![]() In this case, what you want to do is vaporize a part of the asteroid so that the material coming off would push the asteroid the other way (like a rocket). You can pull on it with the mass of the spacecraft (no, we cannot do it with a tractor beam as in Star Trek), so would need to send something as large as possible to the asteroid. Next, what you want to do is nudge it ever so slightly. First, you need to be able to get to an asteroid and we have the technology to do that now. ![]() There are a variety of ideas for how to move an asteroid or comet (you do not want to blow it up). Do we have the technology to change the path of an asteroid?Īt a basic level, the answer is yes. To add to this, it was soon realized that its orbit is similar to the orbit of the Geminid meteors-making it the only asteroid (since it does not have a coma like a comet) the is associated with a meteor shower.ĩ. For this reason, it is thought to be an extinct comet (it has lost most of its ice). It orbit is comet-like (very elliptical) and its composition is unusual. It greatest distance from the Sun is 2.4 AU, well beyond the orbit of Mars. Its orbit takes it with 0.14 AU (Astronomical Units, the distance of the Earth from the Sun) from the Sun, closer than any other known asteroid. However, in 1983, an NEO, 3200 Phaethon, was discovered by IRAS (Infrared Astronomical Satellite). This is why there has never been a meteorite fall from a meteor shower (the particles are too small). When this dust intersects the orbit of the Earth (and the Earth is there), we get a meteor shower. This dust spreads out over time and orbits the Sun just as the comet does (but spread out in a sort of doughnut shape all the way around the orbit of the comet. The tails of comets are made up of dust and gas. Generally, they are not! Most meteor showers are related to comets. Why did the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter not form into a planet? So, to answer the last part of this question, all of these objects formed in the same way as the asteroids-made up of the same “building blocks” as the planets, but not large enough to become planet-size.ĥ. Space is so vast, that, even though there are billions of these objects, collisions are rare. Every once-in-a-while, interactions among these objects (or the effects of passing stars) perturb some of these into the inner part of the Solar System to become comets. However, a lot of this material did not get tossed far enough to escape the gravity of the Sun and got trapped in very distant orbits around the Sun (up to 50,000 times the Earth’s distance), creating this vast “cloud” of icy bodies. It is theorized that, as the Solar System was forming, icy objects that resided (again similar to the asteroid belt) between Jupiter and Saturn were perturbed by the newly-formed Jupiter and Saturn and tossed all over the place, hitting the planets and their moons or being tossed completely out of the Solar System into interstellar space. ![]() We now have confirmed this and know of more than 1,000 objects and it is estimated that there are perhaps tens of thousands of objects larger than 100 km with a total mass at least 100 times as massive as the asteroid belt.Ģ) Long period comets, because of their orbits, are thought to come from a cloud of material (too far out to be seen at present though similar "clouds" have been seen around other stars) that is made up of billions of objects with a total mass several times greater than the Earth’s mass. This disk was predicted to be similar to the asteroid belt, but made up of icy bodies (colder out there) that formed beyond Neptune and have been there since the formation of the Solar System. ![]() This then leads to two models for cometary sources:ġ) Short period comets come from a source at the outer edges of the known Solar System (a disk of material called the Kuiper Belt) and are sometimes perturbed (usually by interactions with each other) into orbits that bring them into the inner Solar System. There are two types of comets: 1) short period comets with orbits that are primarily prograde- they orbit in the same direction around the Sun as do the planets 2) Long period comets with orbits that can be either prograde or retrograde.
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