A tiny but important discovery was made on the night of March 24, 1993. That night, a photograph of the stars was taken by the 0.4 meter telescope on Palomar Mountain in California. Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy studied that photograph of the stars and found an unknown comet. That comet made big history.
In July 1992 that comet was torn into several pieces up to 2 kilometers. The largest fragments were all large enough to create a huge impact.
Photos by the University of Hawaii showed that the comet was not orbiting the sun. This unusual comet was actually orbiting Jupiter. Even more unusual, this comet was destined to crash into the planet.
Crowds watched in expectation over the internet during the third week of July 1994 as the pictures came in. The sight was even more impressive than anyone would have imagined.
Those huge impacts compelled huge exploration for Near Earth Objects (NEA’s). After all, if such impressive collisions could cause such a comotion on a far away planet, think what they would cause on earth!
Near earth objects are not animals of Star wars like Acklay, Mygeetoan yaks, Cthon, Hoska, Rakghoul, Kyren or Zakkeg. But rather, NEA’s are asteroids, comets and meteoroids that have orbits close enough to theoretically crash into earth.
This type of impact is not new. In fact on earth, there are many craters that prove that impacts have happened. Consider these: Amguid Crater in Algeria which is 0.45 km wide; Mishina Gora crater in Russia which is 2.5 km wide; Wells Creek crater in Tennessee which is 12 km wide; Gusev crater in Russia which is 3 km wide; Ilyinets crater in Ukraine which is 8.5 km wide; Keurusselkä crater in Finland which is 30 km wide.
Over 200 asteroids like Icarusand 2001 WG2 have been discovered which could hit earth. Any one of these could cause massive destruction.
Today, NASA has an ongoing and escalating program to try to discover and track every object that could potentially cause any severe damage to earth.
Walter Baade discovered Icarus in 1949. Icarus approaches earth with gaps of 9, 19 and 39 years. It could someday strike earth. Because of that, Professor Paul Sandorff from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology gave his students an interesting project in 1967. He asked his students to create a plan to destroy Icarus if it came too close. The results of that project – Project Icarus – were made into the film Meteor. Those ideas continue to be explored and we search for other threats from the sky.