"Asteroid 2007 VK184 has been picked up by astronomers, including those at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Near-Earth Objects Program. Currently 90 million kilometres from Earth, 130 meters across and travelling at 70,000 km/h, it could impact the planet sometime in 2048." Read more 2007 VK184 has now been listed on the Near Earth Object Risk List with a Torino Scale of Level 1. The 130 metre asteroid was discovered on November 12th 2007, by the Catalina Sky Survey. So far there have been 95 observations over 35 days indicating that the asteroid has a probability of 1 in 3130 of impacting with the Earth on the 3rd June 2048.
Possibly our technology will be sufficiently advanced over the next four decades that we can make some use of this passing asteroid?
From the same source: This always happens, I think. The one-in-3130 chance made me laugh. "ONE IN 3130?! OH NOSE!!!"
Since it will flash by at around 19 km/sec, probably not. If we wanted to go to an asteroid in 40 years it would probably be much easier to go to one that wasn't moving so fast relative to the earth.
Jesus, can't they find any closer ones.. ? I'll be 70 then.. Please Register or Log in to view the hidden image!
Nasor. It would be good if we could fit up a "cheap" controllable camera/transmitter and other instruments onto some of the bodies travelling around the solar system. 19 km/s is almost 600,000,000 km per year. Imagine it leaving the solar system and spending most of it's time out there before coming in again.
