Martian impact now unlikely
January 12th 2008 10:27
Chance of a Martian impact now slim
As I mentioned in one of my previous blog [See link] regarding the possible impact on Mars from a 1 km asteroid, 2007 WD5, which at one time had a fairly high 1 in 25 chance of hitting Mars.
Since then, numerous tracking measurements of asteroid 2007 WD5 obtained from different observatories around the world have lowered the odds significantly. The revised data has led to a significant alteration in the position the asteroid will take on its close approach to Mars on Jan. 30, 2008. As a result, the impact probability has dropped dramatically, to approximately 1 in 10,000, effectively ruling out the possible collision with Mars.
The current estimate now is that 2007 WD5 will pass within 26,000 km from the planet's center at around 12:00 UTC (4:00 am PST) on Jan. 30th. With 99.7% certainty, the pass should be no closer than 4000 km from the surface.
NASA's Spaceguard Survey continues searching for Near-Earth Asteroids such as 2007 WD5, endeavoring to discover 90% of those larger than 1 km in size, a goal that should be met within the next few years. Each discovered asteroid is continually monitored for the possibility of an impact. For 2007 WD5, these analyses show there is no possibility of impact with either Mars or Earth in the next century.
At least not from asteroid 2007 WD5 however the possibility of Earth or Mars being struck with meteors much smaller than asteroids say objects around 6 meters ( perhaps sometime this year) will quite likely result in fragmentation caused by the Earth’s atmosphere resulting in a fireball the odd of this occurring is significantly lower than 1 in 4,000.
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Comment by James Rickard
unlucky_ fishermen.com
Angling Fish
I'm glad to see you referring back to a previous post! I do that a lot but I worry that people will think I'm full of myself. it's far easier (better?) to do that than to bore people with a bunch of stuff they may have already read AND it keeps your current post at a reasonable length!
Comment by CarlCan
Astroearth
I am an avid Scifi fan. I am just lazy and really don't like writing things twice if I can help it LOL
Cheers