[ExI] doh! no asteroid hit on mars...

[Amara Graps]

---------- Forwarded message ----------
Date: Fri, 11 Jan 2008 15:03:01 -0800
From: David Morrison <david.morrison at nasa.gov>
To: David Morrison <david.morrison at nasa.gov>
Subject: NEO News (01/11/08) Mars safe & funds for LSST


NEO News (01/11/08) Mars safe & funds for LSST

NO BIG BANG: ASTEROID WILL MISS MARS

PASADENA, Calif. (AP) - The possibility of a collision between Mars 
and an approaching asteroid has been effectively ruled out, according 
to scientists watching the space rock as it nears the Red Planet.

Tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 from four observatories 
have so greatly reduced uncertainties about its Jan. 30 close 
approach to Mars that the odds of an impact have dropped to 1 in 
10,000, the Near-Earth Object Program at NASA's Jet Propulsion 
Laboratory said in a posting on its Web site Thursday. Scientists 
said the best estimate was for the asteroid to pass at a distance of 
more than 16,000 miles from the surface of Mars, or at worst, no 
closer than 2,480 miles.

The asteroid was discovered in November. Initial observations of its 
orbit raised the odds of an impact to as high as 1 in 25 before 
further refinements came in. The asteroid is big enough to have 
blasted a half-mile-wide crater in the cold and dusty Martian 
surface, an event that astronomers would have liked to observe.

The NEO program normally looks for asteroids and comets that could 
pose a hazard to Earth.

-- 

Amara Graps, PhD      www.amara.com
Research Scientist, Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), Boulder, Colorado