AUSTRALIAN SPACEGUARD NEWS AND LINKS

The search for Near Earth Objects (NEO) - Microplanets (comets, asteroids and meteoroids) that share our region of the solar system. Inspired by the work of Gene Shoemaker and a memorial lecture by Ken Russell from the Anglo Australian Observatory.  The term Spaceguard was coined by Arthur C Clarke in his 1973 science fiction novel Rendezvous with Rama. The introduction has an uncanny September 11 coincidence.  (Extract)

Tip: These pages are in plain HTML. Try Ctrl-F to "Find" any text you are interested in. Why so plain? - this page was started in 1997.

Alerts (see also News)

• 28 Sep 19 TPS: NASA to Build New Asteroid-Hunting Space Telescope.
  
• 4 May 19 ABC: Eta Aquariids: If you've ever wanted to stargaze at meteor showers, don't miss out this weekend...[mostly clear skies but not much activity over Sydney - mostly very brief streaks!]
  
• 1 May 2019: Comets in Human History by Dr Vic Gostin -  at Uni of Adelaide, hosted by Astronomical Society of South Australia
  
• 7 Dec 18 ABC: Comet hunter Robert McNaught looks back on stellar career in Outback Australia - no mention of his shameful treatment by the Australian government
• 11 Dec 18 Sky & Telescope: Comet 46P/Wirtanen Approaches Earth - observing guide. Has interesting info on how Jupiter has changed the comet's orbit over decades + TimeandDate:  Find Comet 46P/Wirtanen in the Night Sky Map. Update: Unfortunately days of cloud cover meant that the comet was not visible from Sydney
  
• 30 June 2018 is International Asteroid Day as declared by the United Nations - register an event with the Asteroid Foundation + Rusty Schweickart’s Planetary Defense – Chelyabinsk Warning - Part One
  
• 5 Jun 18 ABC: Asteroid on collision course with Earth burns up hours after it was detected (Just 2m in diameter so a meteoroid rather then an asteroid but a wake-up call for Spaceguard)
  
• 18 Apr 18 Live Science: How a Football Field-Size Asteroid Caught Us by Surprise. Comment: Once the orbit is refined this might be an interesting object to re-wind the clock and determine if it might have been discovered a decade or so ago in southern skies.
  
• 3 Jul 17 The Advertiser: Did you see a bright, fast-moving light over Adelaide last night? (thanks Paul Curnow - who is mentioned in the article)
• 30 Jun 17 Asteroid Day  + TPS video: Five steps to prevent asteroid impacts
  
• 15-17 May 2017: 5th IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Tokyo. Speakers include Alan Harris, David Morrison, Mark Boslough, Galen Gisler and Paul Chodas - scientists who kindly provided advice for my Rocks from Space articles from 1999 to 2003.
  
• 19 Apr 17 Astronomy Now: Watch asteroid 2014 JO25 brush by Earth on 19 April (650m diameter, 4.5 lunar diatances)
  
• 18 Mar 17 Space.com: Trump's 2018 NASA Budget Request Would Scrap Asteroid Redirect Mission
  
• 1 Mar 17 TPS: Planetary Radio Live: Near Earth Objects—The Killer Asteroid Threat - excellent discussion of the impact risk but very little mention of comets.
  
• 22 Feb 17 USA Today: Will Pluto have the last laugh? NASA scientists want to make Pluto a planet again (see Microplanets)
• 22 Feb 17 NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System - NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets +BBC: What has Nasa discovered 'beyond our solar system'?
  
• 10 Feb 17 TPS: Call for donations for NEO detection programs.
  
• 11 Jan 17 The White House! National NEO Preparedness Strategy. The graph in the report is similar to Figure 1 in this 2002 paper. See also Search for Large Asteroids Nears Completion, Experts Ponder Gaps in Program - from 2003.
  
• 10 Jan 17 Space.com: Newfound Asteroid Gives Earth a Close Shave + Business Insider: An asteroid just flew by Earth two times closer than the moon -- and we barely saw it coming [about 100m in diameter]
  

• 11 Jan 16: Space.com: NASA Opens Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Asteroids  + JPL: NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation.
  

• 21 Aug 15 ABC: NASA confirms world will not end by asteroid strike in September! NASA: There is No Asteroid Threatening Earth
  # Recent estimates are the the Milky Way galaxy contains 30 billion Earthsize exoplanets. In 2006 I made a rough estimate that a Chicxulub-size asteroid/comet impact occurs, on average, every 2 weeks within a 1000 light-year radius of Earth. Over the lifetime of the Earth such impacts have occurred every 200,000 years, although most happened in the early days of the solar system. The current rate is about once every 100 million years which means that within the galaxy an impact occurs every day. Using a 200,000 year interval, an impact occurs every 3 minutes!
  
• 14 July 2015 - New Horizons Pluto/Charon encounter
  
• 30 June 2015 ASTEROID DAY - A Global Movement to Protect Earth from Asteroids. Signatories include Martin Rees, Kip Thorne, Brian May, Bill Nye (TPS), Richard Dawkins, Carolyn Showmaker, Brian Cox, Jill Tarter, Jay Tate (Spaceguard UK), Rusty Schweickart, David Morrison and Ed Lu. Comment: This is a great initiative. I hope the politicians are more positive than the shameful response of the Australian government in 2002, when 91 scientists wrote an open letter to Prime Minister John Howard calling for reinstatement of the Australian search for hazardous asteroids
• 3 Apr 15 Curtin Uni: Fireballs in the Sky is a citizen science initiative that allows everyone to share the discoveries of the Desert Fireball Network...The DFN is a network of digital cameras in the outback desert of Australia which capture photographs of the night sky. By making networked observations of the fireball we can triangulate its trajectory, track the rock forward to where it lands, and back, to where it came from in the solar system. More and more cameras are being added to the DFN as the project expands. The final network will image the night sky over roughly one-third of Australia, and track whatever is coming through the atmosphere. DFN researchers will then go out and recover the meteorite
  
• 26 Jan 15 The Globe and Mail: Scientists excited about mountain-sized asteroid set to hurtle past Earth (1.2 million km away)
• 23 Dec 14 Scientific American: Ursid Meteor Shower Peaks Tonight: How to Watch (but near the North Pole so not good for southern sky watchers)
• 12 Dec 14 Medium.com: 2014's greatest meteor shower - This weekend, the Geminids arrive, and promise to be the best meteor shower of the entire year! (thanks Paul Curnow). SLOOH telescopre: The Geminid Meteor Shower December 2014 - Event starts Sun Dec, 14 2014 12:00 PM (USA) AEDT
• 14 Nov 14 Congratulations to the ESA team for the successful comet landing. Congratulations also to the technical advisors for the movie Armageddeon who got the conditions on the surface of the comet pretty well correct (despite the worst line in the movie [the comet is] "as big as Texas").

• On 19 October 2014: Comet C/2013 A1 - discovered by Rob McNaught in January 2013 - will pass very close to Mars. As of 1 Mar 13 the most likely distance is 37,000km from the centre of Mars. The margin of error means that an impact is a very slight possibilty
  
• 4 Oct 14 Science ($): Intruder from the Oort cloud will graze Mars.
  
• Aug 14: NASA's Swift Satellite Tallies Water Production of Mars-bound Comet - The comet makes its closest approach to Mars on Oct. 19, passing just 86,000 miles (138,000 km) from the Red Planet -- so close that gas and dust in the outermost reaches of the comet's atmosphere, or coma, will interact with the atmosphere of Mars...Based on these measurements, the team concludes that the icy nucleus of comet Siding Spring is only about 2,300 feet (700 meters) across, placing it at the lower end of a size range estimated from earlier observations by other spacecraft.
• 29 Jan 14: NASA Preparing for 2014 Comet Watch at Mars.
•  From early observations the diameter of the comet was estimated to be in the range 8 to 50km (found to be much lesss - see below). A comet this size travelling at 56km/s would cause an "extinction level event" if it struck the Earth.
  
• 17 Dec 13: Fiercest meteor shower on record to hit Mars via comet - likely miss distance now 173,000km) .
• 16 Apr 13: now 110,000km, with the risk of impact dropping to 1 in 120,000.
• This is another wake-up call for a global effort to detect hazardous comets and asteroids. Wikipedia + Ian Musgrave + MPC. Rob's  remarkable discovery occurred at the same time that his professional funding ceased. A few weeks later his home was destroyed in the Siding Spring bushfires. There is now no professional (paid) astronomer looking for NEOs in southern skies. It seems to me that funding Rob's great work is the best insurance for the survival of mankind. Also New Scientist Jul 14: Vital eye for killer asteroids could shut imminently (it did)
  
• 29 Sep 14: Sydney SBS TV at 7:30: Meteor strike: Fireball from Space.
  
• 4 Sept 2014: Field Geology Club of South Australia presents Dr Olga Gostin "The Tektite Enigma" (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 23-24 May 14 Space.com: New Meteor Shower from Comet Could Dazzle Stargazers Next Week. Update: The Conversation: A night’s tale: will a new meteor shower light up northern skies? ["northern skies" says it all - the radiant for these meteors is close to the north celestial poll whihch makes it unlikely that they will be visible from Sydney. The peak is predicted to be around 8pm 24/5 Sydney time so it is worth looking to the north then - but don't expect a great show.
• 6 Nov 13 ABC Science: Catch Comet ISON: sky guide (for Australia)
  
• 11 Sep 13 Jay Tate from the UK Spaceguard Centre has received a well-deserved award from Europlanet (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 29 Aug 13: Rocks from Space now available for iPad as an iBook.
  
• 14 Aug 13 RiAus Adelaide: Dr Phil Plait presents – Death From The Skies!
  
• 30 Jun 13 ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone - raising cash for a community NEO search (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 9 Jun 13 JPL: Small Asteroid Between Earth and Moon Tonight - 10m diameter, 100,000km away
  
• 11 May 2013: Astronomer and author Duncan Steel now has a website.
  
• 2 May 13 Duncan Steel talking to Phillip Adams on Radio National at 10pm
  
• 5 Feb 13 Lake Tyrrell Star Party (9-11 Mar 13  Victoria): Asteroids, Meteorites and the early Earth by Dr Victor Gostin + The Tektite Enigma by Dr Olga Gostin ( (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 1 Feb 13 NewSci ($): Close call coming: Averting the asteroid threat  - On 15 February 2013, the errant rock will skim Earth just 25,000 kilometres above our heads...
• 18 Jan 13 SMH: Who's on night watch? Alerting the world to rogue visitors is a vital task, but one that's under threat [funding for the crucial work by Rob McNaught has dried up, again]
  
• 12 Dec 12 Space.com: Huge Asteroid to Pass Earth Tonight - The near-Earth asteroid 4179 Toutatis, which is about 5 kilometers wide, will zoom within 7 million kilometers of Earth. SLOOH live webcast starts at 7am 12th Dec Sydney time (don't expect much action).
  
• 1 Sep 12: International Conference on Volcanism, Impacts and Mass Extinctions: Causes and Effects, The Natural History Museum, London, March 27-29, 2013 (thanks Duncan Steel)
  
• 29 Aug 12 TPS: Support the research into the effectiveness of Laser Bee spacecraft to deflect near-earth objects from striking our planet.
  
• 11 Jul 12 New Scientist: Vital [southern hemisphere] eye for killer asteroids could shut imminently (Rob McNaught's Siding Spring search to shut down) + Editorial: When it comes to defence, our priorities are wrong  (see also letter from 91 scientists in 2002). Canberra Times: Funding black hole means our asteroid sentinel may abandon crucial work. Comment: The key points is that any asteroid deflection methods that are within our capability require at least a decade of effort prior to the impact. Missing a future impactor during one orbit will mean a likely wait of at least 4 years before it is spotted during the next favourable orbital alignment - those 4 years could make all the difference betqween averting a disaster and taking a devastating hit.
  
• 17 May 12 UT: 4,700 Asteroids Want to Kill You - about twice as many PHAs as previously thought are likely to reside in “lower-inclination” orbits, which are more aligned with the plane of Earth’s orbit. These asteroids would be more likely to encounter Earth and therefore be easier to reach. So the new results suggest more near-Earth objects might be available for future robotic or human missions.
  
• 30 Jan 12 UT: Asteroid [Eros] To Make Closest Approach Since 1975 - 27 million km, visible with small telescopes on 31st Jan. Sky & Telescope chart and Sydney Observatory viewing tips.
  
• 28 Jan 12 Space.com: Asteroid Threat to Earth Sparks Global 'NEOShield' Project.

• 12 Dec 06 Space Review: Can we detect asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets? by Michael Paine
• 17 May 05: PDF of talk given at Australian Centre for Astrobiology in 2003: Asteroids - now for the good news in conjunction with a talk by Mark Sonter on asteroid mining.
• 23 Jul 02 Bioastronomy 2002 paper by Paine and Peiser: The Frequency and Consequences of Cosmic Impacts Since the Demise of the Dinosaurs (280K PDF). A shortened, refereed version The Frequency and Predicted Consequences of Cosmic Impacts in the Last 65 Million Years is now published in the Proceedings of Bioastronomy 2002: Life Among the Stars. 
• Rocks from Space

---


"No one wants to look back and regret actions not taken" - Dr David Suzuki, The Nature of Things.

'Many might say "But we know of no one that has ever died from an asteroid impact." That's true [in recent times], but then who has ever died from a thermonuclear explosion? Surely no one would claim that they are not dangerous?' - Arthur C Clarke, Foreword to Rogue Asteroids and Doomesday Comets by Duncan Steel.


"No one has ever been killed by a meteorite in the presence of a meteoritist and a medical doctor!" - John Lewis

---


NEO (Microplanet) News
See also Tsunami News , Leonid meteor shower and Planetary News

Recent items are near the top (posting date shown).
For more news see Spaceguard UK's News page, Spaceviews, NASA's Asteroid/Comet Impact Hazard news page and NEO Office News Page (NNN), The Planetary Society NEO News, The Cosmic Mirror , Cambridge Conference Network(CC), SpaceDaily, Tumbling Stone (SGF/NEODys),SpaceWeather.com (has a list of forthcoming close approaches), Asteroid/Comet Connection, Universe Today (UT- space news from around the Internet, updated every weekday)

Send us your NEO news tips for posting here.

---

• 29 Oct 19 The Space Review: One scientist’s 15-year (and counting) quest to save Earth from asteroid impacts.
  
• 28 Oct 19 Space.com: An Asteroid the Size of a Skyscraper Just Flew by Earth. (6.2 million km)
  
• 23 Oct 19 NASA: Raining Tears from an Impact Event - formation of tektites (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 22 Oct 19 TPS: NASA to Build New Asteroid-Hunting Space Telescope but, like her predecessers, the Australian Science Minister Karen Andrews apparently ignores the NEO threat in current discussions with NASA about space development.
  
• 19 Oct 19 New Scientist ($): How to defend Earth from asteroids (talk by Ian Carnelli)
  
• 7 Oct 19 New Scientist: We can send a probe to interstellar comet Borisov – but not until 2030.
  
• 6 Oct 19 The Conversation: Space can solve our looming resource crisis – but the space industry itself must be sustainable (see also Riches in the Rubble) + Did a large meteorite hit the earth 12,800 years ago? Here’s new evidence.
  
• 1 Oct 19 Cosmos: Ecosystems took millions of years to recover from the last mass extinction [Chicxulub impact] + Nature ($): Diversity decoupled from ecosystem function and resilience during mass extinction recovery. [Lead author is Sarah Alvarez)
  
• 28 Sep 19 UT: This Summer’s Asteroid Near-Miss Helped Greenlight NASA’s NEOCam Mission to Search the Skies for Killer Spacerocks (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 21 Sep 19 ABC: Skies over Tasmania and Victoria light up as object thought to be a meteor streaks past.
  
• 19 Sep 19 The Guardian: Dust cloud [from asteroids colliding]  sparked explosion in primitive life on Earth, say scientists + Science Advances: An extraterrestrial trigger for the mid-Ordovician ice age: Dust from the breakup of the L-chondrite parent body.
  
• 13 Sep19 Australia Post (!): The impact of the Murchison Meteorite. (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 13 Sep1 9 BBC: Has another interstellar visitor been found? + JPL: Newly Discovered Comet Is Likely Interstellar Visitor.
  
• 10 Sep 19 Cosmos: The rocks below a famous [Chicxulub] crater.
  
• 9 Sep 19 Space.com: America's Largest Asteroid Impact Left a Trail of Destruction Across the Eastern United States
  
• 7 Sep 19 SYFY: A METEORITE OLDER THAN EARTH SHOWS EVIDENCE OF ANCIENT VOLCANISM ON A LONG-GONE PROTOPLANET (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 21 Aug 19 Space.com: Let's Talk Asteroid Apophis, Planetary Defense and Elon Musk + America's Largest Asteroid Impact [ Chesapeake Bay] Left a Trail of Destruction Across the Eastern United States
  
• 19 Aug 19 ABC: The platinum-group metals in your car come from ancient meteorites that bombarded young Earth.
  
• 26 Jul 19 Space.com: Don't Worry About the 'Great Pyramid-Sized' Asteroid Due to Zip Past the Earth Today + ABC: An asteroid just buzzed past Earth, and we barely noticed in time (from The Conversation)
  
• 14 Jul 19 ABC: How well prepared are we to deal with a catastrophic asteroid strike? (reads like a summary of these pages and my Rocks from Space articles)
  
• 14 Jul 19 Japan Times: In world first, Japan's Hayabusa2 probe collects samples from distant asteroid after second successful touchdown.
  
• 12 Jul 19 Livescience: How This Huge [1km], Superfast Asteroid Stayed Hidden in Near-Earth Orbit.
  
• 5 Jul 19 Universe Today: 1.2 billion years ago, a 1-km asteroid smashed into Scotland (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 5 Jul 19 9News: An asteroid [50m] could hit planet Earth later this year.
  
• 4 Jun 19 ESO: ESO contributes to protecting Earth from dangerous asteroids.
  
• 31 May 19 Astronomy [annoying pop-up]: Rare meteorites found in Costa Rica could shed light on Earth's water + SciNews: Researchers Find ‘Oldest Collection of Non-Fossil Meteorites’ in Chile’s Atacama Desert (thanks Paul Curnow )
  
• 31 May 19 New Scientist: Organic matter from space preserved in 3.3-billion-year-old rocks.
  
• 29 May 19 The Guardian: Exploding stars led to humans walking on two legs, radical study suggests [seems to ignore the effects of microplanet impacts over the past several million years]
  
• 24 May 19 NASA JPL: Comet Provides New Clues to Origins of Earth's Oceans.
  
• 23 May 19 ABC: Meteor filmed soaring in the sky was size of a 'small car' when it hit the atmosphere, NASA says
  
• 16 May 19 BBC: Chang'e-4: Chinese rover 'confirms' Moon crater theory
  
• 16 May 19 NASA: Scientists Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away
• 10 May 19 Cosmos: The biggest danger about an asteroid strike? Lawyers.
  
• 7 May 19 ABC: Asteroid disaster simulation tests Earth's ability to avoid catastrophic impact.
  
• 1 May 19 SMH: Meteoroid caught on film during lunar eclipse left big [15m!] crater.
  
• 30 Apr 19 ESA: Gaia’s first asteroid discoveries.
  
• 28 Apr 19 SpaceDaily: NASA, FEMA, international partners to hold asteroid impact exercise
• 23 Apr 19 UT: Astronomers Find a Chunk of a Comet Inside a Meteorite (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 18 Apr 19 LiveScience: The First Known Interstellar Meteor May Have Hit Earth in 2014 [meteor (light) characteristics suggests an interstellar trajectory of this (est) 1metre diameter object - no meteorite (rock) has been found.
• 6 Apr 19 Sci-News: Hungarian Researchers Claim to See Biosignatures in Martian Meteorite (thanks Paul Curnow ) - see also Martian meteorites
  
• 6 Apr 19 NewSci: Incredible fossil find may be first victims of dino-killer asteroid + Science: Does fossil site record dino-killing impact?
  
• 18 Mar 19 NewSci: Huge meteor explosion over Earth last year went unnoticed until now + BBC: US detects huge meteor explosion
  
• 18 Mar 19 Australia's Science Channel: Massive meteorite craters found in Western Australia (~80Mya)  and Central America (~8Kya) (thanks Paul Curnow ) [Note: although the timing of the Nicaragua find is similar to the impact that produced the Australasian Tektites the size of the assumed crater (~14km) indicates that this could not have been that impact ]
  
• 7 Mar 19 BBC: Hunting for space rocks in Antarctica + S&T: Teens Hunt for Meteorites . . . Underwater (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 14 Feb 19 Livescience: [2nd] Huge Meteor Left Crater Hidden Beneath Greenland Ice
  
• 9 Feb 19 NewSci: How Earth’s changing ecosystems may have driven human evolution - but no mention of th effects of cosmic impacts.
  
• 8 Feb 19 NewSci: Here’s how we could turn an asteroid into a space station.
  
• 6 Feb 19 Space.com: When Worlds Collide: Scientists Spot Hint of a Giant Crash in Alien Solar System (see my 2006 essay on detecting exo-planet collisions)
  
• 28 Jan 19 NewSci ($): Moon craters reveal surprise rise in asteroid shrapnel pelting Earth + Saturn’s rings formed in a smash-up less than 100 million years ago [in the same issue but nobody seems to have noticed a possible link!]
  
• 25 Jan 19 NewSci: A meteorite hit the moon during a total lunar eclipse.
  
• 25 Jan 19 News.Com.au: Planet Nine [!] may not exist but another mysterious object deep in the solar system could be lurking
  
• 18 Jan 19 Science($): When Earth got pummeled - They find the impact rate increased within the last ∼500 million years.
  
• 8 Jan 19 LiveScience: Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Triggered Mile-High Tsunami That Spread Through Earth's Oceans.[interesting article but the hot sky effect after the Chixculub impact was not really due to friction from rocks rubbing together. The heat is mostly generated during ballistic re-entry of the impact debris, the same as meteors and returning space capsules. This is due to shock compression of the air in front of the object. A bicycle pump heats up as air is compressed and the reentry pressures mean the heating is thousands of times greater. In the case of Chixculub the sky glowed red hot.]
  
• 8 Jan 19 Space Review: The asteroid mining bubble has burst.
  
• 4 Jan 19 NewSci: Ultima Thule is a snowman-shaped rock covered in weird ice
  
• 4 Jan 19 Space.com: Humanity Will Slam a Spacecraft into an Asteroid in a Few Years to Help Save Us All.
  
• 3 Jan 19 SciAm: Pluto Is Far in the Rearview. Next Stop: Ultima Thule + Space.com: NASA's New Horizons Just Made the Most Distant Flyby in Space History. So, What's Next? [congratulations to Alan Stern and team]
  
• 27 Dec 18 ABC: Comet hunter Robert McNaught looks back on stellar career in Outback Australia - no mention of his shameful treatment by the Australian government
  
• 27 Dec 18 SciAm ($):  How to Approach the Problem of 'Oumuamua +  6 Strange Facts about the Interstellar Visitor 'Oumuamua
  
• 11 Dec 18 ABC: Meteor lights up the sky over Mexico City.
  
• 7 Dec 18 Astrobiology Magazine: NASA’S OSIRIS-REX SPACECRAFT ARRIVES AT ASTEROID BENNU.
  
• 7 Dec 18 Business Insider Australia: Astronaut says a neglected telescope is NASA's best chance of defending Earth from 'city killer' asteroids — 'for God's sake, fund it'
  
• 29 Nov 18 Earth-Science Reviews: On a possible parent crater for Australasian tektites: Geochemical, isotopic, geographical and other constraints (see also Source of the Australasian Tektites? - the latest research suggests a crater might be under gianmt sand dumers in North West China)
  
• 29 Nov 18 Ancient Origins: ‘Fire and Brimstone’ that Destroyed Biblical Sodom Matches Findings of Cosmic Catastrophe 3,700 Years Ago
  
• 16 Nov 18 Space.com: Scientists Spot What May Be a Giant Impact Crater Hidden Under Greenland Ice + Science Advances: A large impact crater beneath Hiawatha Glacier in northwest Greenland - Comment: if this is a recent impact crater then there could be active hydrothermal systems waiting to be explored
  
• 13 Nov 18 Space.com: Astronaut Rusty Schweickart Looks Back on Apollo 9, and to the Next Asteroid Impact.
  
• 7 Oct 18 9News: Rock used as doorstop for decades identified as $141,000 meteorite (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 29 Aug 18 ABC: 'Meteor' lights up sky over Perth and WA's south-west
  
• 23 Aug 18 NewSci: Asteroids get spun so fast by the force of sunlight they fall apart.
  
• 19 Aug 18 New Scientist ($): Asteroid strike may have forged the oldest rocks ever found on Earth + Why I’m flying to the solar system’s only all-metal world
  Worth 10 quintillion dollars, the metal asteroid Psyche is a space miner's fantasy – but there are better reasons to want to visit it, says Lindy Elkins-Tanton (see also Riches in the Rubble)
  
• 8 Aug 18 Sci-News: 4.56-Billion-Year-Old Igneous Meteorite Contains Clues to Planetary Building Blocks (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 6 Aug 18 Space.Daily: China Focus: Capture an asteroid, bring it back to Earth?
  
• 5 Aug 18 ABC: Meteor streaking across the sky over NSW, Victoria captured by dashcam (missed it! - note the confusion of terms and the comment about iron content - most meteoroids in space are stony (but still around 26% iron) but iron ones (90% iron) are more likely to reach the ground intact as a meteorite so tend to be over-represented in meteorite collections - see Riches in the Rubble)
  
• 4 Aug 18 Inquisitr: Meteor Explosion Over U.S. Military Base: Fireball Packing 2.1 Kilotons Of Force Detonates Near Base Thule (see also this 2002 paper: "...there is the additional risk (perhaps 1 in 10,000 per year) that a microplanet airburst over a politically sensitive nation could trigger an exchange of nuclear weapons, with much graver consequences...")
  
• 26 Jun 18 IMO.NET: Daytime Fireball over Russia on June 21 (thanks Paul Curnow ) + Science Alert: An Asteroid Exploded Over Russia This Week And We Didn't See It Coming… Again.
  
• 14 Jun 18 BBC: We will ever colonise asteroids?
  
• 15 Jun 18 IMO: Bright fireballs over China, Hungaria and Mediterranean sea (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 25 May 18 NewSci: We’ve lost track of more than 900 near-Earth asteroids.
  
• 25 May 18 ABC: Dinosaur-killing asteroid impact warmed Earth by 5 degrees for 100,000 years, fossil study finds.(see also extinctions) + The Guardian: Birds had to relearn flight after meteor [sic] wiped out dinosaurs - feathered, ground dwelling creatures like kiwi and emu.
  
• 21 May 18 Phys.org: New evidence for existence of Planet Nine [Ten!] + ScienceAlert: There's Exciting New Evidence a Real Planet Nine Is Out There - Comment: Our neighbourhood of the Milky Way is not static... "it has been estimated that every 100 million years or so another star system passes within 3000 AU of the Sun - well within the Oort Cloud (Hills 1981) " - so this could be an alternative reason for strange microplanet orbits.
  
• 16 May 18 Space.com: Jumbo Jet-Size Asteroid 2010 WC9 Buzzes Earth Soon: See It Live Online Tonight.
  
• 29 Apr 18 The Inquisitr: Earth Will Be Hit By An Asteroid With 100 Percent Certainty, Says Space-Watching Group B612 (sensational headline but true - eventually!)
  
• 26 Apr 18 UT: This Meteorite is One of the Few Remnants from a Lost Planet that was Destroyed Long Ago  (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 26 Apr 18 News.com.au: Goldman predicts the world’s first trillionaire will mine asteroids (see Riches in the Rubble)
  
• 17 Apr 18 Fox News: Asteroid the size of a football field makes 'surprise' flyby past Earth.
  
• 12 Apr 18 Phys.org: Target Earth—how asteroids made an impact on Australia. By Andrew Glikson, The Conversation
• 12 Apr 18 Daily Star (sensationalised!): NASA warn four massive asteroids to make close approaches starting tonight (JPL data on 2018 GG)
  
• 5 Feb 18 Science Alert: A Recent Ice Age Was Triggered by a [comet-generated] Firestorm Bigger Than The One That Killed The Dinosaurs - comment: the cause of  the Younger Dryas period was the topic of CCNet in the 1990s. It was speculated that a fragmented comet struck the Earth.
  
• 5 Feb 18 Live Auctioneers: Meteorite hunters find first fragments of Michigan meteor (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 15 Jan 18 RT.com: Giza Pyramid mystery chamber may hold Pharaoh’s 'meteorite throne' (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 13 Jan 18 Sci-News: Scientists Find Primordial Organic Matter in Two Meteorites (thanks Paul Curnow ) ["organic matter" = carbon compounds, not the products of life]
  
• 13 Jan 18 New Atlas: The interstellar story of the strangest stone ever found.
  
• 7 Jan 18 Vale John Young - SMH: 'If astronauts have a hero, that hero is John Young': plaudits flow for NASA's longest-serving astronaut  - John Young was certainly a hero to me, with that first Space Shuttle flight and his acknowledgement of the craft at the end of the flight. I am proud that he referred to my spaceguard research in an essay "The Big Picture Ways to Mitigate or Prevent Very Bad Planet Earth Events" {thanks Dana Holland]
• 30 Dec 17 Newsweek: 2017 YZ4: HOW QUICKLY CAN NASA DETECT INCOMING NEAR-EARTH ASTEROIDS AND WHAT HAPPENS IF THEY MISS ONE?
  
• 19 Dec 17 UT: Meteors Explode from the Inside When They Reach the Atmosphere - possibly less hazardous than previously thought (thanks Paul Curnow )
• 4 Dec 17 NZ Herald: US mining school to offer world's first space mining degree (see also Riches in the Rubble)
  
• 22 Nov 17 NASA: Solar System’s First Interstellar Visitor Dazzles Scientists.
  
• 22 Nov 17 New Atlas: First international asteroid tracking exercise proves a success.
  
• 18 Nov17 South China Daily Post: China’s nuclear spaceships will be ‘mining asteroids and flying astronauts to the moon’ as it aims to overtake US in space race (see Riches from the Rubble)
  
• 23 Oct 17 Universe Today: This Meteorite Came From a Volcano on Mars (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 23 Oct 17 ABC: Queensland Museum's new meteorite valued at $100,000 but priceless to scientists. (thanks Paul Curnow )
  
• 11 Oct 17 The Guardian: House-sized asteroid will pass by Earth at just above satellite altitude.
  
• 6 Sep 17 The Independent: Asteroid that killed the dinosaurs created endless night and 18-month winter as it rained fire + ABC2: Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid Probably Left Earth In Darkness For 2 Years (thanks Paul Curnow - see also  Rocks from Space)
  
• 5 Aug 17 Terra Nova ($): Geophysical evidence for a large impact structure on the Falkland (Malvinas) Plateau (see also possible Falklands crater from 1999)
  
• 4 Aug 17 Gizmodo: Scientists Just Discovered The Oldest Asteroid Family Ever.
  
• 31 Jul 17 New Atlas: NASA will test its planetary defense network on approaching asteroid.
  
• 3 Jul 17 The Advertiser: Did you see a bright, fast-moving light over Adelaide last night? (thanks Paul Curnow - who is mentioned in the article)
  
• 30 Jun 17 BBC: Burning fireball plummeting to Earth seen on Devon beach camera + UT: Lunar Orbiter Takes a Meteorite Strike Right in the Camera  (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 30 Jun 17 TPS: Remembering planetary scientist Michael A’Hearn [Deep Impact and numerous other microplanet missions]
  
• 27 May 17 Spaceflight Now: Earlier launch of NASA’s Psyche mission touted as cost-saving measure (see also Riches in the Rubble)
  
• 23 May 17 NewSci: Mars Trojans may be part of a planet that was destroyed long ago.
  
• 20 May 17 Nature: Beads made from meteorite reveal prehistoric culture's reach + Daily Mail: The mystery of the iron beads found at an ancient grave site in Illinois: Researchers reveal they are crafted from space rock that fell to Earth hundreds of miles away (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 15 May 17 IBTimes: Asteroid hit Armageddon bull's eye to wipe out the dinosaurs, scientists believe (sorry to spoil a good story but a "relatively minor nine-mile wide asteroid" would have easily caused global extinctions. Also hitting the ocean, which is only a few kilometres deep at most, would have made hardly any difference to the amount of rock vaporised. The article refers to drilling 30 km down into impact strata and the initial crater would have been twice this deep before it slumped and rebounded. More here)
  
• 19 Apr 17 Cosmos: Solving the mysteries of the dino-killing crater (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 28 Mar 17 ABC: ANU astronomers launch public search of the southern skies for elusive 'Planet Nine'.
  
• 28 Mar 17 PRI: 'Asteroid hunters' search for space rocks that could collide with Earth +
  
• 18 Mar 17 WP: An asteroid hunter explains how she’s protecting Earth from a killer space rock.
  
• 13 Mar 17 S&T: A New Take on the Audible Meteor Mystery + NYT ($): Flecks of Extraterrestrial Dust, All Over the Roof (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 1 Mar 17 New Scientist: The greatest danger asteroids pose to us is not from the impact (see also The Frequency and Consequences of Cosmic Impacts Since the Demise of the Dinosaurs and Simulating Armageddon on your PC: asteroid impacts with Earth)
  
• 27 Feb 17 Science Alert: These Are the 6 Biggest Meteorites to Ever to Be Found on Earth (thanks Paul Curnow) - see also Riches in the Rubble of the Solar System: "The biggest technical difficulty in mining solid metal asteroids such as Amun might be the task of chopping chunks of metal from the main block."
  
• 22 Feb 17 USA Today: Will Pluto have the last laugh? NASA scientists want to make Pluto a planet again (see Microplanets)
• 22 Feb 17 NASA to Host News Conference on Discovery Beyond Our Solar System - NASA will hold a news conference at 1 p.m. EST Wednesday, Feb. 22, to present new findings on planets that orbit stars other than our sun, known as exoplanets +BBC: What has Nasa discovered 'beyond our solar system'?
  
• 16 Feb 17 Inquistr: Doomsday Asteroids Imminent [?]: Astronomer Suggests Detection/Deflection Defense.
  
• 15 Feb 17 The Guardian: 'Obviously the threat is there': [Astronaut] Chris Hadfield on the danger of asteroid strikes - Four years ago tomorrow was the day that the Chelyabinsk meteor [sic] struck Earth.
  
• 8 Feb 17 Sky&Telescope: Micrometeorites Found on City Rooftops (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 28 Jan 17 News.com.au: Massive asteroid to strike Earth and trigger mega-tsunami next month, according to this scientist (scientist?). It is not going hit us but a space rock 500m across would cause regional destruction (several 100 km)
  
• 13 Jan 17 Science ($): NASA missions aim at asteroid oddballs.
  
• 12 Jan 17 ABC: Moon likely formed more than 4.5 billion years ago, scientists say.
  
• 11 Jan 17 The White House! National NEO Preparedness Strategy (see also Search for Large Asteroids Nears Completion, Experts Ponder Gaps in Program - from 2003)
• 11 Jan 17 EPSL: Evidence for an impact-induced biosphere from the δ³⁴S signature of sulphides in the Rochechouart impact structure, France.( see also Asteroids - now for the good news)
• 10 Jan 17 Business Insider:  A new theory challenges everything astronomers thought they knew about how the Moon was created.
  
• 10 Jan 17 Space.com: Newfound Asteroid Gives Earth a Close Shave + Business Insider: An asteroid just flew by Earth two times closer than the moon -- and we barely saw it coming.
  
• 3 Jan 17 ScienceDaily: Closest known flyby of star to our solar system: Dim star passed through Oort Cloud 70,000 years ago. See also Transpermia - "the infall of comets from the Oort Cloud would take hundreds of thousands of years..."! + IB Times: Is Earth in danger because of star Gliese 710?
  Gliese 710, currently 64 light years away from Earth, is expected to pass through our solar system's Oort cloud in 1.35 million years.
  
• 20 Dec 16 Business Insider: This spacecraft will hunt for Trojan asteroids hiding close to Earth.
  
• 16 Dec 16 UT: Why Does Siberia Get All the Cool Meteors? (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 16 Dec 16  ABC: Massive fireball caught on camera lighting up Florida sky  + Meteorite recovered in WA with the help of stargazers and science app (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 16 Dec 16 S&T: Clarendon (c): Meteorite Find of a Lifetime (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 21 Nov 16 Brisbane Times: Great balls of fire: WA scientists follow flames to freshly fallen meteorite (Desert Fireball Network)
• 21 Nov 16 BBC: Asteroid strike made 'instant Himalayas' (thanks Paul Curnow) + NS: Dinosaur-killing asteroid turned planet Earth inside-out.
  
• 10 Nov 16 Foxnews: A comet may have hit the Earth 56 million years ago, study says + Science: Impact ejecta at the Paleocene-Eocene boundary.
  
• 7 Nov 16 News.com.au: NASA Scout early warning system detects first near-Earth asteroid.
  
• 7 Nov 16 LivelyStories: The Falling Skies ((thanks Paul Curnow - he features in this article)
• 7 Nov 16 Sci-News: New Secrets Revealed about Ancient Mars from ‘Black Beauty’ Meteorite (also thanks Paul)
  
• 4 Oct 16 Science: Comet may have struck Earth just 10 million years after dinosaur extinction (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 3 Oct 16 ABC: Meteor in Queensland: Maryborough timber yard camera captures meteor 'fireball' (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 29 Sep 16 NewsMail: Meteor and earthquake strike Queensland in one night + AG: Meteor strike reported off Queensland coast (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 17 Sep 16 NewAtlas:  Asteroid mining: The race for space riches (see also  Riches in the rubble of the Solar System)
• 17 Sep 16 DailyMail: Giant 30 tonne meteorite discovered in Argentina is the second heaviest ever found (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 30 Jul 16 SciAm ($): To Bennu and Back - The OSIRIS-REx probe's journey to the asteroid Bennu will answer questions about our deepest past and possible futures (see also Environmental effects of impacts, Riches in the rubble of the Solar System, Defending Earth: Fact Vs Fiction [keyhole orbits] & Fossilized Bacteria Found in Ancient Meteorite)
• 30 Jul 16 Smithsonian (annoying ad): Big Boom: The Best Places to See Meteorite Impact Craters + UT: Chinese [rocket] Fireball Freaks Out Las Vegas (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 12 Jul 16 ScienceAlert: Astronomers just discovered a new dwarf planet beyond Neptune (700km so too  small for the definition of planet that I suggested in 2000)
  
• 11 Jul 16 BBC: In Siberia in 1908, a huge explosion came out of nowhere.
  
• 7 Jul 16 Cosmos: Volcanoes weakened dinosaurs while asteroid dealt knock-out blow (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 15 Jun 16 The Watchers: Very bright fireball over Northeastern US, ground shaking reported + Nature: France launches massive meteor-spotting network + National Geographic: Here’s What Happened the Day the Dinosaurs Died - An impact calculator helps scientists paint a vivid picture of the immediate aftermath of the deadly asteroid strike (see also environmental effects of impacts) (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 31 May 16 Cosmos: New evidence supports asteroid theory of dinosaur extinction.
  
• 10 May 16 Space Review: Mining issues in space law.
• 9 May 16 National Post: Comet crater in Sudbury, Ontario opens up a ‘whole new possibility’ in the search for how life began.
  
• 22 Apr 16 NewSci: How two tiny dots defy the history of life and the solar system -  “If the LHB really was just asteroids being thrown at the moon en masse, there should be a lot more big lunar basins, and there aren’t,” he says. Minton believes he might have found an alternative source for the LHB: Mars...
  
• 20 Apr 16 Youtube: Acraman asteroid impact at the dawn of animal life - Victor Gostin describes his work in Outback Australia, piecing together the various clues that led to his understanding of the enormous impact of the 5km asteroid at Lake Acraman...(thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 20 Apr 16 Business Insider (!): HEADS UP: All the meteor showers you'll see in Australia this year, starting with this week's Lyrids.(see also Meteor Showers and Shooting Stars: A Primer )
• 20 Apr 16 Space and Astronomy: Obama Signs Bill Recognizing Asteroid Resource Property Rights.
  
• 6 Apr 16 Geology Page: Geologists to drill into heart of dinosaur-killing impact
  
• 6 Apr 16 NewSci: Interstellar cloud could have wiped out the dinosaurs + Comet Double-Whammy: A Lesson in Planetary Defense?  (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 24 Mar 16 Space.com: Two Comets Just Made Historic Near-Earth Flybys.
  
• 12 Mar 16 Science: Scientists gear up to drill into ‘ground zero’ of the impact that killed the dinosaurs + Smithsonian: We Finally Know How Much the Dino-Killing Asteroid Reshaped Earth (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 22 Feb 16 ABC: Space mining edges closer to reality but legal minefield remains (see also Riches in the rubble of the Solar System)
• 16 Jan 16 ABC: Lake Eyre meteorite 'Crown property', researchers required to hand findings over (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 13 Jan 16 ABC: Brisbane weather webcam snaps meteor passing over south east Queensland.
  
• 11 Jan 16: Space.com: NASA Opens Planetary Defense Office to Protect Earth from Asteroids  + JPL: NASA Office to Coordinate Asteroid Detection, Hazard Mitigation.
• 7 Jan 16 ABC: Ancient meteorite 'older than Earth' from beyond orbit of Mars found at Lake Eyre (see also 8 May Nullarbor space rock hunt: Crowdfunded scientists return with their best meteorite haul yet )
  
• 31 Dec 15 ABC: Risk of giant comet hitting Earth higher than previously thought, astronomers say + What Meteorites Mean for Science, Culture, and Kitsch (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 29 Dec 15 SciAm ($): Millions of Small Asteroids That Could Threaten Our World Remain Uncatalogued (see also [1999] Dealing with the impact hazard and [2003] Search for Large Asteroids Nears Completion, Experts Ponder Gaps in Program)
  
• 12 Nov 15 Icarus: Detectability of planetesimal impacts on giant exoplanets (see also Can we detect asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets?)
  
• 31 Oct 15 Panspermia.org: A fossil on Mars resembles one on Earth? thanks Brig Klyce (see Transpermia) 
• 30 Oct 15 MNRAS: Periodic impact cratering and extinction events over the last 260 million years + NYU: Scientists Find Link between Comet and Asteroid Shower
  
• 3 Oct 15 Science ($): State shift in Deccan volcanism at the Cretaceous-Paleogene boundary, possibly induced by impact + SMH: Dinosaur extinction theories could be united as a result of research breakthrough  (see also How an asteroid impact causes extinction "Astronomer Duncan Steel has suggested that the same occurred with the
  Chicxulub impact and that the shock waves caused the Deccan Traps..." 1999! )
  
• 1 Oct 15 Herald Sun: Scientists to test Earth-saving theory - The joint US-European AIDA (Asteroid Deflection & Assessment) mission will crash a probe into the smaller of a pair of binary asteroids to see if the object's path can be altered. ESA: The Asteroid Impact & Deflection Assessment (AIDA) mission.
  
• 29 Sep 15 ScienceDaily: Globally unique double crater identified in Sweden [but relatively small] (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 29 Sep 15 StrangeSounds: Giant fireball explodes in the sky over Bingol in Turkey in a loud boom and creates rain of meteorites (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 29 Sep 15 UT: Remembering the Vela Incident. (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 29 Sep 15 PhysicsWorld: Revisiting the crater of doom [Chicxulub] (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 9 Sep 15 NewSci: Winking exoplanets could shed light on distant comet strikes + Icarus:Detectability of Planetesimal Impacts on Giant Exoplanets (see also Can we detect asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets?)
  
• 2 Sep 15 ABC Radio National: Space mining (see also Riches in the rubble of the Solar System)
  
• 22 Aug 15 MIT News: 3 Questions: Richard Binzel on New Horizons’ closest view of Pluto.
  
• 20 Aug 15 Sci-News: Meteorite Impacts on Early Oceans May Have Created DNA Building Blocks (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 5 Aug 15 SMH: Meteor captured streaking through Jervis Bay sky.
  
• 26 May 15 ABC Science Show: Apocalypse followed impact of giant asteroid (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 21 May 15 Space.com: Avoiding 'Armageddon': Asteroid Deflection Test Planned for 2022.
  
• 8 May 15 ABC: Nullarbor space rock hunt: Crowdfunded scientists return with their best meteorite haul yet (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 7 May 15 Space.com: Asteroid-Mining Company to Deploy 1st Satellite This Summer (see also Riches in the rubble of the Solar System)
  
• 2 May 15 Express: Moment 'car-sized' meteor hurtles to Earth exploding with force of 'atomic bomb' (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 28 Apr 15 NewSci: Falling meteor may have changed the course of Christianity (thanks Paul Curnow) + That's no moon! Spacecraft mistaken for new natural satellite.
  
• 20 Apr 15 ABC: Meteorites pinpoint the age of the Moon (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 15 Apr 15 BBC: Coloured Pluto comes into view - clearly a binary microplanet!
  
• 9 Apr 15 Uni Texas: Expedition Will Sample Crater Left By Dinosaur-Killing Asteroid (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 24 Mar 15 SMH: World’s largest asteroid impact zone found in central Australia, scientist says + Winton 'asteroid strike' had power of 650 million Hiroshima bombs.
  
• 9 Mar 15 ABC: Possible meteor flashes across sky in Perth and South West.
  
• 8 Mar 15 Space.com: Missions May Elevate Pluto, and Ceres, Dwarf Status (see also Microplanets)
  
• 8 Mar 15 NASA: NASA Spacecraft Becomes First to Orbit a Dwarf Planet - Dawn reaches Ceres
  
• 26 Feb 15 SBS: Rare daylight meteor dazzles Victoria (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Feb 15 BBC: Alien star system buzzed the Sun - just 70,000 years ago but any infall of comets from the Oort Cloud (a "comet shower") would be hundreds of 1000s of years away, if not millions of years. See Note 5 here. Duncan Steel has pointed out that the orbital period of comets orbiting at 50,000au is around 11 million years and a deflection sending it towards the inner solar system would still involve a journey of more than 2 million years.
  
• 16 Feb 15 Asteroid Day: An interactive video of the Chelyabinsk event + Rusty's Planetary Defense Blog.
  
• 26 Jan 15 The Globe and Mail: Scientists excited about mountain-sized asteroid set to hurtle past Earth (1.2 million km away)
• 26 Jan 15 Business Standard: Scientists discover hidden magnetic messages in meteorites.
  
• 10 Jan 15 LiveScience: Did Meteorite Carve Icy Antarctic Crater? [probably not!] (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 26 Dec 14 Gizmodo: New Incredible Photo Reveals Titanic Cliffs In Rosetta's Comet.
  
• 12 Dec 14 News.com.au: Asteroid heading towards Earth: Experts say 400m wide 2014 UR116 poses no threat to Earth (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 8 Dec 14 UT: Did Philae Land In That Comet Crater? One Month Later, The Search Continues.
  
• 6 Dec 14 Icarus Volume 246 ($) has numerous papers about the Pluto/Charon system
  
• 5 Dec 14 Bad Astronomy: 60 Years Ago Today: The Day a Meteorite Hit Ann Hodges +
  
• 3 Dec 14 The Guardian: Asteroid strike warnings build towards campaigners’ big day of rock - Scientists, astronauts and rock stars including Queen’s Brian May prepare awareness day and concert calling on governments to back early-warning technology (thanks Duncan Steel) + Cosmos: Asteroid threat means Earth 'living on borrowed time' + Wired: Brian May: act now to stop asteroids destroying humanity (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 3 Dec 14 Earth and Planetary Science Letters ($): The Eltanin impact and its tsunami along the coast of South America: Insights for potential deposits + Direct evidence of ancient shock metamorphism at the site of the 1908 Tunguska event. "Curiously, Mount Stojkovic lies within ∼3 km of the tree fall epicenter of the 1908 Tunguska event..."
  
• 2 Dec 14 Science: Respect long overdue: Earth’s most abundant mineral finally gets an official name [Bridgmanite]- thanks to tiny samples found, ironically, in a meteorite that fell to Earth in Australia in 1879 (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 1 Dec 14 Japan Times: Launch of Hayabusa2 probe delayed again by bad weather.
  
• 28 Nov 14 Science ($): Japan to assault asteroid - The most audacious assault ever launched on an asteroid—Hayabusa 2—aims to retrieve samples from the surface of asteroid ...by blasting a crater and capturing some of the ejecta.
  
• 25 Nov 14 IFL Science: Clues To Ancient Meteor Impacts Found (similar crater/age diagram to this) (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 25 Nov 14 Space Review: [Book] Review: The Asteroid Threat
  
• 14 Nov 14 The Guardian: Rosetta mission: what went right, what went wrong and how it can be fixed - “we’re getting one and a half hours of sunlight when we expected six or seven” NewSci: Race to get comet data before Philae dies.
  
• 8 Nov 14 NewSci: 'Missing' disaster led to all-time worst extinction - see also Craters
  
• 26 Oct 14 ABC Science: Craters mark double asteroid impact on early Earth + UT: Earth Dodges a Bullet — New Radar Images of Asteroid 2014 SC324 + IFL Science: Clues To Ancient Meteor Impacts Found (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 25 Oct 14 SpaceDaily: Mars Orbiter Image Shows Comet Nucleus is Small (maybe 400m - still regional destruction) + Space.com: NASA Mars Probes See Rare Comet Flyby + Comet Siding Spring at Mars: How a Rare Celestial Event Was Discovered (by Rob McNaught in the same week that his NEO funding stopped)
• 25 Oct 14 Space.com: Dino-Killing Asteroid Sparked Global Firestorm (see also this "old" Space.com article Did Asteroid-Induced Firestorm Destroy the Dinosaurs)
  
• 6 Oct 14 UT: What Comets, Parking Lots and Charcoal Have in Common (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 21 Sep14 The Guardian: Asteroids: between a rock and a hard place - excellent explanation of the risk from airbursts. (thanks Duncan Steel) - see also Dealing with the impact hazard 'a great many smaller NEOs will "slip through the net" and there is a high risk of another Tunguska event occurring without warning over the next 50 years ...' (written in 1999!)
  
• 18 Sep 14 ILFScience: Asteroid That Killed The Dinosaurs Helped Forests Bloom (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Sep 14 Sci-news: Cell-Like Structure Found within 1.3-Billion-Year-Old Martian Meteorite (thanks Paul Curnow) - see also Fossilized Bacteria Found in Ancient Meteorite
• 16 Sep 14 News.com.au: NASA blasted by inspector-general Paul Martin for not properly protecting us from asteroids (thanks Paul Curnow) + The Guardian: Nasa will 'miss goal to find 90% of nearby potentially dangerous asteroids' (comment: at least the US government is funding the NEO search - the Australian government contributes zilch!)
  
• 13 Sep 14 ESA: Gaia discovers its first supernova (not microplanet related but shows the possibility for detecting asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets “This kind of repeated survey comes in handy for studying the changeable nature of the sky,” )
  
• 11 Sep 14 UT: Tales (Tails?) Of Three Comets - a bevy of binocular comets set to grace evening skies for northern hemisphere observers.
  
• 10 Sep 14 NewSci: No easy parking spot for first-ever comet landing.
  
• 8 Sep 14 BBC: Nasa: [House size] Asteroid 2014 RC flies past Earth.
  
• 8 Sep 14 NG: 1833 Meteor Storm Started Citizen Science + SMH: Rare meteorite impact [probably] causes blast in Nicaragua's capital, Managua (thanks Paul Curnow) - experts are sceptical
  
• 1 Sep 14: Spotted a brilliant meteor over Sydney last night, just after sunset. It was almost a fireball - quite large and bright and it broke into several pieces. It went from the zenith towards the east (over the Pacific Ocean).
  
• 30 Aug 14 NASA: NASA's Spitzer Telescope Witnesses Asteroid Smashup (actually it detected before and after but not during - see also Can we detect asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets?)
• 28 Aug 14 GSA: Volcanism, Impacts, and Mass Extinctions: Causes & Effects - Special Paper 05, Sept 2014 (in press) "There was overwhelming agreement that a single large asteroid or comet impact (Chicxulub) could not have been the sole cause of the end-Cretaceous mass extinction, but rather was a contributing factor along with volcanism. "(thanks Duncan Steel)
• 24 Aug 14 NewSci: Earth's early life endured long asteroid bombardment (bolsters my calculations for detecting asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets and also the lifeboats in space concept)
  
• 20 Aug 14 SciAm: New Evidence Shows How Human Evolution Was Shaped by Climate (but no mention of microplanet impacts and their possible effects on human evolution)
  
• 19 Aug 14 ABC Science: Rare meteorite points to volcanism in early solar system (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 19 Aug 14 Uni of Tennessee: UT Research Uncovers Forces that Hold Gravity-Defying Near-Earth Asteroid Together (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 11 Aug 14 Earth System Sciences ($): new book by Andrew Glikson -  The Archaean: Geological and Geochemical Windows into the Early Earth - "major asteroid bombardment resulted in faulting, large scale uplift, intrusion of granites and an abrupt shift from crustal conditions..."
  
• 9 Aug 14 SMH: Remarkable achievements of Bill Bradfield, comet hunter.
• 7 Aug 14 ESA: Rosetta has today become the first spacecraft to rendezvous with a comet (other spacecraft have orbited asteroids). The close-up images are stunning.
  
• 5 Aug 14 Space.com: How Europe's Rosetta Spacecraft Will Arrive at Comet [this] Wednesday. See the latest ESA picture.
  
• 31 Jul 14 Sci-News: Study Sheds New Light on Extinction of Dinosaurs (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 31 Jul 14 Space.com: Early Earth: A Battered, Hellish World with Water Oases for Life
  
• 17 Jul 14 UT: Rock On! Curiosity Spots a Heavy Metal Meteorite (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 7 Jul 14 NewSci: Crystal cocoons kept bacteria safe in space (see also Asteroids - now for the good news)  + Mystery fossil [meteorite] rock may be chip off life-inspiring block.
• 7 Jul 14 PAP (Poland): Archaeologists discovered a meteorite fragment in a 9 thousand years old hut + UT: Eureka! Kola Fireball Meteorites Found in Russia (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Jun 14 JPL: NASA Update on Asteroid Redirect Mission.
  
• 16 Jun 14 Time ($): The Man Who Guards The Planet [Don Yeomans] (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 16 Jun 14 Secure World Foundation: Near-Earth Objects - Responding to the International Challenge (thanks Leonard David)
  
• 9 Jun 14 ESA: Herschel’s population of trans-Neptunian objects.
  
• 6 Jun 14 SciAm: Meteor Storm Went from Sizzle to Fizzle
  
• 6 Jun 14 Space.com: Huge 'Beast' Asteroid to Fly By Earth Soon, Live Webcast Today.
• 6 Jun 14 UT: How Sentinel Will Hunt for Hidden Asteroids.
  
• 6 Jun 14 Science ($): Identification of the giant impactor Theia in lunar rocks + BBC: Traces of another world found on the Moon + Nature: Lunar rock chemistry supports big-smash theory +
  
• 29 May 14 SpaceDaily: Where Have All The [Earth] Craters Gone?
  
• 24 May 14 ABC Science: Asteroid collided with another before exploding over Russia with '30 times force of atomic bomb': scientists ((thanks Paul Curnow)
• 11 May 14 Sci-NEWS: Ancient Impact Crater Discovered in Canada + Phys.org: Ancient crater points to massive meteorite strike (thanks Paul Curnow) - "Massive"? 8km diameter crater formed about 70 million years ago so the bollide was probably around 400m diameter.
  
• 1 May 14 Space.com: Asteroid-Capture Mission Will Pave Way for Manned Flight to Mars, NASA Says.
  
• 30 Apr 14 SciAm: Earth's Oldest and Biggest Crater Yields New Secrets.
  
• 30 Apr 14 ABC Science: The meteorite hunters (Nullarbor Plain) + Calls for an early-warning asteroid alert system (audio)
  
• 27 Apr 14 NewSci: Instant fossils found trapped in asteroid impact glass
• 27 Apr 14 Acta Astronautica: Mission Opportunities for the Flight Validation of the Kinetic Impactor Concept for Asteroid Deflection.
  
• 26 Apr 14 Space.com: Can Iconic 'Earthrise' Photo Help Protect Earth from Asteroid Impacts? + Mars Rover Curiosity Snaps First Asteroid Photo from Red Planet.
  
• 24 Apr 14 Space.com: Powerful Asteroids Strike Earth with Surprising Frequency (Video)
• 23 Apr 14 ABC Science: Asteroid strike drenched world in acid rain +  Asteroids whack Earth more often than thought (thanks Paul Curnow)
  
• 22 Apr 14 Sci-News: Asteroid, Meteorite Impacts Can Preserve Biodata for Millions of Years + NBC: Meteor Over Murmansk: Russian Fireball Caught on Dashcams (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 4 Apr 14 UT: Norwegian Skydiver Almost Gets Hit by Falling Meteor — and Captures it on Film - be skeptical about this. I am told a meteorite should be black after entering our atmosphere. I suspect this story first "broke" on 1st April!
  
• 4 Apr 14 Icarus ($): A criterion to classify asteroids and comets based on the orbital parameters.
  
• 1 Apr 14 Space Review: After a year, NASA’s asteroid mission still seeks definition.
  
• 27 Mar 14 Space.com: Asteroid Found with Rings! First-of-Its-Kind Discovery Stuns Astronomers (not April 1st joke) + New Dwarf Planet Found at Solar System's Edge, Hints at Possible Faraway 'Planet X' (see also microplanets)
  
• 25 Mar 14 SpaceDaily: NASA Seeks Proposals on Asteroid Redirect Mission Concepts Development.
  
• 23 Mar 14 BBC: South Korea: Meteor shower sparks frantic hunt for debris (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Mar 14 Space.com: To Protect Earth from Killer Asteroids, Humanity Must Take the Long View.
  
• 10 Mar 14 Space.com: Bright Fireball Over New Mexico Rattles Houses (video) + Small Asteroid Gives Earth a Close Shave, 3rd in 2 Days + Rare Sight: Hubble Telescope Sees Asteroid Falling Apart.
  
• 10 Mar 14 SMH: Dinosaur-killing impact acidified oceans.
• 10 Mar 14 ABC Science: Asteroid break-up seen for first time (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 27 Feb 14 Sci-News: Astronomers Document Record-Breaking Lunar Impact (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 24 Feb14 Star Reporter: Star found being pounded by billion-ton asteroid.
  
• 7 Feb 14 Sci-News: Itokawa: Scientists Reveal Structure of Strange Asteroid (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 7 Feb 14 NASA: Mars Orbiter Examines Dramatic New Crater
  
• 30 Jan 14 ABC Science: Asteroids scarred by solar system's violent youth (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 5 Jan 14 Acta Astronautica ($): A Decision Analysis Approach for Risk Management of Near-Earth Objects - co-author Clark R. Chapman
  
• 5 Jan 14 JPL: First 2014 Asteroid Discovered (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Dec 13 UT: Smack! A New Crater Appears on the Moon/ Yutu Rover Update + NASA: NASA's Asteroid Hunter Spacecraft Returns First Images after Reactivation (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Dec 13 ESA: Liftoff for ESA's billion-star surveyor Gaia.
• 17 Dec 13 NewSci ($): Did asteroid fracking cause Earth's worst extinction? + Space megacamera will map Milky Way (but will the Gaia  spacecraft be able to detect huge microplanet impacts with rocky exoplanets? - update: YES, if it is pointing in the right direction: Photometric Science Alerts from Gaia " Gaia will be detecting transients and anomalous behaviour of objects, providing near-real-time alerts to the entire astronomical community. Gaia should detected about 6000 supernovae, 1000 microlensing events and many other interesting types of transients..." (thanks Peter Allan)
  
• 17 Dec 13 NewSci: Fiercest meteor shower on record to hit Mars via comet (in October 2014)
  
• 10 Dec 13 NewSci: Crazy comet ISON returns bearing solar system secrets (it has fizzled after grazing the Sun!) + Alien-hunting equation revamped for mining asteroids.
  
• 10 Dec 13 News.com: Boy struck by meteorite in Florida (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Nov 13 NewSci ($): Meteor impact trapped ancient swamp plants in glass (see Transpermia) + Jolly green comet blazes a trail towards sun.
  
• 12 Nov 13 Nature (Youtube): The [Chelyabinsk] fireball on film.
  
• 7 Nov 13 Science News: Meteor explosions like this year’s Russian fireball more common than thought - Chelyabinsk-sized rocks may come to Earth every 30 years, on average  (thanks Paul Curnow). Also at BBC plus Nature: A 500-kiloton airburst over Chelyabinsk and an enhanced hazard from small impactors. This is still within the range of uncertainty predicted in 1999.
  
• 30 Oct 13 SpaceDaily: Another hazardous asteroid to dart close to Earth in 2065.
  
• 30 Oct 13 SciAm: United Nations to Adopt Asteroid Defense Plan + Daily Mail (sensationalised) Kamikaze spaceships versus the killer asteroids: World's space agencies unite to save planet Earth (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 28 Oct 13 NewSci: For instant climate change, just add one large comet - the suggestion is feasible but, so far, no large impact crater has been found of this age.
  
• 24 Oct 13 ABC News: Japan says space cannon to be fired at asteroid is on track after successful test.
  
• 19 Oct 13 Space.com: Large Asteroid to Buzz Earth in 2032, But Poses Little Threat, NASA Says (finding it difficult to find articles on Space.com these days with ads and pop-ups)
  
• 18 Oct 13 Astrowatch: Meteorite crater in Brazil reveals biggest extinction in Earth history (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Oct 13 Science: Meteorite that fell last year contains surprising molecules (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Oct 13 NASA: NASA Rover Confirms Mars Origin of Some Meteorites see also transpermia
  
• 18 Oct 13 NYT: Lifted From a Russian Lake, a Big, if Fragile, Space Rock.
  
• 17 Sep 13 LST: How a comet impact may have jump-started life on Earth -- and elsewhere.
  
• 12 Sep 13 ABC: NASA identifies potential asteroids to move to the Moon's orbit
• 11 Sep 13 Jay Tate from the UK Spaceguard Centre has received a well-deserved award from Europlanet (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 29 Aug 13: Rocks from Space now available for iPad as an iBook.
• 16 Aug 13 US Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency: DARPA Space Surveillance Telescope Headed to Australia to Improve Space Situational Awareness [defacto Spaceguard for southern skies?] (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 14 Aug 13 NASA: Orbits of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 13 Aug 13 NASA: Small Bodies Assessment Group Findings and NASA HQ Responses + NASA Completes First Internal Review of Concepts for Asteroid Redirect Mission + NASA Sees Enthusiastic Response to Asteroid Call for Ideas  (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 5 Aug 13 SpaceDaily: Lazarus comets' explain Solar System mystery + Cosmic impact may have led to demise of early North American peoples + Surveys reveal ancient impact crater beneath Iowa town + Asteroid named as possible source of exploding Russian meteorite
  
• 27 Jul 13 2013: Flagstaff Planetary Defense Conference papers (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 30 Jun 13 ARKYD: A Space Telescope for Everyone - raising cash for a community NEO search (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 25 Jun 13 Space Review: Redirecting an asteroid mission.
  
• 19 Jun 13: The Chronicle: Meteor or space junk? Burning object mystery solved (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 9 Jun 13 Space.com: Did Comet Impacts Spur Life on Earth?
  
• 5 Jun 13 Discovery: Dying Space Rock: Asteroid-Comet Hybrid Discovered (thanks Paul Curnow) - all the more reason to call them microplanets!
  
• 4 Jun 13 NewSci: Fast-approaching asteroid has its own small moon - 2.5km diameter asteroid passed within 6 million km of Earth.
  
• 18 May 13 Wired: Watch the Biggest Explosion Ever Seen on the Moon.
  
• 11 May 13 The Guardian: Every meteorite since 861 AD: watch them fall - Only 3% of all recorded meteorites that have struck the earth were seen falling. Now you can watch every one of those 1,045 fall in this amazing animation(thanks Duncan Steel)
• 2 May 13 SciAm: Preventing the Next Chelyabinsk - my comment: Thank you for this article John. I take issue with the sentence "Fortunately, impacts on the scale of Chelyabinsk occur only once a century, so perhaps humankind will have figured out even better techniques by then." These impacts are randomly distributed in time so the next event is not a century away. The chance of a similar impact next month is 1 in 1,200 and in any subsequent month. The Catalina Sky Survey stopped funding Rob McNaught's Australian program last year. Then his Australian funding stopped at the start of this year so there is no longer a funded NEO search in the Southern Hemisphere (we are blind in one eye). Rob lost his home in the Siding Spring bushfires in February so it is turning into a very bad year for him. The irony is that in January he discovered the ~20km diameter comet that has a slight chance of hitting Mars in October 2014. If it hits it will be bigger than the Chixculub impact on Earth 65 million years ago (~15km comet). The alarming thing is that this potential impactor with Mars was only detected 18 months before the encounter. Note that most likely miss distance is 40,000km which Mars travels in about one hour in its orbit around the Sun.
  
• 16 Apr 13 SpaceDaily: Comet to Make Close Flyby of Red Planet in October 2014.
• 16 Apr 13 JPL: NASA-Funded Asteroid Tracking Sensor Passes Key Test.
  
• 2 Apr 13 Colorado Uni: CU study provides new evidence ancient asteroid caused global firestorm on Earth (thanks Paul Curnow) See also Did Asteroid-Induced Firestorm Destroy the Dinosaurs?
  
• 31 Mar 13 NewSci: Mighty Trojan found marching with Uranus (60km diameter microplant)
  
• 26 Mar 13 NYT: After Asteroid, Sigh of Relief in Russia (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 25 Mar 13 BBC: Dinosaur-killing space rock 'was a comet' (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 21 Mar 13 SMH: Asteroid risk real, says former astronaut (US senate hearing notice by Australian newspaper!)
  
• 28 Feb 13 News.com.au: Comet C/2013 Siding Spring might hit Mars in 2014 - very unlikely but it will get spectactularly close at 100,000km.
  
• 23 Feb 13 NewSci ($): New satellite will be first asteroid sentinel in space - next week the Canadian Space Agency (CSA) will launch the world's first dedicated asteroid-hunting satellite
  
• 22 Feb 13 Ballina Shire Advocate: Fly-in, fly-out... of space - A group of speakers and guests are this week in Sydney discussing the possibility of space mining... - see also  Off-Earth Mining Forum + Riches in the rubble of the Solar System.
• 21 Feb 13 Discovery.com: Asteroid Early Warning System to be Built (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Feb 13 Space.com: Russian Meteor Fallout: Military Satellite Data Should Be Shared.
  
• 18 Feb 13 Adelaide Now: SA asteroid strike you missed - by 300m years - "The size of the shock metamorphic terrain, larger than 200km in diameter, makes it the third-largest discovered to date on Earth," Dr Glikson said. "It is also possible that the asteroid impact dates back to the late Devonian period - 360 million years ago - a time of major mass extinction." + Science Alert: Asteroid impact zone found  (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 18 Feb 13 NewSci: Russian meteor will teach us about future bigger hits.
  
• 17 Feb 13 NASA:  Asteroid 2012 DA14 and the Eta Carinae Nebula -   The telescope is located at the Siding Spring Observatory in Australia and is maintained and owned by iTelescope.net.
  
• 17 Feb 13 The Guardian: Meteorite slams into Central Russia injuring 1100 - as it happened (see also The Frequency and Consequences of Cosmic Impacts Since the Demise of the Dinosaurs and the FAQ from 1998 "Has anyone ever been killed by a meteorite?") + WP: Details on the meteor in Russia’s Ural Mountain region.
  
• 17 Feb 13 SBS: Meteor shower causes injuries, damage in Russia (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 12 Feb 13 The Guardian: The Tunguska event: a Siberian meteor mystery from 1908 (3 days before the Urals event!)+ Asteroid will come closer than satellites – but it's not the end of the world - see the comments (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 12 Feb 13 NYT: Beware of Errant Asteroids (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 8 Feb 13 Livescience: Asteroid Impact That Killed the Dinosaurs: New Evidence. See also mass extinctions.
  
• 5 Feb 13 Space.com: Search for Near-Earth Asteroids Needs a Speed Boost - At the current rate that near-Earth asteroids are being detected, it will take astronomers 15 years to identify every one of significant size...
• 5 Feb 13 Brisbane Times: Asteroid's near miss is gold for sky miners
  
• 2 Feb 13 S&T: The First-Ever Meteorite from Mercury? (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 1 Feb 13 NewSci ($): Close call coming: Averting the asteroid threat - On 15 February 2013, the errant rock will skim Earth just 25,000 kilometres above our heads...However, there is a region of sky that remains poorly watched. The sky over the south pole never rises above the horizon for telescopes in the northern hemisphere...The Siding Spring telescope near Coonabarabran is the only instrument that could spot a dangerous asteroid approaching from this most southerly patch of sky - but the Catalina project cut its funding in mid-2012. When the solitary astronomer still on duty there, Rob McNaught, visited the UK last September, the Siding Spring Survey shut down for a month, leaving a totally blind spot in our monitoring capabilities...That hole will be plugged in a few years' time by the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope (LSST) on Cerro Pachón mountain in Chile.
  
• 18 Jan 13 SMH: Who's on night watch? Alerting the world to rogue visitors is a vital task, but one that's under threat
  
• 18 Jan 13 SMH: Rogue asteroid [Apophis] a fifth bigger than first thought.
  
• 7 Jan 13 The Australian: Get set for asteroids, comets flyby [in 2013]
  
• 6 Jan 13 Icarus ($): Mineralogies and source regions of near-Earth asteroids + Lunar-forming impacts: High-resolution SPH and AMR-CTH simulations + Planetary perturbations for Oort Cloud comets. I. Distributions and dynamics
  
• 29 Dec 12 Space.com: Asteroid No Threat to Earth in 2040: Study [the use of the term "debunked" in the URL is misleading - the normal procerss is that further observations eliminate the chances of an Earth impact. That is why we need to find them early and the gap in the southern hemisphere is such a concern to astronomers]
  
• 22 Dec 12 Steve Ward has created a brilliant computer simulation of the Chicxulub impact and tsunami on Youtube. More simulations here.
• 17 Dec 12 SpaceDaily: China Makes First Asteroid Fly By [Toutatis]
  
• 11 Dec 12  The Astrophysical Journal ($): A Self-consistent Model of the Circumstellar Debris Created by a Giant Hypervelocity Impact in the HD 172555 System - this may be the first clear evidence of a major planetary impact outside of our solar system. These events should be relatively frequent in young planetary systems. See also Can we detect asteroid impacts with rocky extrasolar planets?
• 12 Sep 12 Spaceweather.com: EXPLOSION ON JUPITER: Apparently, something hit Jupiter during the early hours of Sept. 10th (11:35 UT), igniting a ferocious fireball in the giant planet's cloudtops... + DOUBLE ASTEROID FLYBY: A pair of big, near-Earth asteroids will fly by the Earth-Moon system on Sept. 14th (thanks Duncan Steel) + Space.com: Search Is on Jupiter Impact Scar.
  
• 5 Sep 12 National Geographic (2011): Trojan Asteroid Found Sharing Earth's Orbit—A First (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 13 Aug 12 UT: Schweickart: Private Asteroid Mission is for the Benefit of Humanity.
  
• 2 Aug 12 Australian Geographic: Meteorite craters in Australia (Map) (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 20 Jul 12 NewSci Editorial: Pluto's not a planet – it's much odder than that  - see also Microplanets
• 16 Jul 12 Proceedings of  11th Australian Space Science Conference, 2011 - 14Mb PDF - sample of titles below (thanks Duncan Steel)
• Space Reconnaissance: Scanning the Sky with an Optical Arecibo
• Are Two of the Neptune Trojans Dynamically Unstable?
• Quantifying Jupiter’s influence on the Earth’s impact flux: Implications for planetary habitability
• The Lunar Impact Record: Greatest Hits and One Hit Wonders
• Impacts on the Moon: Understanding the Record of Lunar Impact Glasses
• An Impact Crater in Palm Valley, Central Australia?
• 11 Jul 12 NYT: Are You an Optimist or a Pessimist? (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 11 Jul 12 Nature: Astronomers catch video of near-miss asteroid (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 30 Jun 12 Space.com: Asteroid Threat: Sizing Up Earth's Vulnerability to Space Rock Strikes.
  
• 30 Jun 12 NewSci: Earth's oldest impact crater found in Greenland + UT
  
• 29 Jun 12 Physics World: Privately funded spacecraft will look for dangerous asteroids (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 25 Jun 12 UT: Recent Earth-passing asteroid is much bigger than originally estimated (Note that a 1km asteroid would make a mess of our civilisation but would not be an "extinction level event")
• 25 Jun 12 BBC: Laser treatment for asteroids.
  
• 19 Jun 12 NASA: NASA Releases Workshop Data and Findings on Asteroid 2011 AG5 - 140m asteroid might hit the Earth in 2040, IF it passess through a "keyhole" in 2023 (thanks Duncan Steel)
  
• 19 Jun 12 Astrobiology web: Study Jointly Led by UCSB Researcher Finds New Evidence Supporting Theory of Extraterrestrial Impact - 12,900 years ago
  
• 17 May 12 UT: 4,700 Asteroids Want to Kill You
• 3 May 12 SpaceDaily: Mining Asteroids - A New Industry.
  
• 3 May 12 The Conversation: Asteroid mining will happen … but Australia will miss the boom by Duncan Steel. See also this 2002 letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard
• 27 Apr 12 Space.com: Meteorites Discovered Along Huge Fireball's Path in California.
  
• 24 Apr 12 WSJ: A Quixotic Quest to Mine Asteroids - see also Riches in the rubble of the Solar System (1999!)
  
• 24 Apr 12 PSRD: Earth's Temporary Minimoons.
  
• 24 Apr 12 ABC: Asteroid impact pushes life underground (see also Asteroids - now for the good news - 2003) + Asteroid sites hint at life on Mars + Discovery: Daylight Fireball Streaks Over Nevada and California (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 14 Mar 12 EPSL ($): The onset of the lunar cataclysm as recorded in its ancient crater populations.
  
• 1 Mar 12 SpaceDaily: Asteroid 2011 AG5 - A Reality Check
  
• 27 Feb 12 Discovery:  NASA Urges Vigilance For Weird Fireballs - Slow-moving meteors during February are a well-known phenomenon but astronomers are mystified as to where they come from.(thanks Paul Curnow)
• 28 Jan 12 SlashGear: NEOShield international asteroid threat-reduction group forming now + Space.com: Asteroid Threat to Earth Sparks Global 'NEOShield' Project.
  
• 28 Jan 12 BBC: Asteroid makes near-miss fly-by + UT: Astronomers Capture Images of Asteroid 2012 BX34s Close Flyby of Earth.
  
• 11 Dec 11 Planetary Science Institute (15 May 11): Memorial for Elisabetta (Betty) Pierazzo - "Betty was an expert in the area of impact modeling throughout the solar system, as well as an expert on the astrobiological and environmental effects of impacts on Earth and Mars. Her work ranged widely, from providing detailed insights into the Chicxulub impact that caused the extinction of the dinosaurs to putting constraints on the thickness of the ice shell of Jupiter's moon Europa. She was interested in the rise of life and explored the delivery of organics to planets and Europa by comets as well as the creation of subsurface hydrothermal systems by impacts that may have been favorable sites for life on Mars." (Betty provided invaluable advice when I researched these issues over the years)
  
• 8 Dec 11 SciAm: Stop the Killer Space Rocks - The job of saving humanity from extinction currently falls to no one. NASA and other organizations should take it on
• 17 Nov 11 Nature: Dark days of the Triassic: Lost world - Did a giant impact 200 million years ago trigger a mass extinction and pave the way for the dinosaurs? + Discovery: Asteroid Fingered For Dino Era Boom - Not Just Bust  (thanks Paul Curnow) [comment: A 2 kilometre asteroid would make a mess but is hardly an "extinction level event"]
  
• 2 Nov 11 SpaceDaily: Large asteroid to pass by Earth Nov 8. [about 400m diameter and passing between the Earth and Moon]
• 21 Oct 11 ABC: Study suggests Earth survived near miss - A new study claims life on Earth was almost wiped out by a comet in 1883. (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 6 Oct 11 Space.com: To Deflect Killer Asteroids, Humanity Must Work Together.
• 6 Oct 11 New Scientist: Fewer asteroids found near Earth.
• 2 Sep 11 Space.com: At Mars Crater, NASA Rover Finds Evidence of Ancient Water Hotspot - see also Asteroids - now for the good news
• 1 Sep 11 SpaceDaily: Asteroid Impact on Earth: Experts Review Global Response and Mitigation Steps
• 18 Aug 11 Space.com: Meteorites Possible From Midwest US Fireball + Comet Elenin: Biggest Questions (and Answers) From NASA + Will We Be Able to Deflect an Earthbound Asteroid? (see also Rocks from Space) + Comet Elenin Poses No Threat to Earth, NASA Says.
• 9 Aug 11 Adelaide Now: Exploding meteor wakes Niue with a start  (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 7 Aug 11 SMH: Dawn shines a light on Vesta.
• 28 Jul 11 NASA: NASA's WISE Finds Earth's First Trojan Asteroid [300m asteroid orbits the Sun just ahead of the Earth].
• 26 May 11 Space.com: NASA to Launch Asteroid-Sampling Spacecraft in 2016 + Video:Possible Killer Asteroid Targeted for Mission.
• 25 May 11 SpaceDaily: NASA Sky Cameras Capture Man-Sized Meteor Over Georgia.
• 20 May 11 TPS: A rare direct hit from a meteorite (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 17 May 11 SciAm: Make Craters with Mini-Meteors - classroom science experiment
• 3 May 11 NASA: Spacecraft Earth to Perform Asteroid 'Flyby' This Fall - interpretation: a 400m diameter asteroid passes within 325,000km of Earth on 8th November 2011
• 25 Apr 11 SCPR: “Deep Impact,” but with an unhappy ending: Who will watch for Earth-bound asteroids in an era of budget cuts? (thanks Duncan Steel)
• 11 Apr UT: New Record: Telescope Finds 19 Near-Earth Asteroids in One Night (Pan-STARRS)
• 16 Feb 11 NewSci: Found: crater from Deep Impact's comet crash.
• 3 Feb 11 Cosmos Magazine Issue 37 ($): Lucky Strike (mass extinctions) + A Very Big Bang (impact consequences) and Ancient Scars (craters) - note that these articles suffer from terminology difficulties - meteors/asteroids/comets - that were addressed in this essay.
• 2 Feb 11 NASA: NASA's NEOWISE Completes Scan for Asteroids and Comets.
• 1 Feb 11 Discovery News: Asteroid Deflection Should Be Next 'Sputnik Moment'  (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 31 Jan 11 Irish Central: Massive fireball spotted in the skies above Ireland (thanks Paul Curnow)
• 27 Jan 11 NASA: Asteroids Ahoy! Jupiter Scar Likely from Rocky Body.
• 13 Jan 11 Australian Science ($): The Truth About Impact Craters + Cosmic Time Machine + The Sun Steals Comets from Other Stars + Ancient Asteroid Impact Revealed
• 5 Jan 11 Space.com: Comet or Asteroid? Big Space Rock Has Identity Crisis - or just call them all microplanets...

 
NEO News archive (from Nov 1997)
Other Planetary Science News
Top of page

The alarm bells are ringing!

These are just a few examples of events that warn us that asteroids and comets are potentially hazardous to our civilisation.
• 8 Jun 03 The Times: Siberia meteorite flattens 40 sq miles - If it had hit Central London, Britain would no longer have a capital city. The force of the meteorite that hit eastern Siberia last September destroyed 40 square miles of forest...(CC)
  
• 21 Jun 02 BBC: Space rock's close approach - 100m diameter asteroid passed within 120,000 km of the Earth.
• Jan 2002 BBC: Space rock hurtles past Earth - 300m asteroid, less than 1 million km from Earth (the Earth travels about 2.5 million km around the Sun each day)
• May 2002 Science: Signs of a major impact 480,000 years ago, with tektites discovered in South America. There was certainly another one in SE Asia  800,000 years ago.
  
• 2001: Evidence that a huge impact was associated with the greatest extinction on record - 251 million years ago. As one scientist put it, we now have the "bookends" for the age of the dinosaurs - the huge impact that led to their rise 250 million years ago, and the Mexico impact 65 million years ago that led to their demise. That same impact led to the rise of mammals. How far away is our terminating bookmark, if we don't take action to find and mitigate the next big impact? August 2001: GSA Permian Extraterrestrial Impact Caused Largest Mass Extinction on Earth. Nature: Brimstone pickled Permian
• 2000: At the Annual AAAS meeting in Washington, Dr Benny Peiser describes the likelihood that Tunguska-type events (airbursts rather that cratering events) have played an important role in the development of civilisation over the past 10,000 years. Notes about the computer simulation. Why Files. SpaceDaily report. The Frequency and Consequences of Cosmic Impacts Since the Demise of the Dinosaurs (280K PDF)
• 1998: Astronomers discover the first (1997XF11) of several asteroids that are now known to be in a 'resonant orbit' with the Earth. In other words, they repeatedly buzz the Earth in their orbits around the Sun. A close encounter (passing through a 'keyhole') could result in the Earth's gravity changing the asteroid's orbit sufficiently to cause a collision during the next orbit. See the International Astronomy Union's List of Potentially Hazardous Asteroids.
• 1997: In a complete surprise to astronomers, Comet Hale-Bopp (a "dirty snowball" 40km across) enters the inner solar system for a brief visit. Not "as big as Texas" (the worst line in the movie Armageddon) but an object this size striking the Earth would cause an "extinction level event". Update Nov 1999: new estimates put the size of Hale-Bopp at 70km!

 .

•  July 1994: (see image) Several fragments of Comet Shoemaker-Levy 9 caused these black "scars" in Jupiter's atmosphere. Each patch is about the size of the Earth (inset).
• 1991: Discovery of the giant Chicxulub impact crater in Mexico - confirming the impact that eliminated the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
• 1972: Rock samples collected by Apollo 17 (the last manned mission to the Moon) show that the age of the 85km diameter Tycho Crater is about 100 million years. An asteroid or comet about 4km across would be needed to make a crater this size. On average the Earth is struck by a microplanet this size every 10 million years. The impact rate on the smaller Moon is about one tenth of that on Earth so Tycho is within expectations (but see this note about impacts randomly distributed in time).
• June 1908: An asteroid or comet fragment about 60 metres across explodes over Tunguska in remote Siberia. 2,000 sq kilometres of forest are flattened. Under slightly different circumstances St Petersburg might had been obliterated. The Tunguska object had a kinetic energy of about 6x10^16 Joules or 15 Mt of TNT. This was around a 1000 times that of the Hiroshima bomb so the potential for destruction of cities is very serious. Tunguska was probably the largest geographically indiscriminate explosion of the last century (volcanic explosions such as Mt St Helens and major earthquakes are confined to geologically active and somewhat predictable areas but cosmic impacts can occur anywhere at any time). Events like Tunguska may occur with a typical frequency of about once per century. I have estimated that there is an annual probabilty of about 1 in 1000 that such an explosion will occur over a populated region of the Earth.
• 1910: L'Eternel Adam (The Eternal Adam) by Jules and Michel Verne. "In the distant future, Zartog Sofr-Ai-Sr discovers the journals of a man who with friends, associates and family was present at the end of the previous civilization. The journal reveals that the survivor of that civilization most certainly had an influence on the start of the one in Zartog currently lives. The civilization whose demise [by an impact] is documented is that of our present one."
• 1490 AD: 10,000 people killed in the Chinese city of Chi'ing-yang (Qingyang, Shaanxi Province) when "stones fell like rain". An exploding asteroid is a likely cause ("Rain of Iron and Ice" by John Lewis)
• 1178 AD: Monks witness the bright plume from a giant impact which might have formed the 22km diameter crater Giordano Bruno on the farside of the Moon (update 17 Mar 01 - this now seems unlikely)

---

Notes for Journalists

Rocks from Space: Michael Paine's series of articles for Space.com - bibliography with many links.

Here are some possible storylines to explore:
• Feb 02: In a remarkable show of global solidarity more than 90 scientists from 17 countries have signed a letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, calling for a major Australian contribution to Spaceguard - the international effort to detect asteroids that might collide with the Earth. The signatories to the letter come from Australia, Canary Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and  United States of America. They include leading asteroid researchers such as David Levy and Caroline Shoemaker - famous for discovering Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that collided with Jupiter in 1994. The letter was organised by Jay Tate from the Spaceguard Centre in the UK and Dr Benny Peiser from Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Michael Paine from the Planetary Society Australian Volunteers assisted them. A PDF copy of the letter and press release can be viewed at http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/pr_oz_sg.pdf.
• 19 Jan 02 CCNet: THE REAL SITUATION INVOLVING 2001 YB5 - excellent report by Brian Marsden from MPC. "The real role of  the search programs is therefore in attempting to secure the safety of future generations. If it does happen that we are tremendously unlucky and experience an unanticipated   asteroidal impact, we should therefore blame past generations for not embarking on an  adequate search."
• 10 Jan 02 SMH: Looking out for the mother of all comets - It's time for Australia to get back in the hunt for the asteroid that  could wipe out life on Earth, writes Paul Davies. Also The Age: Big bang that ends it all and MONSTER FROM OUTER SPACE JUST MISSED US (the Earth, not the USA!). The Sunday Age: Planet X - plug for Spaceguard by Paul Davies.
• Sep 2000: UK NEO Task Force report - PDF available . NASA has a summary. See our Press Release on the implications for Australia. Excellent NASA article about Near Earth Asteroids.
• Feb 2000: At the Annual AAAS meeting in Washington, Dr Benny Peiser describes the likelihood that Tunguska-type events (airbursts rather that cratering events) have played an important role in the progress of civilisation over the past 10,000 years. Also MSNBC, Discovery.com,AAAS Press Release, Simulations. Notes about the computer simulation.
• Looking for more info about how to recognise a meteorite? - see Meteorites and Their Properties - Lunar and Planetary Laboratory, University of Arizona
• Our press release of 27 May 1999 seeking Australian funding for the proposed Australian componentof the International Spaceguard Survey. Australian Current Affairs show Lateline covered the issue on 31 August 1999. Press release on 1 Dec 1999 about international developments.
• What are the chances of Spaceguard detecting a threatening object?
• US Congress triples NASA's budget for near earth asteroid detection
• Kilometre wide asteroid to whizz past the Earth in 2027and might hit in 2044. Amateur observations in Australia helped to pin down the orbit. Old photos reduce the risk even further.
• Spaceguard supported in UK Parliament (again but delayed) and raised by the Opposition in the Australian Federal Parliament. Nov 28: UK Government establishes NEO centre.
• "Collision Course" by AAO Astronomer Ken Russell was a big hit (sorry!) at the Australian Science Festival in Canberra.
• Conference in Hawaii looks at tsunami from asteroid impacts. Coastlines at higher risk from impacts than inland locations but risk is probably less than earlier estimates. More research needed on vulnerability of Australian coastlines to tsunami (whatever the cause).
• High level science committee in Australia has "Near Earth Asteroids" on its prestigous "List of activities for 1998/99" but doesn't seem to have done anything about it (the total salaries of the eminent committee members exceeds the proposed annual Australian Spaceguard budget!)
• Learn all about Near Earth Objects (NEOs) while enjoying a good fiction novel Nemesis by Bill Napier, one of the Britain's top NEO scientists (update 2002 - a bit hard to find now).
• 11 Sep 03 ACA: Asteroids - now for the good news. Talk by Mark Sonter and Michael Paine, Macquarie Uni, Sydney, 1pm. Powerpoint presentation now online.
  
• 22 Jul 03 Space.com: Search for Large Asteroids Nears Completion, Experts Ponder Gaps in Program.
  
• 2 Apr 03 OECD: Dealing with the hazard of asteroids and comets that collide with the Earth - Report from the workshop, entitled "Near Earth Objects: Risks, Policies and Actions" held in Frascati, Italy, on January 20-22, 2003, It brought together leading NEO experts and government officials to examine the NEO issue as it relates to public safety. This is the one the Australian Science Minister has been waiting for. There is also a paper by Clark Chapman.(also a Word DOC version at Clark's website)
• 2 Dec 03 NASA: STUDY TO DETERMINE THE FEASIBILITY OF EXTENDING THE SEARCH FOR NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS TO SMALLER LIMITING DIAMETERS (1.2Mb PDF) - Report of the Near-Earth Object Science Definition Team - August 22, 2003
• 2 Nov 04 NASA: Hyperbole in Reports on NEOs and Impacts
• 11 May 05 Skeptical Enquirer: Hyperbole in Media Reports on Asteroids and Impacts by David Morrison
• 13 Sep 14: This page is referred to in a web page by US astronaut John Young: The Big Picture
  Ways to Mitigate or Prevent Very Bad Planet Earth Events. (unofficial page quoting one of his essays)
  

---

How much are you willing to spend on Spaceguard? Try this quick quiz!

The odds, in any one year, of a civilisation-destroying impact by an asteroid or comet 1 kilometre or more in diameter are between 1 in 200,000 and 1 in a million. The odds of being dealt a royal flush in five card poker are in the same ballpark - about 1 in 500,000. Now imagine that each year you are to be dealt a hand of poker. If you are dealt a royal flush you will be immediately executed (the equivalent of a major asteroid impact). But you can avoid playing the 'game' by paying a fine.
How much would you be willing to pay to not play this deadly gamble each year?
$10? $1000? $1 million? You decide.
Now multiply this amount by the number of human beings who pay taxes in developed nations (the ones who can best afford it). Let's say 500 million people. You have worked out, on your terms, the amount the world should spend on averting a cosmic catastrophe. As a bonus the Spaceguard Survey would find many objects smaller than 1 km which could cause regional or local devastation.


---

Status of the Australian Search

The Spaceguard Survey is an international project to search for asteroids and comets which could threaten life on Earth or seriously disrupt human activities. The Australian Federal Government stopped funding (about $100,000 per year) for the Australian component of the Spaceguard Survey in 1996 and the project ceased at the end of that year. "AANEAS: A Valedictory Report" has a description of the program's many successes up to that time. Note that the Australian program tied up relatively little telescope time - it used many photographs obtained for other purposes.

That is why this is an unofficial web-site - there is no Spaceguard Survey in Australia at the present time. The web site has been started to support the re-establishment of the Australian Spaceguard Survey and to provide links to other Spaceguard-related sites.

It is evident that the Australian Government is only interested in short term issues and is unlikely to support a project which might not benefit mankind for decades, or even centuries. One problem is that the bureaucracy does not have a "pigeon hole" for this topic - it is not pure "science" and there is no tangible enemy to make it a "defence" matter. Therefore the Australian Spaceguard Survey will probably need the support of individuals, corporations and societies.
 

We are not asking for money, but an indication of support - and to determine whether the web site is a suitable way to generate this support. See also the Guestbook.

1 April 1997 Canberra Times: "Asteroid watch might resume" - Sky watching for "killer rocks" in Australia could be resurrected after intervention by Prime Minister John Howard...Science Minister Peter McGauran said Mr Howard recently asked him, Education Minister Vanstane and Defeence Minister McLachlan to examine whether asteroid spotting should continue..."we're treating it as a case where individuals can fall between portfolios becuase they don't fit neatly in one or the other"...

Update March 1999: A glimmer of hope about Australian funding for Spaceguard: The Coordination Committee on Science and Technology (CCST) is a high level committee set up by the Government of the Commonwealth of Australia, comprising representatives of departments with an interest in or responsibility for science, technology and innovation matters. It lists "Near Earth Asteroids" under "Matters receiving attention in the current financial year"! . Copy here (for the record!)

Update 10 September 1999: After a three year break a professional search for Earth-threatening
asteroids will soon begin again in Australia. The project is a collaboration between astronomers at the University of Arizona and the     Australian National University. It involves refurbishing a telescope at Siding Spring in New South Wales and providing a verysensitive electronic detector array, computer pointing control and automatic detection software.

The project will help to fill a huge gap in our ability to detect asteroids which might collide with the Earth. Until now the only professional searches were in the Northern Hemisphere - the southern half of the sky was not covered. Early detection of a potentially threatening asteroids is essential if mankind is to have sufficient time
to mitigate the threat. Even the moderate rocket power we have available today would be sufficient to deflect an asteroid away from a collision, provided that the action can be taken over decades and the asteroid is
given a little nudge during each orbit around the Sun.

Although the ANU/UA project is a welcome development renewed government funding for an additional telescope will be required if the goals of the international Spaceguard Survey are to be achieved. That goal is to
discover, within a decade, 90% of Earth-approaching asteroids with a diameter of 1 km or more. A collision by an asteroid of this size would be a grave threat to our civilisation and the death toll would likely be
in the hundreds of millions.
NASA NEO News - copy of ANU/UA Press Release
 

Update March 2002

It is now 5 years since the Australian Science Minister said he would look at restarting Spaceguard in Australia (shut down by the Howard Government in 1996). Most Near Earth Asteroids take 5 years or less to orbit the Sun. Therefore the ones that were in southern skies in 1997-98, and might have been picked up by an Australian Spaceguard, are now returning to our region of the solar system. If any are found, by the northern hemisphere search efforts, to be on a collision course then the finger will be pointed at Australia for wasting five years in the effort to avert a catastrophe. This is one of those rare cases where politicians can be made accountable for their decisions to risk the consequences of inaction - astronomers can calculate an asteroid's orbit back in time and determine whether it should have been detected by a Spaceguard telescope.

18 Mar 02 OPINION - There was good coverage of the Spaceguard issue on Australian TV yesterday. Science Minister Peter McGauran tried to accuse NEO researchers of "fear-mongering" and being "self-indulgent" - a sure sign of an uncomfortable politician. In fact none of the 91 scientists from 17 countries who signed the letter to the Federal Government earlier this year would benefit in any way from an Australian decision to fund Spaceguard - other than the knowledge that a blind spot in the south would be eliminated.  However, the reaction to the programs was overwhelmingly supportive and I think Mr McGauran should discuss this issue with his colleagues. He suggested Spaceguard would take 5% out of the $18 million budget for astronomy in Australia - a sneaky way to try and eliminate support for Spaceguard from other astronomers. We are saying it is not strictly science research and it would be more appropriate to fund it from the huge defence budget. If you agree please tell your local member of federal parliament.

• Transcripts of Deeper Impact - Ch7 Sunday Sunrise
• Transcripts of The Threat Above  Ch9 60 Minutes [Text version on CCNet]"I'm not going to be spooked or panicked into spending scarce research dollars on a fruitless [!] attempt to predict the next asteroid. I'm just not convinced that the hype and alarm and even fear-mongering is 
  
enough to justify an instant investment." --Peter McGauran, Australian Minister for Science. He should have read the letter before mouthing off!
SHOULD SPACEGUARD FUNDING BE RESTORED IN AUSTRALIA?Yes 92% No 8%
• "Live chat" on the Internet after the 60 Minutes program, with Duncan Steel and Michael Paine.
• Press Release on the 60 Minutes transcripts.


1 Feb 02: In a remarkable show of global solidarity more than 90 scientists from 17 countries have signed a letter to Australian Prime Minister John Howard, calling for a major Australian contribution to Spaceguard - the international effort to detect asteroids that might collide with the Earth. The signatories to the letter come from Australia, Canary Islands, Croatia, Czech Republic, Denmark, Germany, Greece, Israel, Italy, Poland, Romania, Russia, Spain, Sweden, Ukraine, United Kingdom and  United States of America. They include leading asteroid researchers such as David Levy and Caroline Shoemaker - famous for discovering Comet Shoemaker Levy 9 that collided with Jupiter in 1994. The letter was organised by Jay Tate from the Spaceguard Centre in the UK and Dr Benny Peiser from Liverpool John Moores University, UK. Michael Paine from the Planetary Society Australian Volunteers assisted them. A PDF copy of the letter and press release can be viewed at http://www4.tpg.com.au/users/tps-seti/pr_oz_sg.pdf.
Updates: Space.com World's Asteroid Hunters Make Political Plea to Save Earth. Recipient list added to PDF document. 5 Feb 02 Canberra Times: Australia fails world on asteroids: scientists.

Top of page

---

The Risk and Consequences of Asteroid/Comet Impact

The following table is based on data from the NEO weblinks and you are encouraged to follow those links for a more complete picture. There are some inconsistancies between these links due, in part, to a lack of observational information (which would be corrected by a full Spaceguard survey). Therefore the table is very approximate but it will give some idea of the threat posed by asteroid and comet impacts.

Very approx size of object *	Equiv. Megatons of TNT ("Bravo" H bomb=15Mt)	Odds in 50 years #	Consequences @
10 metres	20 kilotons	Annual	"Fireballs" burn up in atmosphere. Local hazard from debris and shockwaves. Possible trigger for nuclear warning systems. Smaller objects in much greater numbers pose a threat to spacecraft
100m	75 megatons	Earth:1 in 20  Inhabit:1 in 160	Meteor crater, Wolfe Crater, Tunguska. Local direct destruction (eg 50km radius).  Around 1 million fatalities.
500m	10,000	Earth:1 in 800  Inhabit:1 in 3,600	Regional destruction. Short-term global climate (and economic) effects. Tsunami (tidal waves) devastate coastal areas. Around 35 million fatalities.
1km	100,000	Earth:1 in 2,000  Inhabit:1 in 6,000	Medium-term global climate effects. Around 63 million fatalities.
2 km	1 million	Earth:  1 in 20,000  Inhabit:  1 in 30,000	Global catastrophe threshold. Severe long-term climate effects. Collapse of agriculture. Around 1500 million fatalities.
10km	100million	Earth:1 in 2 million  Inhabit:same!	K-T impact. Mass extinction (eg dinosaurs)

Notes:

# 50 years chosen because (a) it represents a typical adult human lifespan in the developed world and (b) it is about two human generations (our grandchildren will reach our current age in 50 years time). There is considerable uncertainty about the number of NEOs and these estimates might vary by a factor of 10. The larger impacts may have periodic peaks making the risk at some parts of the "cycle" much greater (see Shiva Hypothesis). Also some events might be due to multiple impacts, such as the Jurassic/Cretaceous boundary which corresponds to the age (142My) of at least three large craters on Earth.
* "Size" is the approximate diameter of a rock asteroid. Meteor Crater was probably caused by an iron-nickel meteorite about 50m in diameter but its destruction was equivalent to a 100m rock asteroid because it did not break up in the atmosphere. By convention, an object under 10m in diameter is called a meteoroid. Impact energy depends very much on the speed of impact which can range from 11km/s to 70km/s.
@ Estimated fatalities are based on the object striking an inhabited region of the Earth. They include indirect effects such as crop failures leading to starvation. For more details see estimates of the risk to inhabited regions of Earth. See also frequency of fatal events analysis from an impact simulation - the annual risk of a one million+ fatality event is about 1 in 5500.


These values are based on the estimated NEO population. Care should be taken when comparing the "odds in 50 years" with actual evidence of impacts with the Earth. See Poisson Distributions.

Update 25 Nov 04 Icarus (abstract): Bias-corrected population, size distribution, and impact hazard for the near-Earth objects - Globally destructive collisions (~1021 J) of asteroids 1 km or larger strike the Earth once every 0.60±0.1 Myr on average. Regionally destructive collisions with impact energy greater than 4×1018 J (~200 m diameter) strike the Earth every 56,000±6000 yr. Collisions in the range of the Tunguska event (4-8×1016 J) occur every 2000-3000 yr. This latest analysis suggests that the odds shown in the above table improve by about 5 times for 1km objects and less.


Another way of looking at the risk posed by asteroid/comet impact is to compare the chances of dying from selected causes. This table is based mostly on a paper by Clark Chapman and David Morrison and is for residents of the USA:

Cause of death	Chances
Motor vehicle accident	1 in 100
Homicide	1 in 300
Melanoma (a skin cancer*)	1 in 300
Fire	1 in 800
Firearms accident	1 in 2,500
Electrocution	1 in 5,000
Asteroid/comet impact	1 in 20,000#
Passenger aircraft crash	1 in 20,000
Flood	1 in 30,000
Tornado	1 in 60,000
Venomous bite or sting	1 in 100,000
Food poisioning by botulism	1 in 3 million

* Based on 7,700 melanoma deaths per year in the US. This medical cause of death was not covered by Chapman and Morrison. It is included here because, like NEO detection, it is an example of low-cost early detection reducing death rates. See Scientific American, Sept 2000 'Data Points'.
# Update Feb07: Despite its limitations, the Spaceguard Program has mostly eliminated a SHORT-TERM threat from a large NEO impact (the un-surveyed proportion of large NEOs has gone from 100% to about 10%). Recent estimates put the current risk at 1 in 200,000. The LONG-TERM risk (over centuries) remains at about 1 in 20,000 due to the number of large NEOs out there.


In other words, a US resident is 200 times more likely to die in car crash than from a NEO impact and 5 times more likely to die from a NEO impact than a venemous bite or sting.

Note that although an asteroid/comet impact is a very rare event, the number of people likely to be killed is greatly in excess of the other causes in the table. Compare the national US expenditure on "prevention" for all of these causes and it is evident that asteroid/comet detection is grossly under-funded.

For people living in low-lying coastal areas on the shoreline of deep oceans the risk could be several times greater due to the extra risk of tsunami.

.

Relative size of a 1 kilometre asteroid and the Sydney Harbour Bridge.

_{Note: I have cheated with this picture - it is actually asteroid Ida which is 50km across - you will have to imagine it is only 1km (in fact the small dot to the right is a 1km companion asteroid "Dactyl"). Thank you to Dr. Christian Gritzner from EUROSPACE GmbH for pointing this out!}

Top of page

A Rough Guide to Impact Frequency for Anthropologists, Palaeontologists and Geologists

If you are working in a field of science that studies past events then you need to take the possibility of cosmic impacts into consideration. Here is a quick and rough guide to the expected frequency of impact-related events:
 
• 1000s of years - airbursts similar to large nuclear explosions causing local devastation (e.g. Tunguska)
• 10s of 1000s of years - impacts of sufficient size to cause regional devastation and "years without summer" around the world. Disruption of agriculture.
• 100s of 1000s of years - ocean impacts causing devastating tsunami for low-lying coastal areas, land impacts causing global cooling for weeks. Devastation of agriculture. Regional extinctions.
• Millions of years - ocean and land impacts causing global darkness for weeks, freezing conditions for months, major disruption of food chains. Some global extinctions
• 100s of millions of years - catastrophic impacts causing mass extinctions, lava eruptions?, initiation of tectonic plate movement? Major global extinctions.
• Billions of years - sterilizing impacts that boil away the oceans. Major geological disruption. Seas of lava formed.

---

FAQs

• Has anyone ever been killed by a meteorite?  See John Lewis's book "Comet and asteroid impact hazard on a populated Earth" for a discussion of this subject and a very long list of incidents. It is likely that 10,000 people were killed in the Chinese city of Chi'ing-yang  when "stones fell like rain". There are several reports of people being injured by meteorites. John Lewis sums up: "No one has ever been killed by a meteorite in the presence of a meteoritist and a medical doctor!"
• What are the environmental consequences of asteroid impacts?
• What are the risks of major impacts with the Earth and possible death tolls?
• Where are all the craters? Most fatal events do not leave a crater - they result from an ocean impact (with many of the fatalities due to tsunami) or Tunguska-like fragmentation over land. The proportion of fatal events that involve a crater on land gradually increases from less than 1% for events with around 100 fatalities to 16% for events with around 1 million fatalities (see simulation results).
• Are places like Sydney at greater risk due to the danger of tsunami generated by impacts? Yes - several times greater than inland locations.
• Can anything be done if an asteroid if found to be on a collision course with Earth? Yes- we have the technology to nudge a rogue asteroids into a harmless orbit but only if there is early warning - the purpose of  Spaceguard.
• Have international experts confirmed there is a threat from asteorids? Yes - including
• UK NEO Task Force Report
• AIAA report pointing out the need for a Spaceguard telescope in the soutern hemisphere (pdf)
• What can I do? It is important that politicians are aware of community concerns about the asteroid issue. If you agree that Australia needs a Spaceguard program please tell your local member of federal parliament. There is no official organisation within Australia that is able to get a major search program underway at this stage. For example, this web page is prepared on a voluntary part-time basis.

---

NEO Web Links has moved (getting too large for this page!)

Top of page

---

The worldwide Spaceguard program should be able to detect several thousand "candidate" asteroids/comets over a fifteen year period for less than US$10 million per year. Compared with worldwide defence expenditure, and space exploration budgets, this is very cheap "insurance" for mankind!

Media Contacts

Since there is no Australian Spaceguard Survey at present general media inquiries in Australia should be directed to research organisations such as the Anglo-Australian Observatory (phone Sydney 02 93724800) or Mt Stromlo(Canberra 02 6249 0230) or the links at ASTRONOMICAL SOCIETY OF AUSTRALIA. We will, however, try and answer email enquiries about matters covered on this web site.


Update May 2013: Astronomer and author Duncan Steel now has a website.

---

Prepared by Michael Paine (home page) : email.
His views - not necessarily those of people involved in the Spaceguard Survey or

The Planetary Society Australian Volunteer Co-ordinators or the Planetary Society
Started in 1997 (when web page names were limited to 8 letters). For last update see News