4 ms·
From what I can tell from the animation in the article, it shouldn't be that far out. I'm not an astronomer or anything, but from my point of view, it would be
by ahje 8y ago
From what I can tell from the animation in the article, it shouldn't be that far out.
I'm not an astronomer or anything, but from my point of view, it would be quite interesting to find out more about that asteroid's composition etc.
- TeMPOraL 8y agoIt's not about how far out they are, but how fast they are going relative to Earth. When you're trying to get to something in space, you need to roughly match both positions and velocities between you and your target.
- Cthulhu_ 8y agoI did a quick googling, the earth's orbital speed is 29.78 km/second, so you'd need to cancel that out first, then speed up again to match the speed of the asteroid. For comparison, you need 9.4 km/s of delta-V to bring something in low earth object (7.8 km/s for orbit, plus 1.3-1.8 km/s for atmospheric and gravity drag). To put something in counter-rotating low earth orbit, you probably also need to add the rotation speed of the earth (at the location of launch), but, I don't know the figures there (not a three second googling away). So uh, yes. Needs a rocket with at least four times as much delta-V as what we currently use to put something in orbit. I'm reading the New Horizons project, which up until now was the fastest thing to leave Earth, was shooting away from us at 16.26 km/s - all from chemical thrust. The Voyager 1 is still going a bit faster thanks to gravity assists.