ASTEROID BENNU, CHELYABINSK METEOR, OSIRIS-REX, OUTER SPACE, DANGEROUS ASTEROID, 2135, NASA, PROBE, GRAVITY TRACTOR, KINETIC ENERGY IMPACTOR, #ASTEROID BENNU #CHRISTIAN #CREATION SCIENCE

STAR TREK/WARS TECHNOLOGY

Greetings my friends!

Are all of you ready to head into a change of seasons? It will be early autumn for me but there are those of you who live where it will be early spring soon. I love the way God set up our planet to have season changes. I look forward to autumn more that any other season.

Speaking of changes, have any of you heard about asteroid Bennu? Bennu, discovered in 1999, is a large asteroid that has an elliptical path crossing Earth’s orbit every six years. Bennu, which is around 500 meters in diameter at its equator and travels around the sun at 63,000mph, is projected to pass between Earth and the moon in 2135. The Chelyabinsk meteoroid was much smaller by comparison. 

On September 8, 2016 NASA plans to launch an eight million dollar probe, the OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, Regolith Explorer) to collect rock samples from an asteroid. The main goal is to collect samples so scientists will hopefully be able to estimate the mass of the large asteroid. But another aspect of the giant space rock has captured far greater attention; the possibility that it could collide with our planet in the future. “Bennu is officially classified as a potentially

dangerous asteroid. In fact, there's an 0.037 percent (or 1-in-2,700) chance that it will strike Earth in the last quarter of the 22nd century, NASA scientists have calculated. Specifically, that's the probability that, during an Earthy flyby in 2135, Bennu will hit a special orbit-altering ‘keyhole' that will send it on a collision course with the planet later in the century.”¹  OSIRIS-REx will journey to Bennu for two years, study it from a close range orbit for another two years then match the velocity (speed and direction) of the asteroid and “bounce” of the surface. The purpose of the bounce is to collect a sample within 5 seconds. Scientists made the decision for this bounce rather than a landing because it is difficult to land on an object that has little gravity. Instead objects tend to bounce off. The probe should then return to Earth by 2023 with a hefty sample.

Pogo stick rock sample collector on OSIEIS_REX

It is interesting yet sad that so much money is being spent in the desire to “learn” what the origins of the cosmos is. “The mission team is chiefly interested in learning the role that asteroids like Bennu — dark, primitive and apparently carbon-rich objects — may have played in helping life get a foothold on Earth.”² We already have this information, written clearly for us in the Bible. And there is so much physical evidence to back it up. If only the scales would drop off their eyes!

The only valid part of the mission in my opinion, is in allowing scientists to recalculate the impact probability of the asteroid. Then a gravity tractor can be employed. This Star Trek technology in which a robotic probe flies alongside the space rock for months or years, gradually nudging it off course via a slight gravitational tug (the greater the probe’s mass, the stronger its gravitational pull— kind of like a tug boat) is truly here. 

Also a Kinetic Energy Impactor (KEI) may also be utilized to deflect the asteroid. A KEI utilizes kinetic energy, or energy

from motion, that turns into an explosion of the object's (its landing on/hitting) material. As the material blows away it pushes like rocket exhaust resulting in pushing the pieces off course thus preventing an impact with Earth. Kinetic energy equals the speed-of-impact-squared times the mass (Remember the movie Armageddon with Bruce Willis?). 

Yes its Trek/Wars technology all right! But all of this exciting technology tends to take our eyes off of Who’s really is in charge. The Creator, God of heaven and Earth, Jesus Christ.

Until next time, God bless and take care,

Willow Dressel 

PS here’s some more space information: NASA “wants astronauts to visit the redirected asteroid by 2025, to meet an exploration deadline set by the White House. In 2010, President Barack Obama directed NASA to get people to a near-Earth asteroid by 2025 and then on to the vicinity of Mars by the mid-2030s.”³ Imagine how that much money could help mankind cure famines, disease and poverty.

References:

¹http://www.space.com/33616-asteroid-bennu-will-not-destroy-earth.html

^2,3http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/nasa-probe-asteroid-armageddon-bennu-space-a7164901.html#gallery