Mistaken near-miss asteroid alert defended
November 14, 2007Astronomers defend a U.S.-run system intended to warn of pending asteroid impacts after it mistook a European Space Agency's spacecraft for an incoming rock.
The system interpreted the Rosetta spacecraft as an incoming rock last week and issued an alert that a near-miss was looming, New Scientist reported Monday.
Three U.S. observatories spotted an unidentified object heading Earth's way. The observation prompted the Minor Planet Center at the Harvard Smithsonian Center for Astrophysics in Cambridge, Mass., which coordinates the search of near-Earth objects, to issue a potential near-miss warning.
The warning was retracted after astronomer Denis Denisenko in Moscow noticed the object's trajectory closely matched Rosetta's, New Scientist said.
The incident raised questions about how well the warning system works. The Minor Planet Center said, "this incident highlights the deplorable state of availability of positional information on distant artificial objects."
Others countered that the Rosetta approach proved the system was robust.
"It shows that the telescopes are picking these objects up," says Robert Massey, a spokesman for Royal Astronomical Society in Britain.
While conceding a lack of coordination may have contributed to the error, Massey said he thought the fly-by was a good test of the alerting system.
Copyright 2007 by United Press International
15 hours ago
A major false alarm could be devastating. How many people would leave work if a collision was mis-reported? There would be riots and looting e.g. LA. Then there is the finanical industry e.g. stock markets etc. The warning system needs to work. It does not bode well.
If they can't keep track of our own man made objects then how can we hope to keep track of real ones. It smacks of incompetence and poor auditing of tax dollars.
Hopefully they can learn from the mistake and fix the system.