Russian scientists will soon meet in secret to work on a plan for saving Earth from a possible catastrophic collision with a giant asteroid in 26 years, the head of Russia’s space agency announced.
“We will soon hold a closed meeting of our collegium, the science-technical council to look at what can be done to prevent the asteroid Apophis from slamming into the planet in 2036,” Anatoly Perminov told Voice of Russia radio.
“We are talking about people’s lives,” Perminov was quoted by news agencies as telling the radio station.
“Better spend a few hundred million dollars to create a system for preventing a collision than to wait until it happens and hundreds of thousands of people are killed,” he said.
The Apophis asteroid measures approximately 350m in diameter and RIA Novosti news agency said that if it were to hit Earth when it passes nearby in 2036 it would create a new desert the size of France.
Perminov said a serious plan to prevent such a catastrophe would probably be an international project involving Russian, European, US and Chinese space experts.
Interfax quoted him as saying that one option would be to build a new “space apparatus” designed solely for the purpose of safely diverting Apophis from a collision course with Earth.
“There won’t be any nuclear explosions,” Perminov said. “Everything will be done according to the laws of physics. We will examine all of this.”
In a statement dated from October and posted on its Web site, the US space agency NASA said new calculations on the path of Apophis indicated “a significantly reduced likelihood of a hazardous encounter with Earth in 2036.”
“Updated computational techniques and newly available data indicate the probability of an Earth encounter on April 13, 2036, for Apophis has dropped from one-in-45,000 to about four-in-a-million,” NASA said.
RIA Novosti said the asteroid was expected to pass within 30,000km of Earth in 2029 — closer than some geo-stationary satellites — and could shift course to hit Earth seven years after that.
(AFP)
俄羅斯太空總署署長宣告，俄國科學家短期內將秘密會晤，研討拯救地球的對策，以防止二十六年後可能發生的巨型小行星毀滅性撞擊。
阿納托里．佩米諾夫對俄羅斯之聲廣播電台說：「我們短期內將邀請科技委員會的成員參與一場閉門會議，商討該如何防止二Ｏ三六年小行星『阿波菲斯』撞上地球。」
其他新聞通訊社引述佩米諾夫在廣播中所言：「這是人命關天的事情。」
他說：「花費數億元建立一套防撞機制，總比坐以待斃讓無數民眾喪命來得好。」
阿波菲斯小行星直徑約三百五十公尺，而根據《俄新社》報導，如果二Ｏ三六年它經過地球附近時撞上地球，將會撞出一個等同法國大小的新沙漠。
佩米諾夫說，防止如此大災難，需要擬定一個嚴密周詳的計畫，而該計畫可能是集合俄羅斯、歐洲、美國和中國航太專家的跨國工程。
俄羅斯《電通社》引述他的話說，其中一項對策是打造一個新的「太空裝置」，專門用來偏轉阿波菲斯的軌跡，確保它不會撞上地球。
佩米諾夫說：「我們不會使用核爆解決。一切都將按照物理定律進行。我們會審慎思考一切。」
去年十月美國航太總署（NASA）公佈在其網站的一份聲明稿表示，根據新的阿波菲斯軌跡計算顯示，「它二Ｏ三六年撞上地球的危險性大幅下降」。
NASA指出：「最新的電腦計算技術及最近取得的資料顯示，阿波菲斯二Ｏ三六年四月十三日撞上地球的機率，已從四萬五千分之一降到二十五萬分之一。」
《俄新社》報導，這顆小行星將於二Ｏ二九年，從距離地球三萬公里之處掠過（比某些同步衛星距離地球更近），並可能在七年後改變軌道撞上地球。
（法新社╱翻譯：袁星塵）
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