Asteroid + Earth Impacts: rising probability... 4140

Straydog

The main problem is being able to determine the orbital elements based on a few observations. If found early enough, something to deal with such objects can be launched. "Deep Impact" required only a few months to fly to Comet Tempel 1.

However, another problem is to determine the size and mbutt of such objects and that can be a lot tricker as their surfaces are unlikely to be smooth due to meteorite impact and collisions with other objects. Their material could be estimated from the surface reflectivities, but determining all this could be made difficult if those same objects rotate.

These will be required to determine what sort of vehicle payload will be needed and what it has to do in order to either destroy it or render it harmless.

In addition, another aspect to this is the inclination of the orbits. On the "New York Times" website this afternoon, an article mentioned that a tenth planet in our solar system had been discovered, though no name had been given. It's slightly bigger than Pluto, as I recall, and a lot further out, but one reason why it took to long to be discovered was that its orbit was at a very high inclination, well out of the plane of the solar system.

In order for any asteroid detection system to be effective, it has to look at higher inclinations and determine where the orbits of any objects out there will intersect the aforementioned plane.

There is geological evidence that terrestrial impacts from such bodies occurred frequently in the past with the craters being significant in size.