Asteroid Apophis: Dealing with Earth's Future Troublemaker

BOULDER, Colorado - The potential for a newly discovered asteroid smacking into the Earth in 2036 cannot be discounted. NASA has sketched out a response strategy in the outside possibility that the space rock becomes a true threat.


NASA's action plan was the result of prodding by a group of astronauts, scientists and other technical specialists uneasy about the current lack of action to protect the Earth from the impact of near Earth objects (NEOs).

The object was found last year through the efforts of NASA's Spaceguard Survey. In 1998 NASA formally initiated the Spaceguard Survey by adopting the objective of finding 90 percent of the near Earth asteroids larger than 3,280 feet (one kilometer) diameter within the next decade - before the end of 2008.

Asteroid 99942 Apophis - first labeled as 2004 MN4 -- is estimated to be roughly 1,000 feet (320 meters) in diameter. Were it to strike Earth, it would not set off global havoc but would generate significant local or regional damage, experts say.

Worrisome to asteroid watchers is the exceptionally close flyby of Earth by Apophis on April 13, 2029. So close in fact, the space rock will be naked-eye visible as it darts by. And what can't be ruled out at this time is that Apophis may pass through a gravitational "keyhole" - a spot that alters the asteroid's trajectory as it zips by our planet and might put it on the bee-line lane for banging into Earth seven years later.

Issue of critical importance

Concern over asteroid Apophis and the ability to precisely chart its trajectory -- and take steps if needed to deflect the object -- were fervently voiced by the B612 Foundation, chaired by Russell Schweickart, a former Apollo astronaut.

The group requested that NASA carry out an analysis that included the possibility of placing an active radio transponder on the object. Doing so at a fairly early date would yield the requisite orbital accuracy of the asteroid as it sped through space.

In a June 6 letter to NASA Administrator, Michael Griffin, Schweickart on behalf of the B612 Foundation called for support in "resolving an issue of critical importance" - namely whether a scientific mission should be launched to asteroid Apophis in the near term.

Such a probe, if dispatched, Schweickart stated, would provide knowledge of the asteroid's orbit in time to initiate a deflection mission in the unlikely event one should be required. The position of the B612 Foundation was that the mission should be staged, pointing out that NASA's NEO program personnel apparently did not concur with that view. A spacecraft mission to Apophis would augment tracking of the object from the ground, the letter to Griffin explained, and also carry out a number of scientific duties too.

NASA response

NASA provided a formal response to the B612 Foundation's June communique via an October 12 letter from Mary Cleave, Associate Administrator for Science Mission Directorate.

That NASA reply came with an appended detailed analysis by Steven Chesley of NASA'S NEO Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, California. The study by Chesley dug into Apophis' orbit, under varying conditions, and contained other items pertaining to the space agency's findings about the Apophis matter.

"The key conclusion to be taken from this analysis," Cleave explained in the letter, "is that aggressive (i.e., more expensive) action can reasonably be delayed until after the 2013 observing opportunity. For Apophis, the 16 years available after 2013 are sufficient to recognize and respond to any hazard that still exists after that time."

Cleave noted in the letter that while Apophis "is an object whose motion we will continue to monitor closely in the coming years, we conclude a space mission to this object based solely on any perceived collision hazard is not warranted at this time."

Not ruled out by Cleave, however, is the prospect of Discovery-class, low-cost missions sent to Apophis, "based on purely scientific arguments," she said.

"Indeed, the asteroid's orbit is particularly attractive for spacecraft rendezvous, and the extraordinary close encounter in April 2029 provides a unique opportunity to investigate a number of scientific NEO issues," Cleave explained in the letter.

Pinpointing the object's whereabouts

While Schweickart said that the NASA response to the B612 Foundation's concern is a step forward, there are other issues still to be resolved.

One matter involves radar tracking of Apophis.

On one hand, radar plays a crucial role in being able to rationally determine the future likelihood of a NEO impact and potentially in planning for a deflection mission when required.

Yet the availability of NEO radar tracking, and the budgets to support this work in the future is highly uncertain, even precarious, Schweickart and the B612 Foundation emphasize. Radar hits of Apophis at each opportunity through 2021 are important to keep watch of the object's whereabouts.

"Tracking these asteroids once you know they exist and pinning down their orbits is really not science," Schweickart told SPACE.com. "This is public safety. It's disaster preparedness."

Begging time and bumming bucks

When Apophis swings by Earth, Schweickart said the asteroid will likely change its orbit. Also, its spin characteristics may be altered. Due to Earth's gravity tugging on the object, "asteroid quakes" could reshape Apophis, he said.

Moreover, still far from resolution is a "who's in charge" proclamation about troublemaking NEOs, Schweickart said.

"It would be great if we had NASA doing this as a regular process. Unfortunately, the mindset that's essentially required by their budget is to think about discovery, not to think about the potential need for deflection," Schweickart added. "Until your mindset is oriented that way, you're going to miss things."

Until an agency is identified that is responsible for all of this, Schweickart cautioned, everybody is "begging time and bumming bucks" from some other program. "This whole thing is sort of in a precarious position until somebody gets around to assigning agency responsibility," he said.

Japan's Hayabusa Asteroid

Regarding the skill required to deposit a transponder on Apophis, Schweickart saluted Japan's Hayabusa asteroid sample-return mission, now in progress.

That craft is scheduled to make two landings on its target asteroid - Itokawa -- later this month. The mission is geared to haul back samples of the object to Earth.

Scientists at Japan's Institute of Space and Astronautical Science (ISAS) are working day-by-day issues in readying the probe for contact with the asteroid, including release of a mini-robot onto Itokawa that will move about and survey its rocky surroundings. ISAS is a research arm of the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA).

"It's an impressive mission," Schweickart said, sure to yield operational experience and lessons learned on how best to execute duties on asteroid Apophis.

Global preparedness

The ruin stemming from asteroid Apophis colliding with Earth would potentially be very great.

Indeed, the consequences, Schweickart suggested, would dwarf those seen as a result of the Indian Ocean tsunami in December 2004, hurricanes Katrina and Rita in September of this year, and the Pakistan earthquake last month.

In regards to global preparedness in handling these unusually devastating events of late, "it's basically out of sight...out of mind," Schweickart said. "That's the real challenge for society. The things that you don't know about are one thing. But the things that you do know about, and don't do something about...those are the ones that are really tough."

Refine the impact probability

Fully concurring with NASA's response is Alan Harris, a senior research scientist and asteroid expert for the Space Science Institute headquartered here.

Harris noted, as has been underscored by the B612 Foundation, that if Apophis is indeed on an impact trajectory, then ground-based radar observations will not be able to refine the impact probability to greater than 20 percent. "That is, we would still not know better than one-chance-in-five whether the impact would really occur or not," he told SPACE.com.

"We really would need a transponder to improve tracking enough to firmly establish that an impact would occur," Harris said.

What has been overlooked, or at best under-emphasized, Harris added, is a point raised in the NASA response. Ground-only tracking has a 99.8 percent chance of eliminating any chance at all of an impact. Thus, there is only one-chance-in-500 that ground-based tracking will fail to resolve the issue in favor of no impact. "For this reason I think the NASA conclusion is entirely sensible," he said.

Wait and see strategy

Harris said that there are Apophis observing opportunities every 6-8 years, with each one having about a 90 percent chance of eliminating any possible impact. At each of these "shoulder" times, he said, one can re-evaluate the "wait and see" strategy if the impact possibility does not go away.

"Certainly it seems appropriate to play the 'wait and see' game until after the 2013 observing opportunity," Harris stated. None of this diminishes the opening that Apophis presents for purely scientific investigations, which could incidentally contribute to the NEO hazard issue, he said.

Harris said that he would not recommend a "deep impact" type of scientific mission, "lest we have the misfortune to deflect it into a keyhole, but other than that, Apophis is a very attractive mission target."

A coming of age

Asteroid Apophis, and the discussions it has sparked are welcomed, observed David Morrison, a space scientist and asteroid specialist at NASA's Ames Research Center, situated in Silicon Valley, California.

"I am pleased that this dialog is taking place," Morrison said. "This is the first time that serious possibilities for dealing with a real but low-probability future impact have been discussed in a technically professional way, rather than receiving the 'Hollywood treatment'".

Morrison said that he considers it remarkable that the Spaceguard Survey has reached the
level of maturity where such an asteroid could not only be found, but its orbit understood well enough to deal with "keyholes" and other subtleties. "Apophis represents for me a symbol of the coming of age of Spaceguard and of asteroid impact studies in general," he said.


The possibility of Apophis hitting Earth on April 13, 2036 is real, Morrison said, even if the probabilities now seem to be very small. "These probabilities represent uncertainties in our knowledge of the orbit, not a failure of the science."

But whether the asteroid will strike Earth or not, Morrison concluded, the challenge is to resolve which case is correct. "With more observations over a longer time span, we will be able to tie this down."

Russia to charge 10 over Politkovskaya murder

The group suspected of killing the Russian journalist Anna Politkovskaya was led by an ethnic Chechen organised crime boss, Russian authorities said today.

Yuri Chaika, the prosecutor general, also told a press conference that the killers included serving government officers.

"The group was headed by a leader of a Moscow criminal group of Chechen origin," Mr Chaika said. "We have evidence that this group took part in the killing of [the US journalist] Paul Klebnikov ... Unfortunately, this group included retired and acting interior ministry and FSB (Federal Security Service) officers."

Article continues
Mr Klebnikov edited the Russian edition of the financial magazine Forbes. The 41-year-old was shot dead in July 2004 near his office in Moscow.

Earlier, prosecutors said they had arrested 10 people and would soon charge them in connection with the killing of Politkovskaya.

"We have made serious progress in the Politkovskaya murder investigation," the prosecutor general, Yuri Chaika, was quoted by the Itar-Tass news agency as saying.

"Ten people have been arrested in connection with this case and literally, in the very near future, they will be charged with carrying out this grave crime," he said.

The prosecutor told Vladimir Putin about the arrests during a meeting at the president's dacha just outside Moscow.

Politkovskaya's murder in October last year drew widespread international condemnation and prompted concern about press freedoms and the treatment of government opponents in Russia. She was a particularly fierce critic of human rights abuses in the Chechnya war.

Her last incomplete article, published last October, contained allegations of torture by pro-Russian Chechen security forces. Her newspaper, Noveya Gazeta, carried eyewitness accounts and photos of people with injuries said to have been sustained under torture.

Politkovskaya's colleagues from Noveya Gazeta cautiously welcomed the 10 arrests. Vyacheslav Izmailov, a friend and columnist on the paper, said few details of the arrests had been made public.

But he confirmed that the trail appeared to lead to Chechnya. "It's a very complicated case because it involves both those who ordered the murder and those who carried it out. There are Chechens (among those arrested). But not only Chechens," he told the Guardian.

Asked whether those arrested had definitely carried out her killing last October, he replied: "I don't know."

Dmitry Muratov, Noveya Gazeta's editor in chief, said the paper had been satisfied with the level of cooperation from Russian authorities since the murder last year. Asked about the arrests, he said: "I think this is serious. But I can't say more at the moment."

The suspects were arrested between August 15 and 23, he said. "There is no more information we can give at the moment, other to say that people have been arrested and that they include people from different nationalities. Right now they are under active investigation."

Mr Putin has said everything possible would be done to find and punish the killers of Politkovskaya, who was 48 when she was shot dead in the stairwell of her Moscow apartment.

For the first time, Britons' personal debt exceeds Britain's GDP

Britons have racked up so much debt on loans and credit cards that the total borrowed now exceeds the entire value of the economy, new research shows today. The financial consultant Grant Thornton is forecasting that gross domestic product (GDP) will hit £1.33 trillion this year, less than the £1.35trn which was outstanding on mortgages, credit cards and personal loans in June.

The symbolic overtaking is the first time that the country's 60 million people owe more to the banks than the value of everything made by every office and factory in the country. It prompted a warning that personal borrowing was so out of control that many more people would be pushed over the "financial edge". The runaway housing market is the biggest reason why consumer debt has spiralled, totalling £1.131trn. Debt on personal loans and credit cards totals £214bn. Overall, individuals owe the staggering sum of £1,344,721,000,000.


In the United States, the sudden failure of the poor to repay home loans in recent months has sparked a "sub-prime" crisis that has spooked the financial markets and wiped billions of pounds off share prices.

Buster - The Rare White Bengali Tiger

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Blackwater : Shadow Army

IS THE FINAL SOLUTION JUST ABOUT TO REAR IT'S UGLY HEAD AGAIN?

Not one for conjecture - I will try and summarise the important bits from the information I have collated from the last 3 posts and other information I have included in previous posts in this blog...


THE ORIGINS OF THE CIA
Helms went on to work closely with General Reinhard Gehlen, the notorious Nazi spymaster who was hired by US intelligence to set up an organization within the CIA. The Gehlen Org recruited thousands of Nazi agents to run covert operations in Eastern Europe after the war. Gehlen is, of course, not mentioned in any of recent news reports on Helms. Neither is the fact that the OSS (the US agency that preceded the CIA) had a lot in common with the SS. To both, the biggest evil in the word was summed up in one word, communism. And to both, the elimination of communists, labour activists and other undesirable elements that got in the way of corporatism was their chief preoccupation.


George Bush: The Unauthorized Biography -
by Webster G. Tarpley & Anton Chaitkin

Chapter 16- CIA DIRECTORR

In late 1975, as a result in particular of his role in Watergate, Bush's confirmation as CIA Director was not automatic. And though the debate at his confirmation was superficial, some senators, including in particular the late Frank Church of Idaho, made some observations about the dangers inherent in the Bush nomination that have turned out in retrospect to be useful.




PRESCOTT BUSH (G Bsh Jnrs. Grandfather)

was the main Wall Street connection for German companies and the varied U.S. financial interests of Fritz Thyssen, who had been an early financial backer of the Nazi party until 1938, but who by 1939 had fled Germany and was bitterly denouncing Hitler. Business transactions for profit with Nazi Germany were not illegal when Hitler declared war on the United States (December 11, 1941), but, six days after the attack on Pearl Harbor, President Franklin Delano Roosevelt signed the Trading With the Enemy Act after it had been made public that U.S. companies were doing business with the declared enemy of the United States. On October 20, 1942, the U.S. government ordered the seizure of Nazi German banking operations in New York City. President Franklin Roosevelt's Alien Property Custodian, Leo T. Crowley, signed Vesting Order Number 248 seizing the property of Prescott Bush under the Trading with the Enemy Act. The order, published in obscure government record books and kept out of the news, cited only the Union Banking Corporation (UBC) connections with Von Thyssen. Fox News has reported that recently declassified material "The 4,000 Union Banking shares owned by the Dutch bank were registered in the names of the seven U.S. directors, according a document signed by Homer Jones, chief of the division of investigation and research of the Office of Alien Property Custodian, a World War II-era agency that no longer exists"[2].

* E. Roland Harriman--3991 shares (managed and under voting control of Prescott Bush)
* Cornelis Lievense--4 shares (He was the New York banker of the German Nazi Party)
* Harold D. Pennington--1 share (Employed by Prescott Bush at Brown Brothers Harriman)
* Ray Morris--1 share (a business partner of the Bush and Harriman families)
* Prescott S. Bush--1 share (director of UBC, which was co-founded and sponsored by his father-in-law George Walker; senior managing partner for E. Roland Harriman and Averell Harriman)
* H.J. Kouwenhoven--1 share (organized UBC for Von Thyssen, managed UBC in Nazi occupied Netherlands)
* Johann G. Groeninger--1 share (German Industrial Executive, a not unimportant member of the Nazi party)

The Harriman business interests seized under the act in October and November 1942 included:

* Union Banking Corporation (UBC) (for Thyssen and Brown Brothers Harriman). The President of UBC at that time was George Herbert Walker, Prescott Bush's father-in-law. He is the grandfather and great-grandfather of the former and current Presidents Bush.
* Holland-American Trading Corporation (with Harriman)
* the Seamless Steel Equipment Corporation (with Harriman)
* Silesian-American Corporation (this company was partially owned by a German entity; during the war the Germans tried to take full control of Silesian-American. In response to that, the American government seized German owned minority shares in the company, leaving the U.S. partners to carry on the business.)

The assets were held by the government for the duration of the war, then returned afterward. UBC was dissolved in 1951. Prescott Bush was on the board of directors of UBC and held one share in the company. For it, he was reimbursed $1,500,000. These assets were later used to launch Bush family investments in the Texas energy industry.

Toby Rogers has claimed that Bush's connections to Silesian businesses (with Thyssen and Flick) make him complicit with the mining operations in Poland which used slave labor out of Auschwitz, where the Auschwitz concentration camp was later constructed.

The New York Herald-Tribune referred to the German industrialist, Fritz Thyssen, as "Hitler's Angel" and mentioned Bush as an employee of the investment banking firm Thyssen used in the USA. The underlying importance is Hitler's known ideology; intelligent business partners like Bush and Thyssen and Harriman clearly knew who they were doing business with and were willing to do so. Some records in the National Archives, including the Harriman papers, document the continued relationship of Brown Brothers Harriman with Thyssen and some of his German investments up until his 1951 death.[4] Investigator John Loftus has said, "As a former federal prosecutor, I would make a case for Prescott Bush, his father-in-law (George Walker) and Averell Harriman [to be prosecuted] for giving aid and comfort to the enemy. They remained on the boards of these companies knowing that they were of financial benefit to the nation of Germany." Two former slave laborers from Poland have filed suit in London against the government of the United States and the heirs of Prescott Bush in the amount of $40 billion. A class-action lawsuit filed in the U.S. in 2001 was dismissed based on the principle of state sovereignty.[5]

(For more information on the Bush family and the arms industry, see Samuel P. Bush.)


IRAN's NUCLEAR MISSILES (the ones it hasnt got?)

# The Jerusalem Post reported on April 9, 1998 that Iran had purchased four tactical nuclear weapons from Russian smugglers for $25 million in the early 1990s, that the weapons had been obtained from Kazakhstan in 1991, and that Argentine technicians were helping to activate the weapon.

* It quoted what it claimed was an Iranian report, dated December 26, 1991, of a meeting between Brigadier General Rahim Safavi, the Deputy Commander of the Revolutionary Guards and Reza Amrohalli, then head of the Iranian atomic energy organization.
* It also quoted a second document -- dated January 2, 1992 --- saying the Iranians were awaiting the arrival of Russian technicians to show them how to disarm the protection systems that would otherwise inactivate the weapons if anyone attempted to use them.
* The documents implied the weapons were flawed by did not indicate whether Iran had succeeded in activating them.
* The US intelligence community denied any evidence that such a transfer had taken place.



After Iraq, Bush Will Attack His Real Target - IRAN

EW YORK -- President George Bush wrapped himself in the American flag and won a major victory last week as U.S. voters gave control of both houses of Congress to the Republican party. In mid-term elections, the party in power almost always fares badly, but this year an electorate, gripped by fear of terrorism, and whipped into war fever by high-voltage propaganda, voted Republican. Thank you Osama and Saddam.


But for all the propaganda about wicked Saddam, Iraq is not the main objective for the small but powerful coterie of Pentagon hardliners driving the Bush administration's national security policy. Nor is it for their intellectual and emotional peers in Israel's right-wing Likud party. The real target of the coming war is Iran, which Israel views as its principal and most dangerous enemy. Iraq merely serves as a pretext to whip America into a war frenzy and to justify insertion of large numbers of U.S. troops into Mesopotamia.

The Final Solution

The Final Solution to the Jewish Question (German: Die Endlösung der Judenfrage) refers to the German Nazis' plan to engage in systematic genocide against the European Jewish population during World War II. The term was coined by Adolf Eichmann, a top Nazi official who supervised the genocidal campaign and was captured, tried and executed by Israeli authorities in 1961–1962. The implementation of the Final Solution resulted in the most deadly phase of the Holocaust. The expression reflects the belief that the Jewish European population itself posed a "question" and a problem.

Mass killings of over 1 million Jews occurred before the plans of the Final Solution were fully implemented in 1942, but it was only with the decision to eradicate the entire Jewish population that the extermination camps were built and industrialized mass slaughter of Jews began in earnest. This decision to systematically kill the Jews of Europe was made by the time of, or at the Wannsee conference, which took place in Berlin, in the Wannsee Villa on January 20, 1942. During the conference, there was a discussion held by a group of German Nazi officials to decide on the "Final Solution of the Jewish Question". The records and minutes of this meeting were found intact by the Allies at the end of the war and served as valuable evidence during the Nuremberg Trials. By spring of 1942, Operation Reinhard began the systematic extermination of the Jews, although hundreds of thousands already had been killed by death squads and in mass pogroms. In Heinrich Himmler's speech at the Posen Conference of October 6, 1943, Himmler, for the first time, clearly elucidated to all assembled leaders of the Reich, in frank and brutal terms, what the "Final Solution" actually referred to.
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