Asteroid Apophis in the News Again

Annimation of Apophis. Image Credit: Osservatorio Astronomico Sormano

It must have been a slow news day in Russia yesterday (actually – and unfortunately — it wasn’t)… as headlines from one of Russia’s leading news agencies, Ria Novosti, proclaimed, “Russian Astronomers Predict Apophis-Earth Collision in 2036.” But reading the article a little further, the astronomer, Leonid Sokolov of St. Petersburg State University says the chance of a collision in 2036 is extremely slim, which is exactly what NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program has been saying for several years. So, just to be clear, there is no new information or changes in understanding Apophis’ orbit. Here are the facts:

Continue reading “Asteroid Apophis in the News Again”

More Asteroids Could Have Made Life’s Ingredients

This artist's concept uses hands to illustrate the left and right-handed versions of the amino acid isovaline. Credit: NASA/Mary Pat Hrybyk-Keith

[/caption]

From a NASA press release:

A wider range of asteroids were capable of creating the kind of amino acids used by life on Earth, according to new NASA research. Amino acids are used to build proteins, which are used by life to make structures like hair and nails, and to speed up or regulate chemical reactions. Amino acids come in two varieties that are mirror images of each other, like your hands. Life on Earth uses the left-handed kind exclusively. Since life based on right-handed amino acids would presumably work fine, scientists are trying to find out why Earth-based life favored left-handed amino acids.

In March, 2009, researchers at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., reported the discovery of an excess of the left-handed form of the amino acid isovaline in samples of meteorites that came from carbon-rich asteroids. This suggests that perhaps left-handed life got its start in space, where conditions in asteroids favored the creation of left-handed amino acids. Meteorite impacts could have supplied this material, enriched in left-handed molecules, to Earth. The bias toward left-handedness would have been perpetuated as this material was incorporated into emerging life.

In the new research, the team reports finding excess left-handed isovaline (L-isovaline) in a much wider variety of carbon-rich meteorites. “This tells us our initial discovery wasn’t a fluke; that there really was something going on in the asteroids where these meteorites came from that favors the creation of left-handed amino acids,” says Dr. Daniel Glavin of NASA Goddard. Glavin is lead author of a paper about this research published online in Meteoritics and Planetary Science January 17.

This is a photo of a carbon-rich meteorite analyzed in the study. Credit: Antarctic Meteorite Laboratory/NASA Johnson Space Center

“This research builds on over a decade of work on excesses of left-handed isovaline in carbon-rich meteorites,” said Dr. Jason Dworkin of NASA Goddard, a co-author on the paper.

“Initially, John Cronin and Sandra Pizzarello of Arizona State University showed a small but significant excess of L-isovaline in two CM2 meteorites. Last year we showed that L-isovaline excesses appear to track with the history of hot water on the asteroid from which the meteorites came. In this work we have studied some exceptionally rare meteorites which witnessed large amounts of water on the asteroid. We were gratified that the meteorites in this study corroborate our hypothesis,” explained Dworkin.

L-isovaline excesses in these additional water-altered type 1 meteorites (i.e. CM1 and CR1) suggest that extra left-handed amino acids in water-altered meteorites are much more common than previously thought, according to Glavin. Now the question is what process creates extra left-handed amino acids. There are several options, and it will take more research to identify the specific reaction, according to the team.

However, “liquid water seems to be the key,” notes Glavin. “We can tell how much these asteroids were altered by liquid water by analyzing the minerals their meteorites contain. The more these asteroids were altered, the greater the excess L-isovaline we found. This indicates some process involving liquid water favors the creation of left-handed amino acids.”

Another clue comes from the total amount of isovaline found in each meteorite. “In the meteorites with the largest left-handed excess, we find about 1,000 times less isovaline than in meteorites with a small or non-detectable left-handed excess. This tells us that to get the excess, you need to use up or destroy the amino acid, so the process is a double-edged sword,” says Glavin.

Whatever it may be, the water-alteration process only amplifies a small existing left-handed excess, it does not create the bias, according to Glavin. Something in the pre-solar nebula (a vast cloud of gas and dust from which our solar system, and probably many others, were born) created a small initial bias toward L-isovaline and presumably many other left-handed amino acids as well.

One possibility is radiation. Space is filled with objects like massive stars, neutron stars, and black holes, just to name a few, that produce many kinds of radiation. It’s possible that the radiation encountered by our solar system in its youth made left-handed amino acids slightly more likely to be created, or right-handed amino acids a bit more likely to be destroyed, according to Glavin.

It’s also possible that other young solar systems encountered different radiation that favored right-handed amino acids. If life emerged in one of these solar systems, perhaps the bias toward right-handed amino acids would be built in just as it may have been for left-handed amino acids here, according to Glavin.

The research was funded by the NASA Astrobiology Institute (NAI), which is administered by NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, Calif.; the NASA Cosmochemistry program, the Goddard Center for Astrobiology, and the NASA Post Doctoral Fellowship program. The team includes Glavin, Dworkin, Dr. Michael Callahan, and Dr. Jamie Elsila of NASA Goddard.

Deep Space Radar Unveils Rotating Asteroid 2010 JL33

A radar image of asteroid 2010 JL33, generated from data taken by NASA's Goldstone Solar System Radar on Dec. 11 and 12, 2010. Image credit: NASA/JPL-Caltech

[/caption]

Intriguing details about the physical properties and characteristics of a recently discovered asteroid have just been unveiled in amazing images obtained using a large radar dish in California. The radar dish serves as a key component of NASA’s Deep Space Network (DSN). The Near Earth asteroid, dubbed 2010 JL33, was imaged by radar on Dec. 11 and 12, 2010 at NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar in California’s Mojave Desert when a close approach to Earth offered an outstanding opportunity for high quality science.

Asteroids studies have taken on significantly increased importance at NASA ever since President Obama decided to cancel the Constellation ‘Return to the Moon’ program and redirect NASA’s next human spaceflight goal to journeying to an Asteroid by around 2025.

Update: Orbital diagram added below
A sequence of 36 amazingly detailed images has been assembled into a short movie (see below) by the science team at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif. The movie shows about 90 percent of one rotation.

The data gathered by radar revealed that the asteroid measures roughly 1.8 kilometers (1.1 miles) in diameter and rotates once every nine hours.

Orbital diagram of Asteroid 2010 JL33 shows location as of Jan 14, 2011. Credit: NASA
click to enlage all images

“Asteroid 2010 JL33 approached within 17 Earth-Moon distances [some 7 million km] in December 2010 and offered an outstanding opportunity to study it with radar,” said Lance Benner, a scientist at JPL who studies asteroids.

“To get detailed radar images, an asteroid must be close to Earth,” Benner told me, for Universe Today.

The object was only discovered on May 6 by the Mount Lemmon Survey in Arizona. The radar observations were led by a team headed by JPL scientist Marina Brozovic.

Video Caption: While safely passing Earth, NASA’s Goldstone Solar System Radar captured the rotation of asteroid 2010 JL33 — an irregular, elongated object roughly 1.8 kilometers (1.1) miles wide. The video consists of 36 frames.

“The radar images we got enabled us to estimate the asteroid’s size, rotation period, and to see features on its surface, most notably, the large concavity that appears as a dark region in the collage,” Benner elaborated.

“It was discovered so recently that little else is known about it.”

The object was revealed to be elongated and irregularly shaped.

70-meter diameter NASA Deep Space Network (DSN) antenna at Goldstone, California.

The 70-meter (230-foot) diameter antenna is the largest, and therefore most sensitive, DSN antenna, and is capable of tracking a spacecraft travelling more than 16 billion kilometers (10 billion miles) from Earth.
The surface of the 70-meter reflector must remain accurate within a fraction of the signal wavelength, meaning that the precision across the 3,850-square-meter (41,400 sq. ft.) surface is maintained within one centimeter (0.4 in.). Credit: NASA


The large concavity is clearly visible in the images and may be an impact crater. It took about 56 seconds for the radio signals from the 70-meter (230-foot) diameter Goldstone radar dish to make the roundtrip from Earth to the asteroid and back to Earth again.

“When we get deeper into our analysis of the data, we will use the images to estimate the three-dimensional shape of the asteroid as well,” Benner added.

Benner belongs to a team that is part of a long-term NASA program to study asteroid physical properties and to improve asteroid orbits using radar telescopes at Goldstone and also at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico. The 1,000-foot-diameter (305 meters) Arecibo radar dish antenna is operated by the National Science Foundation.

“Each close approach by an asteroid provides an important opportunity to study it, so we try to exploit as many such opportunities as possible to investigate the physical properties of many asteroids. In the bigger picture, this helps us understand how the asteroids formed,” Benner told me.

“Asteroid 2010 JL33 is in an elongated orbit about the Sun. On average, it’s about 2.7 times farther from the Sun than the Earth is, but its distance from the Sun varies from 0.7 to 4.6 times that of the Earth.” That takes the asteroid nearly out to Jupiter at Aphelion. It takes about 4.3 years to complete one orbit around the sun.

But, there’s no need to fret about disaster scenarios. “The probability of impact with Earth is effectively zero for the foreseeable future,” Benner explained.

“On rare occasions it approaches closely to Vesta,” he said. Vesta is the second most massive asteroid and will be visited for the first time by NASA’s Dawn spacecraft later this year.

In addition to the ground based radar imaging, the tiny space rock was investigated by an Earth orbiting telescope.

“This asteroid was also studied by NASA’s Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) spacecraft,” according to Benner. “Our observations will help WISE scientists calibrate their results because we provided an independent means to estimate the size of this object.”

More at this JPL press release. The NASA-JPL Near-Earth Object Program website has an interactive map that allows you to see the asteroid’s position at any time you desire. Go to here

To see the trajectory of any other near-Earth asteroid, go to here

For more information about asteroid radar research, go to here

Information about the Deep Space Network is here

Did GD61 Eat a Planetessimal?

Dusty debris around an old white dwarf star (NASA)

[/caption]

The primary method by which astronomers hope to study exoplanet atmospheres is by detecting their absorption spectra as they transit their parent stars. However, another way would be to detect the signal of the atmospheric components in the atmosphere of a star that recently cannibalized a planet or other large body. White dwarfs offer an excellent class of stars on which to use this method since convection will pull heavy elements down more rapidly, leaving surfaces with near pristine hydrogen and helium photospheres. The presence of other elements would indicate recent accretion. This method has been used on several white dwarfs previously, but a new study reexamines data from a 2008 paper, adding their own data on the white dwarf GD61 to propose that the star isn’t just eating dust and small bodies, but a sizable one, likely containing water.

Data for the project were taken in 2009 using the SPITZER telescope. One of the first clues to the presence of a recent case of cannibalism was the presence of warm dust within the Roche limit of the star. This disc did not extend more than 26 stellar radii from the star, leading the team to suspect that this was not simply a large scale disc feeding the star with rocky materials, but an object that had fallen inwards to be tidally torn apart.

To support this, the new team used the Keck I telescope on Mauna Kea with the HIRES spectograph to analyze the spectrum. The findings from this confirmed the previous study that, in order of decreasing abundance, the star contained helium, hydrogen, oxygen, silicon, and iron. Based on the amount of material present in the spectrum and estimated convection rates for such stars, the team concluded that, if the disc were created by a single body, it would have been an asteroid at least 100 km in diameter. So why should the team expect that it was a single body as opposed to many smaller ones?

The key lies in the relative amount of detected elements. For GD61, oxygen was the most abundant element not typically present in white dwarf atmospheres. In fact, its presence far outweighed the other elements such that, even if all of it had been previously bound to the silicon, iron, carbon, and other trace elements, there would still be an inexplicable excess. This oxygen would necessarily have been combined into some molecule or have dissipated during the red giant phase. The only way the team could account for its presence would be to have it wrapped up in water (H2O) which, after disassociation, would allow the hydrogen to blend in the the expected hydrogen already present. Since water readily sublimates without sufficient pressures, the team notes that a large number of small bodies would be unable to bury the water deep enough to keep it from escaping previously, that the best explanation would be a large body which could shield water inside it during the previous red giant phase.

The evidence of water rich asteroids speaks to the formation of our own solar system because it provides a delivery mechanism for water to our planet beyond direct accretion. Water rich asteroids and comets would likely have supplemented our supply. Indeed, Ceres, the largest known asteroid in our solar system, is suspected to harbor as much as 25% of its mass in water.

No Asteroid Particles Found in Second Hayabusa Compartment, But More in First

Artist concept of the Hayabusa spacecraft, which visited asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and returned samples to Earth in 2010. Credit: JAXA
Artist concept of the Hayabusa spacecraft, which visited asteroid Itokawa in 2005 and returned samples to Earth in 2010. Credit: JAXA

[/caption]

No visible material from asteroid Itokawa was found inside the second compartment of a canister returned to Earth by the Hayabusa spacecraft. However, JAXA also announced that more micron-sized grains have been found in the first compartment, opened earlier this year. Reportedly, the first compartment has about 1,500 tiny particles, however some might be aluminum particles from the container itself. But about 20 grains were rocky or mineral-based. However, according to the Daily Yomiuri Online, no visible material was inside the second chamber, although further investigations of the second compartment will be done with a special microscope.

Hayabusa attempted to land on Itokawa twice. The cylindrical canister was divided into two chambers, and the second chamber was to contain material collected during the spacecraft’s first landing.
JAXA officials expect the second compartment to contain more microscopic particles from Itokawa since the first landing was longer than the second.

As far as the particles from the first chamber, several have been observed with an electron microscope, and according to UmannedSpaceflight.com, the “rocky” ones are 30 microns in size, with several larger ones are about 100 microns.

JAXA hopes to provide more insight on the nature of the grains by the end of the year.

Asteroid Scheila Sprouts a Tail and Coma

(596) Scheila, the asteroid with a tail. Image credit: Peter Lake

[/caption]
When is an asteroid not an asteroid? When it turns out to be a comet, of course. Has this ever happened before? Why, yes it has. In fact it was just announced December 12, 2010 that the asteroid (596) Scheila has sprouted a tail and coma! This is likely a comet that has been masquerading as an asteroid.

Taken from New Mexico Skies between 8h15m and 11h45m UT. The image is a stack of 10 x 600 sec exposures using a 20 inch RCOS and STL11K camera. Scale is 0.91 asec/px.. Image courtesy of Joseph Brimacombe

See an animation by Joseph Brimacombe at this link.

Steve Larson of the Lunar and Planetary Laboratory (LPL), University of Arizona first reported that images of the minor planet (596) Scheila taken on December 11th showed the object to be in outburst, with a comet-like appearance and an increase in brightness from magnitude 14.5 to 13.4. The cometary appearance of the object was confirmed by several other observers within hours.

A quick check of archived Catalina images of Scheila from October 18, November 2 and November 11 showed Scheila to look star-like, which is what asteroids look like from Earth. They just happen to be moving across the field of view in contrast to the fixed background stars. The image taken by Catalina on December 3rd shows some slight diffuseness and an increase in overall brightness. So, it appears this event began on or around December 3rd.

Upon hearing the news, there was some speculation that this might be evidence of an impact event. Had something crashed into asteroid Scheila? It seems unlikely, and this is a story we have heard before.

The asteroid discovered in 1979 and named 1979 OW7 was lost to astronomers for years and then recovered in 1996. It was subsequently renamed 1996 N2. That same year it was discovered to have a comet-like appearance, and many believed this was the signature of an impact between two asteroids. After years of inactivity 1996 N2 sprouted a tail again in 2002. One collision between two asteroids was unlikely enough. The odds of it happening again to the same object were essentially zero. What we had was a comet masquerading as an asteroid. This object is now known by its cometary name 133P/Elst-Pizarro, named after the two astronomers who discovered its initial cometary outburst.

The 2002 outburst and the discovery of more active asteroids showing mass-loss led to a paper (Hsieh and Jewitt 2006, Science, 312, 561-563) introducing an entirely new class of solar system objects, Main Belt Comets (MBC). MBCs look like comets because they show comae and have tails but they have orbits inside Jupiter’s orbit like main belt asteroids.

The most likely cause of the mass loss activity in MBCs is sublimation of water ice as the surface of the MBC is heated by the Sun. This is suggested most strongly by the behavior of the best-studied example, namely 133P/Elst-Pizarro. Its activity is recurrent, and it is strongest near and after perihelion, the point in its orbit nearest the Sun, like other comets.

MBCs are interesting to astronomers because they appear to be a third reservoir of comets in our solar system, distinct from the Oort cloud and Kuiper belt. Since we know of no way for these other reservoirs to have deposited comets in the inner solar system, the ice in MBCs probably has a different history than the ice in the outer comets. This allows researchers to study the differences in the Sun’s proto-planetary disk at three separate locations. This might lead to information on the Earth’s oceans, one of the continuing lines of investigation by solar system scientists.

Now it seems we have another MBC to add to the sample. And Scheila will probably be getting a new name soon. Asteroid (596) Scheila was discovered Feb. 21, 1906, by A. Kopff at Heidelberg. The 113Km in diameter ‘asteroid’ was named after an acquaintance, an English student at Heidelberg. In the future it will be called XXXP/Lawson or something similar, and Kopff’s Scheila will become just another footnote in the history of astronomical nomenclature.

Venus Has a Moon?

Venusian quasi-satellite 2002 VE68. Illustration: NASA/JPL/Caltech

[/caption]

Astronomers have been busy trying to determine the spin period and composition of Venus’ moon. December 8, 2010, results were announced by JPL/Caltech scientists, led by Michael Hicks.

“Wait a minute; back up”, I hear you ask. “Venus has a Moon?”
Of course it does. Well, kind of…
Let me explain.

It has the rather unfortunate name of 2002 VE68. That is because it was discovered on November 11, 2002 by LONEOS, the Lowell Observatory Near Earth Object Search. 2002 VE68 is an earth orbit-crossing asteroid that has been designated a Potential Hazardous Asteroid by the Minor Planet Center. For obvious reasons, this makes it a very interesting subject of study for JPL scientists.

2002 VE68 used to be a run of the mill, potential impact threat, Near Earth Object. But approximately 7000 years ago it had a close encounter with Earth that kicked it into a new orbit. It now occupies a place in orbit around the Sun where at its closest it wanders inside the orbit of Mercury and at its furthest it reaches just outside the orbit of the Earth. It is now in a 1:1 orbital resonance with Venus.

An orbital resonance is when two orbiting bodies exert a regular, periodic gravitational influence on each other due to their orbital periods being related by a ratio of two small numbers. For example, Pluto and Neptune are in an orbital resonance of 2:3, which simply means for every two times Pluto goes around the Sun, Neptune makes three trips around.

In the case of Venus and 2002 VE68, they both take the same time to orbit the Sun once. They are in a 1:1 orbital resonance. So by definition, 2002 VE68 is considered a quasi-satellite of Venus. If you watch the Orbital Viewer applet at the JPL small body page you can watch this celestial dance as the two bodies orbit the Sun and each other as 2002 VE68 dodges Earth and Mercury in the process.

Often these resonances result in an unstable interaction, in which the bodies exchange momentum and shift orbits until the resonance no longer exists. In this case, scientists believe 2002 VE68 will only remain a Venusian quasi-satellite for another 500 years or so.

So getting back to the story, Hicks and his team used the recent close apparition of 2002 VE68 to do photometric measurements over the course of three nights in November using the JPL Table Mountain 0.6m telescope near Wrightwood, California. From the color data they obtained they determined that 2002 VE68 is an X type asteroid. This is a group of asteroids with very similar spectra that could potentially have a variety of compositions. They are further broken down into Tholen classification types as either E, M or P types. Unfortunately Hicks’ team was not able to resolve the sub-classification with their equipment.

They were able to determine the approximate size of the asteroid to be 200 meters in diameter, based on its absolute magnitude, and they determined a spin rate of 13.5 hours. The amplitude of the fluctuation on the light curve of 2002 VE68 could imply hat it is actually a contact binary, two clumps of asteroidal material orbiting a center of mass in contact with each other.

For more information on some of the strange and curious beasts in the asteroidal zoo, visit the NASA Near Earth Object Program website.

Mini-Asteroid Flying By Earth Tonight

A small asteroid will make a fairly close flyby of Earth tonight, November 16, 2010 at 10:44 p.m. EST (0344 GMT), but it is not a threat to hit the planet. Plus, at 3 meters wide, (10 ft) the asteroid, named 2010 WA, would break apart if it hit Earth’s atmosphere. Still, finding and tracking the small asteroid is “good practice in detection,” wrote NASA’s @AsteroidWatch Twitter feed.

2010 WA will pass about 1/10 lunar distance, or about 38,000 kilometers (24,000 miles) away, and have a magnitude of about 14.5, so it won’t be visible “without a good sized telescope” said @AsteroidWatch. But if you do have such a telescope, the asteroid could be seen over the middle to east coast of US.

For references, geostationary satellites are in orbit about 36,000 km (22,350 miles) up, while the International Space Station is about 350 km (220 miles) above Earth.

See more detailed information about 2010 WA on the Minor Planet Center Website

NASA is constantly on the lookout for asteroids, or Near Earth Objects (NEO), and has a mandate by Congress for the “Spaceguard” survey to find all asteroids around 40 meters and larger by 2020.

NASA says several teams of astronomers worldwide are surveying the sky to find NEOs. One of the most most productive NEO surveys is the LINEAR search program of the MIT Lincoln Lab, carried out in New Mexico with US Air Force and NASA support. The LINEAR team, which operates two search telescopes with one-meter aperture. Recently, the Catalina Sky Survey in Tucson, Arizona has been extremely productive, as well. Other active survey groups include the NEAT search program in Hawaii, carried out jointly by the NASA Jet Propulsion Lab and the US Air Force; the Spacewatch survey at the University of Arizona, and the LONEOS survey at Lowell Observatory in Flagstaff Arizona. Other astronomers — many of them amateurs — follow up the discoveries with supporting observations.

Graph of NEO discoveries. Credit: NASA

To see more details on NEO discoveries, see this page on the NASA’s NEO website.

Confirmed: Hayabusa Nabbed Asteroid Particles

An electron micrograph image of the edge of a special Teflon spatula that scraped the interior surfaces of Hayabusa's sample return capsule. Credit: JAXA

[/caption]

The Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) has confirmed that the tiny particles inside the Hayabusa spacecraft’s sample return container are in fact from the asteroid Itokawa. Scientists examined the particles to determine if the probe successfully captured and brought back anything from the asteroid, and in a press release said “about 1,500 grains were identified as rocky particles, and most were determined to be of extraterrestrial origin, and definitely from Asteroid Itokawa.”

These are the first samples from an asteroid ever returned to Earth; the only other extraterrestrial samples brought back to Earth came from the Apollo missions to the Moon. See correction, below.

Previously, JAXA said that although particles were inside the container, it wasn’t clear if they were from the asteroid or if they could be of terrestrial origin (dust from Earth that could have been inside the container).

The particles samples were collected from the chamber by a specially shaped Teflon spatula and examined with a scanning electron microscope. There were two chambers inside the container, and from the press release (in Japanese) it appears all the particles were found in one chamber, Chamber A.

Most of the particles are extremely small, about 10 microns in size and require special handling and equipment. Unfortunately they aren’t the “peanut-sized” chunks of rock that the mission originally hoped to capture. This will make analyzing the particles difficult, but not impossible.

Hayabusa's sample return cannister and parachute on the ground in the Australian outback. Credit: JAXA

During the seven-year round trip journey, Hayabusa arrived at Itokawa in November, 2005. The mechanism that was intended to capture the samples apparently failed, but scientists were hopeful that at least some dust had made its way into the return canister. After a circuitous and troubled-filled return trip home, the sample return capsule was ejected and landed in Australia in June of this year.

Here are the other successful sample return missions:
Apollo Moon missions (1969-1972)
Soviet Union’s Luna 16 (1970) returned 101 grams of lunar soil
Luna 20 (1974) returned 30 grams
Luna 24 (1976) returned 170.1 grams.
The Orbital Debris Collection (ODC) experiment, deployed on the Mir space station for 18 months during 1996–1997, used aerogel to capture interplanetary dust particles in orbit.
Genesis (2001-2004) captured and returned molecules collected from the solar wind. It crashed in the Utah desert, but samples were able to be retreived.
Stardust (1999-2006) collected particles from the tail of a comet, as well as a few interstellar dust grains.

Source: JAXA

Calculate the Effect of an Asteroid Impact on Earth

Impact Earth website

[/caption]

A 20-km asteroid has just been predicted to hit Earth and you want to know if a. You should run for it, b. You should call Bruce Willis, or c. You can rest easy because your part of the world won’t be affected. All you have to do is input the parameters of the asteroid on the recently updated “Impact Earth” website, and you’ll find out everything about what an impactor will do to Earth, including an estimate of the size of the crater, how far away you’ll need to be in order to avoid being affected by the impact (and if that is possible), tsunami wave height, and other details of the subsequent disaster. The fun part is, you can simulate the destruction of Earth multiple times, without hurting anyone.

The original Impact Earth website was created in 2002 for use by NASA and homeland security. The new version, built in a collaboration between Purdue University and Imperial College London, is more user-friendly for the general public, as well as providing more visual details of an impact. Besides being rather fun to play around with, the website is highly educational about what a various sized impacts would do Earth, depending on if it hit ground or water.

Go play around with it.