Europe Officially Signs on for Asteroid-Smashing Effort

[Admin]

The European Space Agency has officially approved the Hera mission, which will assess the results of NASA's asteroid-walloping Double Asteroid Redirection Test.

Europe Officially Signs on for Asteroid-Smashing Effort : Read more

 

[rod]

I enjoyed the 3 minute video in the report. By changing the binary asteroid period a bit, the asteroid can be slowed - a bit too. In the heliocentric solar system, this could provide enough time for Earth to move and not be impacted. Otherwise in the geocentric solar system - Earth does not move and we get hit

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

I enjoyed the 3 minute video in the report. By changing the binary asteroid period a bit, the asteroid can be slowed - a bit too. In the heliocentric solar system, this could provide enough time for Earth to move and not be impacted. Otherwise in the geocentric solar system - Earth does not move and we get hit

You're forgetting that in the geocentric solar system the asteroid isn't simply moving in a straight line toward Earth. It's following some strange path as it gets dragged around by the Sun. If it were slowed down a bit, the Sun would drag it a bit farther before it reached Earth and it would fly on by.

 

[rod]

In geocentric solar system - everything moves around or above the Earth (flat earth view), at least before Tycho Brahe who attempted to describe his geocentric-heliocentric arrangement to refute Copernicus but this failed too. In the geocentric firmament teaching, everything moves in a circle like Claudius Ptolemy and Tycho Brahe. There were no asteroids in the geocentric solar system and no gravity or elliptical orbits When Galileo observed the Galilean moons, Galileo did not know about gravity and thought the moons were stars. Asteroids were reported in the early 1800s, using much better, and larger telescopes based upon the heliocentric solar system that features gravity and elliptical orbits so their motion today and orbits are much better defined and tracked.

 

[Spaceman Spiff]

Little history lesson. Good fun.