where there are thought to be around 1.1 million.

“Asteroids are ‘bits of a planet that didn’t happen’ that orbit the sun between Mars and Jupiter in the main asteroid belt. However, as they are relatively small, asteroids can be disturbed quite easily, so they can develop orbits that cross those of planets,” Jay Tate, the director of the U.K.’s Spaceguard Center observatory, previously told Newsweek.

Each of the asteroids will pass by Earth at a distance of 0.01959, 0.00691 and 0.02872 astronomical units, as per NASA NEO Earth Close Approaches data. One astronomical unit, which is equivalent to the distance between the Earth and the sun—93 million miles miles—meaning that asteroid A will pass by at around 1,820,000 miles away from Earth, asteroid B at 642,000 miles and asteroid C at 2,670,000 miles.

While this may sound extremely far away, in terms of the solar system, the asteroids are coming fairly closer to Earth: the moon is only around 238,900 miles away, while our nearest neighbor planet, Venus, is currently 153.6 million miles away.

Many of the asteroids that pass close to Earth are classified as near-Earth objects, and are designated as such based on how close they approach and how large they are. There are about 30,000 NEOs known to us so far, some of which are also in another category called “potentially hazardous” objects. These are defined as coming within 4.6 million miles of Earth’s orbit and also measure greater than 460 feet in diameter.

Therefore, only asteroid C falls into the potentially hazardous category.

“The potentially hazardous designation simply means over many centuries and millennia the asteroid’s orbit may evolve into one that has a chance of impacting Earth. We do not assess these long-term, many-century possibilities of impact,” Paul Chodas, manager of NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, previously told Newsweek.

Despite these Christmas asteroids’ proximity to the Earth, the chances of them or any of the other thousands of asteroids in the solar system hitting our planet are very small.

“No known asteroid poses a significant risk of impact with Earth over the next 100 years,” states NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Do you have a tip on a science story that Newsweek should be covering? Do you have a question about asteroids? Let us know via science@newsweek.com.

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We could build space cities in asteroids with this wild concept

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A pandemic-induced “lockdown” project produced a new vision for how to build cities on asteroids.

The wild asteroid concept would see far-future humans gather up rock rubble in a massive bag made of nanofiber mesh, allowing future astronauts to build a habitat inside the loose asteroid bits as the rocks spin in space.

“This project started as just a way for physicists and engineers to blow off steam, set aside worldly stresses for a while, and imagine something crazy,” Ph.D. candidate and study lead author Peter Miklavčič, who is based at the University of Rochester, said in a statement (opens in new tab).

The researchers suggest that future Manhattan-sized cities of 22 square miles (57 square kilometers) could be built on these space rocks, just like in science fiction, assuming the base asteroid is at least 1,000 feet (300 meters) across.

Related: Humans could move to this floating asteroid belt colony in the next 15 years, astrophysicist says

“We’re taking a science fiction idea that has been very popular recently — in TV shows like Amazon’s “The Expanse” — and offering a new path for using an asteroid to build a city in space,” added co-author Adam Frank, who teaches physics and astronomy at Rochester, in the same statement.

The study team argues that if their concept indeed works, it would (eventually) allow for lower-cost exploration of the solar system and open up living off-planet to far more people than just billionaires. 

That said, the launch infrastructure is not yet in place for rapid and affordable access to space, let alone any asteroid city-building materials; that may take a few decades at least to build, if not centuries.

The new study borrows from the oft-cited “O’Neill cylinder (opens in new tab)” concept, first proposed by physicist Gerard O’Neill in a 1972 NASA study. Simply put, the design includes two cylinders that rotate in opposite directions, inspiring billionaires like Blue Origin’s Jeff Bezos (who made his fortune with Amazon) or SpaceX‘s Elon Musk. But past work has suggested that supplying the necessary materials from Earth would be quite costly.

Related: As space billionaires take flight, ‘the right stuff’ for space travel enters a new era

Miklavčič studies the space rubble that often arises in asteroids, which can in many cases only be loosely held together by gravity. Since a rotating O’Neill cylinder would make such an asteroid fly apart, a flexible bag could be one solution to holding the materials in and allowing a stable base for a city.

The mesh bag would be made out of carbon nanofibers, which are lightweight and yet strong enough to hold together the asteroid rubble in a potential habitat. In theory, a spun-up asteroid inside a bag would fling its rocks into the sides, allowing the bag to expand and hold the rocks tight with the help of the nanofibers. The rubble peppering the bag’s side would be held there by artificial gravity and would shield the inhabitants from space radiation. 

While the study is literally ‘out there,’ the researchers emphasized all the technology is currently in place (albeit at an early stage) and that the science stands up. 

“Obviously, no one will be building asteroid cities anytime soon, but the technologies required to accomplish this kind of engineering don’t break any laws of physics,” Frank said.

A study based on the research was published in January (opens in new tab) in Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences, and highlighted by the university in December.

Elizabeth Howell is the co-author of “Why Am I Taller (opens in new tab)?” (ECW Press, 2022; with Canadian astronaut Dave Williams), a book about space medicine. Follow her on Twitter @howellspace (opens in new tab). Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom (opens in new tab) or Facebook (opens in new tab).



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Bizarre new study proposes living inside asteroids

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Scientists have proposed what might be the most bizarre concept yet for colonising space – living inside asteroids. 

In a new paper, the University of Rochester experts suggest hollowing out an asteroid, increasing its spin to create artificial gravity and filling it with buildings. 

Covering the chosen asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of carbon nanofibres would stop rubble from breaking off as it spun, they say. 

The team admit that their concept is ‘wildly theoretical’ and that it would require ‘engineering capacities that do not exist at present’. 

In a wildly theoretical paper, Rochester researchers imagine covering an asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of ultralight and high-strength carbon nanofibers as the key to creating human cities in space

Depiction of the cylindrical, spinning habitat, covered with solar panels. Inside is a thick layer of asteroid rubble and regolith that serves as a radiation shield. Just under the solar panels is a strong, stiff container that keeps the rubble from flying apart. The habitat is spun about its lengthwise axis to generate gravity on the inner surface

How would it work? 

The asteroid would somehow be spun to create artificial gravity. This process would inevitably cause the asteroid to break apart. 

The bits of the asteroid rubble would fling outward, expanding the carbon nanofibre bag enveloping the asteroid.

When the bag reached its maximum extent, the carbon nanofibers would snap taut, catching expanding rubble.

As the rubble settled against the bag, it would produce a layer thick enough to shield against radiation for anyone living inside. The spin of the cylinder would induce artificial gravity on the inner surface. 

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‘Our paper lives on the edge of science and science fiction,’ said study author Adam Frank at the University of Rochester. 

‘We’re taking a science fiction idea that has been very popular recently – in TV shows like Amazon’s The Expanse – and offering a new path for using an asteroid to build a city in space.

‘Based on our calculations, a 300-meter-diameter asteroid just a few football fields across could be expanded into a cylindrical space habitat with about 22 square miles of living area – roughly the size of Manhattan.’ 

The team was inspired by O’Neill cylinders, a concept for a space settlement proposed by US physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in 1976. 

The spinning space metropolises consist of two connected cylinders rotating in opposite directions.

The cylinders would rotate fast enough to provide artificial gravity on their inner surface but slow enough that people living in them would not experience motion sickness. 

Billionaires Jeff Bezos and Elon Musk, who own Blue Origin and SpaceX respectively, have referenced O’Neill cylinders in their visions for future space habitats. 

But the Rochester team say getting the necessary building supplies from Earth to space to build them would be too difficult and costly. 

‘Our proposal is likely to be less costly and complex in terms of engineering than building a classic O’Neill habitat,’ they say in their paper. 

The team were inspired by ‘O’Neill cylinders’, a concept for a space settlement proposed by US physicist Gerard K. O’Neill in 1976 (pictured)

An O’Neill cylinder would consist of two counter-rotating cylinders that would rotate in opposite directions, both providing artificial gravity 

DIFFERENT TYPES OF SPACE ROCKS

An asteroid is a large chunk of rock left over from collisions or the early Solar System. Most are located between Mars and Jupiter in the Main Belt.

A comet is a rock covered in ice, methane and other compounds. Their orbits take them much further out of the Solar System.

A meteor is what astronomers call a flash of light in the atmosphere when debris burns up.

This debris itself is known as a meteoroid. Most are so small they are vapourised in the atmosphere.

If any of this meteoroid makes it to Earth, it is called a meteorite.

Meteors, meteoroids and meteorites normally originate from asteroids and comets.

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They therefore turned to asteroids – rocky bodies orbiting the sun, leftover from the formation of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago.  

Scientists estimate there are about 1,000 asteroids larger than one mile across in our solar system alone. 

A 2019 study led by Thomas Maindl at the University of Vienna already suggested a hollowed out asteroid with a central cylindrical cavity could be spun about its axis to achieve artificial gravity similar to Earth’s 

But this paper did not account for a potential issue: that the hollowed-out rock of asteroids would not be strong enough, so it would fracture and break up as it spun. 

Most asteroids are not even solid rock but ‘rubble piles’ – clusters of loose boulders, stones and sand held together by the weak mutual gravity of space. 

The new study therefore proposes covering an asteroid in a flexible, mesh bag made of ultralight, high-strength carbon nanofibres – tubes made of carbon, each just a few atoms in diameter. 

The bag would envelope and support the entire spinning mass of the asteroid’s rubble and the habitat within, while also supporting its own weight as it spins.

Covering the carbon nanofibres would be solar panels, which would provide the habitat with power. 

The experts say the asteroid’s outside layer would provide a natural shield against deadly cosmic radiation from the sun. 

What’s more, a habitat built on an asteroid has implications for interplanetary transport – meaning the colonised asteroid could act as a spaceport. 

Rotation of the asteroid would be spun up to create artificial gravity using rockets, Frank told MailOnline. 

‘The asteroid could be spun up by anchoring rocket motors into the bulk of the rubble pile and firing them perpendicular to the surface,’ he said.  

Asteroids are rocky bodies orbiting the sun, leftover from the formation of the solar system approximately 4.6 billion years ago (artist’s impression) 

The team have not identified a suitable asteroid, despite the paper referring to the project as ‘Habitat Bennu’ after the asteroid that’s about a third of a mile wide.

Colonising parts of space and making them habitable could be the only way to save humans from eventual extinction on our planet. 

At some point in the future, humans could irreparably spoil Earth by plundering its resources entirely, or setting it on fire through greenhouse gas emissions. 

‘If humanity is truly to become a space-faring species then it must have places in which to live and work,’ the experts say in their paper, published in the journal Frontiers in Astronomy and Space Sciences. 

‘While our study clearly relies on engineering capacities that do not exist at present, our results indicate that the basic physics of transforming small asteroids into human habitats is feasible.’   

SpaceX, the company led by Elon Musk, is working on the Starship launch vehicle which would once day take humans to the moon and Mars and colonise them. 

SpaceX, the company led by Elon Musk, is working on the Starship launch vehicle which would once day take humans to the moon and Mars and colonise them 

Musk’s entertaining 2017 research paper, entitled ‘Making Humans a Multi-Planetary Species’, outlines his company’s vision to live on Mars. 

‘History is going to bifurcate along two directions,’ Musk says in the paper.

‘One path is we stay on Earth forever, and then there will be some eventual extinction event.

‘The alternative is to become a space-bearing civilisation and a multi-planetary species, which I hope you would agree is the right way to go.’

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SORRY EARTHLINGS: OUR SUN WILL BECOME A RED GIANT IN ABOUT 5 BILLION YEARS BEFORE SHRINKING DOWN TO A COMPACT WHITE DWARF

The Sun is only 4.6 billion years through its roughly 10-billion-year lifetime.

When hydrogen fuel at the centre of a star is exhausted, nuclear reactions will start move outwards into its atmosphere and burn the hydrogen that’s in a shell surrounding the core. 

As a result, the outside of the star starts to expand and cool, turning much redder. 

Over time, the star will change into a red giant and grow to more than 400 times its original size.

As they expand, red giants engulf some of their close-orbiting planets. In the Sun’s case, this will mean the fiery end of all the inner planets of our Solar System, which might also include the Earth.

But don’t worry – this won’t happen for another 5,000,000,000 years.

Once swelled into a red giant, engulfing the inner planets and searing the Earth’s surface, it will then throw off its outer layers, and the exposed core of the Sun will be left as a slowly cooling white dwarf. 

This stellar ember will be incredibly dense, packing a large fraction of the mass of the Sun into a roughly Earth-sized sphere. 

Source: ESA/National Schools’ Observatory 

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