How long would it take to get to the asteroid belt from Earth?
With current technology the journey to the asteroid belt would be greater than 18 months, suggesting that a crewed mission may be beyond our current technological capabilities.
Short answer: You can't really see it at all. Asteroids are so spread out that it just looks like the rest of space. Long answer: In science fiction, asteroid belts are often shown as areas of space densely packed with rocky asteroids like this... In reality, asteroids aren't anywhere near this close to each other.
Yes, you could go "over" or "under" the asteroid belt. However, plane changes are expensive, and as pointed out in the comments, the asteroid belt is not very dense (average distance of 600,000 miles [1 million kilometers] between objects) so there isn't much to avoid.
Answer and Explanation: The orbit of Mars is about 1.5 AU from the Sun on average, with the asteroid belt starting about 2 AU from the Sun. This means that the closest Mars gets to the asteroid belt is about 0.5 AU, or about the same distance on average between the Earth and Mars.
Calculations in recent years have proven the asteroid will safely glide past Earth in both 2029 and 2036. Thanks to additional observations of the near-Earth object (NEO), the risk of an impact in 2029 was later ruled out, as was the potential impact risk posed by another close approach in 2036.
The temperature of the asteroid belt varies with the distance from the Sun. For dust particles within the belt, typical temperatures range from 200 K (-73 °C) at 2.2 AU down to 165 K (-108 °C) at 3.2 AU.
Very easily, the asteroid belt is essentially empty space so there is nothing for them to crash into. The mean distance between objects is of the order of hundreds of thousands of miles. The asteroids in the asteroid belt are, in fact, much farther from each other then movies depict.
The first crossing of the asteroid belt took place in the early 1970s, when the Pioneer 10 and Pioneer 11 spacecraft journeyed to Jupiter and beyond.
The temperature of the “warm” belt was measured to be minus 190 degrees Fahrenheit, while the outer belt is minus 370 degrees, far colder than any place on Earth. In our solar system, the inner asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter is maintained by the gravity of the terrestrial planets and the giant planets.
All life forms would be killed, with the possible exception of extremophiles. The first solution is to settle on another planet and to achieve full autonomy before the impact. Small groups of humans may nevertheless survive in underground shelters.
How do spaceships avoid the asteroid belt?
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contains millions of asteroids, but a space probe has never had to worry about hitting into one on its way to the outer planets. The reason for this is because space is so big and so empty when it comes to macroscopic objects such as planets and asteroids.
The mission's one-way trip confirmed NASA can successfully navigate a spacecraft to intentionally collide with an asteroid to deflect it, a technique known as kinetic impact.
Past Missions:
The first spacecraft to make a journey through the asteroid belt was the Pioneer 10 spacecraft, which entered the region on July 16th, 1972 (a journey of 135 days).
The speed at which asteroids move depends on their distance to the Sun. The closer they are, the greater the speed. That said, even Earth-crossing asteroids, or NEOs, travel around 25 kilometers per second — yep, per second!
At this speed, how many days would it take to travel to the sun from Earth, located at a distance of 149 million kilometers? Answer: Time = Distance/speed so Time = 149,000,000 km/ 28,000 = 5321 hours or 222 days.
Ultimately, scientists estimate that an asteroid would have to be about 96 km (60 miles) wide to completely and utterly wipe out life on our planet.
The productivity of marine ecosystems in the North Atlantic took about 300,000 years to be restored. In the immediate area of the crater, however, life returned more quickly. Within the crater itself, marine organisms rebounded in less than 6 years.
Montage of our solar system. Asteroid 1997 XF11 will pass well beyond the Moon's distance from Earth in October 2028 with a zero probability of impacting the planet, according to astronomers at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, CA.
Previous estimates of the sulfur aerosols entering Earth's atmosphere after the asteroid impact range from about 30 to 500 gigatons; according to climate models, this sulfur would have turned into sulfate aerosols, which would have caused 3.6 to 14.4 degrees Fahrenheit (2 to 8 degrees Celsius) cooling of the Earth's ...
No asteroids have ever been observed to hit the Sun, but that doesn't mean that they don't! Asteroids are normally content to stay in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but occasionally something nudges them out of their original orbits, and they come careening into the inner solar system.
How long is a day in the asteroid belt?
In the asteroid belt, each asteroid would have its own period of rotation (and some rotations are quite erratic), which means that each asteroid would have its own length of day. One day on the dwarf planet Ceres is the equivalent of 9 hours on Earth.
What would it take to stop an asteroid? In order to stop an asteroid of this size in less than six months, the researchers think that we would have to use nuclear devices to "disassemble" the object. And this is apparently doable with less than 10 percent of the world's current nuclear arsenal.
Voyager 1 got through the asteroid belt by flying between the enormous gaps between asteroids. Asteroids are, in general, about 1 million km (600,000 mi) apart, making accidentally hitting one extremely unlikely, and making actually getting a satellite to an asteroid, any asteroid, a matter of precise calculations.
An artist's rendering of asteroids in the asteroid belt. Scientists just calculated that one of two metallic asteroids floating in Earth's vicinity may contain precious metals worth about $11.65 trillion.
Although no human is known to have been killed directly by an impact, over 1000 people were injured by the Chelyabinsk meteor airburst event over Russia in 2013. In 2005 it was estimated that the chance of a single person born today dying due to an impact is around 1 in 200,000.
What would happen if a 1-kilometer object struck Earth? It would cause widespread devastation and climate change. What do asteroids and comets have in common? Most are unchanged since their formation in the solar nebula.
Navigating Asteroid Belts
The chances of hitting one is actually less than 1 billion. The asteroid belt, which is located between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter, contains rocky objects that range in size from a speck of dust to 590 miles across.
Asteroids are leftovers from the formation of our solar system about 4.6 billion years ago. Early on, the birth of Jupiter prevented any planetary bodies from forming in the gap between Mars and Jupiter, causing the small objects that were there to collide with each other and fragment into the asteroids seen today.
Most of the asteroids in the Main Belt are made of rock and stone, but a small portion of them contain iron and nickel metals. The remaining asteroids are made up of a mix of these, along with carbon-rich materials. Some of the more distant asteroids tend to contain more ices.
Astronomers consider a near-Earth object a threat if it will come within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of the planet and is at least 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter. If a celestial body of this size crashed into Earth, it could destroy an entire city and cause extreme regional devastation.
Will an asteroid hit Earth 2022?
It has since been confirmed that 2022 AE1 will not impact Earth and has been removed from ESA's risk list. So, what's the story behind the excitement, and how can we trust this seemingly 'meandering' impact risk?
Scientists calculate that it was blasted into Earth by a 10-kilometer-wide asteroid or comet traveling 30 kilometers per second -- 150 times faster than a jet airliner. Scientists have concluded that the impact that created this crater occurred 65 million years ago.
The ocean could be affected by high tsunami and/or pressure waves in the case of a large asteroid or comet impact. Most current submarines can survive at a depth of 400 m, so they might survive long pressure spikes created by the waves above them as high as 200–400 m, but not kilometer size waves.
Debris from the asteroid impact would be absorbed in the atmosphere and then spat back out, pummeling buildings and starting fires everywhere. You'll want to find a shelter with reinforced concrete walls at least 30 to 80 centimeters (1-2 feet) thick.
The safest course of action is to launch a spacecraft and divert the asteroid using the gravity of the spacecraft.
There are a variety of deflection techniques that could save Earth from an incoming asteroid. They range from using a large spacecraft's gravity to pull the asteroid off course, to sending up a kinetic impactor to slam into the asteroid, or even using nuclear detonations.
Asteroid 2002 RM4 has been estimated by astronomers to be between 360-809 yards/330-740 meters wide. So at it's very largest it could be as wide as the world's tallest building is tall. Astronomers at the Pan-STARRS 2 telescope in Haleakala, Hawaii on September 12, 2022, discovered 2022 RM4.
This could be done by impacting it with a non-destructive projectile, simply tugging the asteroid into a different orbit with a nearby high-mass spacecraft, ablating the asteroid's surface with a high-power laser (or a nearby nuclear explosion), or by placing small rockets on the asteroid's surface.
Fortunately most occur over uninhabited areas. Asteroid 2021 YK (10–20 meters in diameter) was observed on 27 December 2021 04:40 UT (when it was about 3.8 million km from Earth) and passed 0.49 LD (190 thousand km) from Earth on 2 January 2022.
In the asteroid belt, each asteroid would have its own period of rotation (and some rotations are quite erratic), which means that each asteroid would have its own length of day. One day on the dwarf planet Ceres is the equivalent of 9 hours on Earth.
How did Voyager avoid asteroid belt?
The asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter contains millions of asteroids, but a space probe has never had to worry about hitting into one on its way to the outer planets. The reason for this is because space is so big and so empty when it comes to macroscopic objects such as planets and asteroids.
Each of these cylindrical habitats could accommodate upwards of 50,000 people, support an artificial atmosphere and generate an Earth-like gravity through the centrifugal force of its own rotation, Janhunen wrote.
The first spacecraft to traverse the asteroid belt was Pioneer 10, which entered the region on 16 July 1972. At the time there was some concern that the debris in the belt would pose a hazard to the spacecraft, but it has since been safely traversed by 12 spacecraft without incident.
Astronomers consider a near-Earth object a threat if it will come within 4.6 million miles (7.4 million km) of the planet and is at least 460 feet (140 meters) in diameter. If a celestial body of this size crashed into Earth, it could destroy an entire city and cause extreme regional devastation.
However, asteroids with a diameter of 20 m (66 ft), and which strike Earth approximately twice every century, produce more powerful airbursts. The 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor was estimated to be about 20 m in diameter with an airburst of around 500 kilotons, an explosion 30 times the Hiroshima bomb impact.
Rocks that explode can provide a powerful light show. If the exploding rocks are large enough, their fragments can still plummet down like smaller stones. Experts estimate that between 10 and 50 meteorites fall every day, according to the American Meteor Society.
Every year, the Earth is hit by about 6100 meteors large enough to reach the ground, or about 17 every day, research has revealed. The vast majority fall unnoticed, in uninhabited areas.
"There are about 100 pingpong-ball-sized meteoroids hitting the moon per day," Cooke said. That adds up to roughly 33,000 meteoroids per year. Despite their small size, each of these pingpong-ball-size rocks impacts the surface with the force of 7 pounds (3.2 kilograms) of dynamite.
No asteroids have ever been observed to hit the Sun, but that doesn't mean that they don't! Asteroids are normally content to stay in the asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter, but occasionally something nudges them out of their original orbits, and they come careening into the inner solar system.