A small but important discovery was made on the night of March 24, 1993. That night, a photo of the stars was taken by the 0.4 meter telescope on Mt. Palomar in California. Eugene and Carolyn Shoemaker and David Levy studied that photo of the stars and found an unknown comet. That comet caused a huge impact.
In July 1992 that comet fractured into several pieces up to 2 kilometers. The largest pieces were all large enough to create a huge impact.
Photos by the McDonald Observatory in Texas 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, Tesfli piercer, Greysor, Nudj or Wampa. But rather, NEA’s are asteroids, comets and meteoroids that have orbits close enough to theoretically hit earth.
This type of astronomical collision is not new. In fact on earth, there are many craters that prove that astronomical collisions have happened. Consider these: Amguid Crater in Algeria which is 0.45 km wide; Bigach crater in Kazakhstan which is 8 km wide; Arkenu 1 Crater in Libya which is 6.8 km wide; Shunak crater in Kazakhstan which is 2.8 km wide.
Over 200 asteroids like Icarusand Heracles 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.