NASA sees cost ballooning 30% on Boeing rocket for moon missions


Justin Bachman, Bloomberg News

Workers near the top of the 526 ft. Vehicle Assembly Building at the Kennedy Space Center spruce up the NASA logo standing on scaffolds in Cape Canaveral, Fla., Wednesday, May 20, 2020. , The Associated Press

Boeing Co.’s Space Launch System, the largest rocket in NASA’s history, will carry a price tag of at least US$9.1 billion -- or 30 per cent more than the previous estimate for a key element in the agency’s plan to return to the moon.

Additionally, the costs for new ground infrastructure at Florida’s Kennedy Space Center to support the deep-space exploration program has jumped to US$2.4 billion, Kathy Lueders, NASA’s associate administrator for human spaceflight, said in a blog post Wednesday. That’s also a 30 per cent increase, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration said in an email Thursday.

“NASA has notified Congress of these new commitments, and we are working at the best possible pace toward launch, including streamlining operational flow at Kennedy and assessing opportunities to further improve the efficiency of our integration activities,” Lueders wrote.

The new cost estimates are based on NASA’s pledge to fly the first SLS-powered Artemis mission around the moon, without crew, in November 2021. Addressing the escalating costs, NASA referred to its previous statements on “challenges associated with design development, manufacturing development, first-time production, and initial operations for SLS.”

Coronavirus Uncertainty


While the space agency is confident of meeting the November 2021 flight date, it’s too early to predict the full impact of work delays caused by the coronavirus pandemic, Lueders said. NASA will follow the first SLS flight with a crewed mission in 2023. A third Artemis flight to put astronauts on the moon is planned for 2024 to meet a challenge set by the Trump administration.

“Boeing is responsible for the rocket core and upper stages and we are making great progress,” the Chicago-based company said in a statement.

Jacobs Engineering Group Inc., the prime contractor for the ground support work at Kennedy Space Center, didn’t immediately reply to a request for comment.

In March, a NASA Inspector General report on the SLS program found that the agency has struggled with rising costs and delays, citing “program management, technical issues, and contractor performance.” By the end of the current U.S. fiscal year, which ends Sept. 30, NASA will have spent more than US$17 billion on the overall SLS program, according to the report. That’s 60 per cent more than NASA’s 2014 cost estimate.

The next big test for the SLS, which will stand taller than the Statue of Liberty, will be in October when engineers plan to fire all four main RS-25 engines simultaneously and drain the fuel tanks within eight minutes, simulating flight conditions.

NASA approved the rocket’s development in August 2014, setting the cost at US$7.02 billion with a first flight “no later than November 2018.” Throughout its history, the SLS program has enjoyed immense support in the Senate, and Congress has continued to fund the program despite setbacks in cost and schedule.

Germany Set to Start Coal Phaseout Tenders Amid Legal Challenge

As the effort to phase out coal by 2038 begins, the question of whether the market would have done the job sooner lingers.

JOHN PARNELL AUGUST 27, 2020

Germany's coal phaseout plan awaits approval from the European Commission.

The best compromises tend to leave all parties equally dissatisfied. By that measure, the German coal phaseout looks like a great compromise.

The first tender to pay German coal power plants to close will begin next week, and no one is entirely happy. Environmental groups say the closures will come too late to align with the goals of the Paris Agreement. Utilities have asked for swift compensation payouts, but the European Commission has yet to give the program its seal of approval. Even with compensation, utility RWE thinks it will face a €900 million ($1.06 billion) loss from the deal.

In 2018, Germany appointed a commission drawn from industry, government and civil society to find a broadly acceptable way to close the nation’s substantial coal mining and power plant infrastructure. Despite its long-time leadership in wind and solar energy, Germany still had 44 gigawatts of coal plants running at the end of 2019, and parts of the country remain economically reliant on coal.

The final coal deal, approved by Germany's parliament last month, will see all of the country's capacity closed by 2038, with more than half of it shut down by 2030. For €40 billion of compensation to actually start flowing, the European Commission must grant State Aid approval — what essentially amounts to an endorsement that the government is not distorting the market with its payments.

In recent earning calls, RWE, one of the major recipients of compensation, said the European Commission's final approval is not expected until the autumn. Germany is rolling ahead anyway, working under the assumption that Brussels will eventually sign off on the plan.
Coal phaseout process set to begin

The process will compensate shuttering lignite, or "brown coal," plants, which are the most heavily polluting, via a flat rate. RWE and Leag are the only operators with more than 1 gigawatt of affected capacity. RWE is set to receive €2.6 billion; Leag will receive €1.75 billion.

Hard coal plants, or those burning more carbon-dense and less-polluting types of coal, by contrast, will be closed via least-cost tenders. These will be held sporadically through 2024.

There are also compensation packages for workers in mines and power plants who lose their job as a result of the coal exit laws. Those payments will last till 2048 and are estimated at €5 billion.

On September 1, hard-coal plant operators can bid into the first tender for the early closure of 4 gigawatts of generation capacity. The maximum payment per megawatt of capacity shutdown is €165,000 ($196,000) for this initial tender. That price ceiling gradually falls over time, with the final auction capped at €89,000 per megawatt.

So far, the most intense controversy has centered on the flat-rate compensation for the lignite plants, which was calculated behind closed doors. Environmental legal organization ClientEarth has tried, so far in vain, to have these calculations made public. ClientEarth also alleges that the Leag payments are contrary to the EU electricity market regulations.

Maximilian Boemke, a partner at the German office of law firm Watson Farley & Williams, thinks that the calculation of the flat-rate lignite compensation will be key to the European Commission’s decision.

“The EU Commission will have to review if the calculation method, as well as the assumptions, are plausible. We cannot exclude [the possibility] that it might reject the flat-rate calculation in view of the volatility of the energy markets and the costs of CO2 certificates,” Boemke told GTM by email.

Essentially, the argument boils down to whether the new market reality means those plants would have been squeezed out anyway. The merit order system — the method by which European and many other grid operators and energy markets choose the lowest-operating-cost resources to be brought online before more expensive alternatives — means that this is a question of whether natural-gas prices will keep gas-fired plants competitive with coal during its sunset years.
The debate over coal plants' future market prospects

In other words, a €40 billion policy's future at least partly relies on accurate natural-gas forecasting 18 years into the future. There are reasons to doubt that lignite plants being offered the current flat-rate payments to shut down early could remain competitive in the market long enough to earn their equivalent if they were to remain open.


“The lignite plants in the first and second stage of the phaseout will be approaching 50, and in some cases, 60 years of operation when they close,” said Dan Eager, principal analyst for European power at Wood Mackenzie Power & Renewables. “It could be argued...that many of these assets [would] have been decommissioned around this time anyway or risk falling to pieces.”

That’s not a universal story, he pointed out. The youngest plant, Datteln 4, is both flexible and cost-competitive, and it could serve as a useful counterweight to a renewable-heavy grid, carbon emissions aside.

State Aid approval of a previously completed round of German coal closures, which paid lignite plants to go on standby, was approved in 2016. The 2016 mechanism also left the level of compensation up to the energy regulator, but it was set using a formula, rather than a flat rate. This State Aid approval, and another for a €52.5 million payment to Vattenfall for the closure of the Hemweg 8 plant in the Netherlands, suggests the German plan is likely to be approved as well.

But aside from the flat-rate compensation structure, there is another key difference between those approved plans and Germany’s phaseout: Those shutdowns happened in the near term, not over the course of 18 years.

Boemke pointed out that it is a reasonable assumption that the plant closures involved in the 2016 measures were missing out on money-earning years of operations by going on standby or shutting down entirely “According to some studies, this seems less certain for the plants in question today,” he said. “Germany will have to provide evidence to the EU Commission that the plants would not have closed [due to market pressures] before 2030.”

Broadly speaking, however, coal's market prospects are not great.

“Growth in low-short-run-cost renewables, expectations of sustained low gas prices for the next few years, and increasing carbon prices are putting tremendous pressure on the margins of coal-fired assets across Europe," said Wood Mackenzie's Eager. "Our data shows that German coal generation was down 26 percent in 2019 relative to the previous year, with gas generation up 10 percent and renewables up 14 percent. We can expect further reductions once the 2020 results are in."

In many parts of Europe, coal is already on the ropes. A recent report by the think tank Ember estimated that coal power plant utilization rates in the European Union have dropped to 24 percent.

France and the U.K. have both brought forward their own coal phaseouts by a year to 2022 and 2024, respectively. In the U.K., the market has more or less phased out coal this year. It contributed 3 percent of U.K. power in Q1 2020 compared to 39 percent in Q1 2000.

Given what's happening elsewhere in Western Europe, then, critics argue the German phaseout plan locks it into an artificially drawn-out shutdown process.

“Our analysis suggests that the German coal law, and the contracts with operators that it relies on, actually maintains a situation that no longer reflects economic reality. Worse still, it is set to make climate action even more difficult in the future,” said Ida Westphal, an energy lawyer at ClientEarth's Berlin office, in an email.
What if the State Aid approval isn’t granted?

If the State Aid approval is rejected by the EU Commission, an already-lengthy process will be stretched out further. An initial rejection would trigger a month-long public consultation and a fresh round of talks with the authorities.

“The German government and the coal industry could, of course, try to challenge a negative decision by the commission...[in] the EU courts, but that is lengthy, costly and the aid could still not be paid in the meantime — so amending the law could be quicker and more effective,” Westphal said, adding that a challenge in the courts could run in parallel.

With so much work already done to develop the existing coal phaseout laws, anything that jeopardizes it will likely be unpalatable to the government. Utilities might, for example, try to negotiate higher payouts if consideration of the law is reopened.

More likely is that the existing agreement, should it be found deficient by the EC, will be amended until it can be approved.

“Given the long discussions about the phaseout and the [difficulty] of finding a compromise, I do not think that the phaseout plan will be touched again,” said Christine Bader of Watson Farley & Williams.

The Arecibo Telescope Is Damaged — And That's A Big Deal

August 28, 2020





Since its completion in 1963, the Arecibo Observatory has played a key role in discoveries ranging from new insights into pulsars to detecting planets outside our solar system.Universal Images Group via Getty


SCIENCE
Puerto Rico's Arecibo Radio Telescope Damaged By Falling Cable


THE TWO-WAY
Puerto Rico's Arecibo Radio Telescope Suffers Hurricane Damage

In early August a cable snapped at the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, causing substantial damage to one of the largest single dish radio telescopes in the world. Planetary scientist Edgard Rivera-Valentín explains what's at stake until the damage can be repaired, and the unique role the telescope plays in both scientific research and popular culture.

This episode was produced by Brit Hanson, fact-checked by Viet Le and edited by Deborah George.

Increase in release of underground CO2 emissions in Italy tied to earthquakes

by Bob Yirka , Phys.org
The amount of CO2 dissolved in groundwater is so large that, in some cases, strong free CO2 emissions are associated with the water discharges. The emission in the picture is located at San Vittorino plain (Rieti) about 30 km far from the epicenter of the April 2009 L’Aquila earthquake. Credit: Giovanni Chiodini - INGV (first author)

A team of researchers affiliated with several institutions in Italy has found a possible link between increases in CO2 emissions from groundwater and earthquake occurrences in Italy's Apennine Mountains. In their paper published in the journal Science Advances, the group describes their decade-long study of CO2 emissions in the area and what they learned about them.


Prior research has shown that carbon dioxide in the air can become trapped in rocks—the resulting rocks are known as carbonates.Additionally, the carbon dioxide in those rocks can be released by heat from within the Earth and other tectonic forces. When the carbon is released, it tends to be sequestered in pockets belowground or in underground reservoirs. Carbon that makes its way into such reservoirs quite often ends up in the nearby water table, and can rise to the surface via springs. In this new effort, the researchers studied fluctuations in the amount of carbon dioxide being released from spring water at several sites in the Apennine Mountains near the site of the 2009 L'Aquila earthquake. They did so by collecting samples over the years 2009 to 2018.

As part of their study of the samples they collected, the researchers also looked at seismic data, which, in addition to normal seismic events, also showed occurrences of several small earthquakes. They found that levels of CO2 emissions from spring water in the area rose when there were earthquakes and then dropped again after the quakes were over. More specifically, they found that when quakes of magnitude 6 or higher struck, CO2 emission levels rose to an average of 600 metric tons per day. During quiet periods, CO2 emissions in the same area were typically between 400 and 500 metric tons per day.

The researchers suggest that pressure created by increases in CO2 gas underground might be the factor setting off the earthquakes. They further suggest that if CO2 does set off some earthquakes, measuring it might be a way of predicting some of them. They also note that their findings highlight a source of carbon emissions into the atmosphere that needs to be added to global warming models.

In the Apennine mountains (Italy), the emission of CO2 of deep origin is well correlated with earthquakes occurrence during the last decade. In fact, during 2007-2019, the seismic events (including the destructive events of 2009 and 2016) were accompanied by evident peaks in the amount of deep CO2 dissolved and transported by the groundwaters in the area. In the diagram FCO2 (t d-1) indicates the total amount of CO2 discharged by the large springs in tons per day. Credit: Giovanni Chiodini - INGV (first author)


Explore further

Study shows global warming could push methane emissions from wetlands 50 to 80 percent higher
More information: G. Chiodini et al. Correlation between tectonic CO2 Earth degassing and seismicity is revealed by a 10-year record in the Apennines, Italy, Science Advances (2020). DOI: 10.1126/sciadv.abc2938
Journal information: Science Advances



© 2020 Science X Network

Animated Baby Cthulhu is Monstrously Adorable

by Eric Diaz

Aug 26 2020 • 

Writer H.P. Lovecraft created a whole cadre of ancient “Elder Gods” in his stories. But nearly a century later, it is his creation Cthulhu who looms largest in pop culture. But that’s what happens when you create an enormous being with an octopus-like head, with a tentacle face, scary claws, and long narrow bat-wings sprouting out of its back. He’ll stand out in a crowd.

But like most scary creatures in pop culture, it’s inevitable someone on the internet will eventually give us the cute version. Artist and animator Fernando Alves has made a series of videos which showcase a wee baby Cthulhu, doing all the adorable things babies do. You know, like turning pitch black and flying around the bathroom. And occasionally eating a small kitten.

While a commenter on his YouTube video was dismayed at the fate of the kitty, Alves suggested the little furball could still be alive. “I heard sometimes they spit out their prey… I didn’t see him spitting the cat… I hope so..”

In response to another comment, Alves joked, “Baby Cthulhu eats any living thing small enough to swallow whole, so I give him chicklets, but he loves to hunt insects, rats, pigeons… and some cats and dogs went missing in my neighborhood, and I pretend I don’t know anything… fortunately, human children are too big for him..”

Although Cthulu is his cutest creation, Alves also has a few videos of an equally adorable baby Baphomet. For those of you out there that aren’t Dungeons & Dragons adjacent, Baphomet is the Medieval deity that later got conflated with Satan. The Baphomet imagery is where most modern folks derive their conceptions of the Devil. But Alves’ little Baby Baphomet only look devilishly adorable.

For more of Fernando Alves videos and art, be sure to head on over to his Instagram and YouTube channels.

Featured Image: Fernando Alves

The pandemic has slowed human consumption of Earth's resources — for now 

Social ShariCBC News · Posted: Aug 27, 2020 

Earth Overshoot Day: Measuring our consumption of natural resources

(Robyn Beck/AFP via Getty Images)

Each year, the Global Footprint Network, an international non-profit organization that aims to draw attention to sustainability, releases an estimate on the day when humanity's demand for ecological resources surpasses what the planet can regenerate in that year.

The calculations include things like carbon production, cropland and forests, among other types of land use.

Called Earth Overshoot Day, it has fallen earlier and earlier based on historical data going back to 1970. But this year, there was a bit of good news: the date moved ahead by three weeks, from July 29 (in 2019) to Aug. 22, owing to a 9.3 per cent reduction in the world's ecological footprint. 

By this calculation, we are living as though we had the resources of 1.6 Earths.

To take a more local perspective, if everyone consumed resources at the rate of Canada, Earth Overshoot Day this year would be March 18. (Put another way, we would need 4.75 Earths in a year.) As a comparison, with a country like Mexico, Earth Overshoot Day would occur on Aug. 17.

According to the Global Footprint Network, Canada's large ecological impact is because of our high land use, fuel consumption and production, as well as how much we import and export.

While the news for 2020 is more positive, the Global Footprint Network warns that it was largely because of the pandemic, which resulted in shutdowns around the world.

"Yes, we reduced our demand, but it is reduced by disaster, not by design," said Mathis Wackernagel, CEO and founder of the Global Footprint Network. 

This isn't without precedent. Similar trends have occurred at times of global crisis, such as the dissolution of the former Soviet Union, the savings and loans crisis in the 1980s and the post-2008 global financial crisis. But every time, as governments try to stimulate the economy and thus increase the demand for resources, our ecological footprint eventually pushes that date earlier and earlier.

Some don't entirely agree with Earth Overshoot Day, saying it doesn't accurately take into account all metrics for measuring our environmental impact. But Wackernagel said that the overarching message is "to translate the numbers in a way that people can understand."

Eric Cole, director of the Ecological Footprint Initiative at York University, which provides the Global Footprint Network with the data, said it is taken from official statistics, including ones provided to United Nations agencies, such as the Food and Agriculture Organization, and Comtrade, which collects international trade statistics.

"I would compare this to economic statistics about the world: how much stuff is produced and consumed. It's all very similar." 

Cole said Earth Overshoot Day is another way of looking at the big picture when it comes to trying to plan for sustainable practices. 

"The nice thing about the data is we can use it to answer all kinds of interesting questions, such as if we wanted to, let's say, devote more of our lands to soaking up carbon emissions, what would that take?" he said. "And if we're doing that, we can't also at the same time use them for providing timber products … or we can't also use them for providing housing and commercial areas and so on."

That, he said, helps us look at the limits and trade-offs.

Wackernagel believes Earth Overshoot Day is an important part of looking at our planet and our consumption of finite resources.

"What we provide is a fuel gauge," said Wackernagel. "A plane doesn't only fly with a fuel gauge — but a plane without a fuel gauge is very dangerous."

— Nicole Mortillaro

The push to save a rare ecosystem in Nova Scotia

(Moira Donovan/CBC)

Just outside Kingston, N.S., biologist Sherman Boates crouches over a yellow flower growing out of the sand. "Watch your feet," he says. "It's an endangered species." 

The flower, known as rock rose or Canada frostweed, isn't all that's facing extinction along this stretch of highway. So is its entire habitat, a globally rare ecosystem known as the Annapolis Valley sand barrens. 

The area is "very rare in terms of North America, but many of us locally don't really know that it exists, or how interesting and how important it is," said Boates. 

Over hundreds of years, human activity has reduced the sand barrens to roughly three per cent of their original size. Now, scientists and a community organization called Clean Annapolis River Project are trying to build awareness about the ecosystem to stem further decline.

The Annapolis Valley sand barrens — "barren" because there are few trees and vegetation is low to the ground — are formed by ancient sand deposits running from roughly Kentville to Middleton. "It's quite a big ecosystem," said Boates, but much of it has been destroyed or degraded by activities such as agriculture. 

He said that for decades, scientists had resigned themselves to the disappearance of the habitat. But that's changed thanks to measures such as federal funding aimed at identifying places important for species at risk.

A project aimed at protecting the sand barrens, run by Clean Annapolis River Project, has set out to identify the threats and develop ways to address them. 

While all levels of government have potential roles in the project, community members have a particularly important part to play, said Katie McLean, CARP's communications and outreach co-ordinator. 

"If people can recognize maybe three of these plants that we see covering the ground around us, they're going to start to recognize if they're recreating or if they're living in sand barrens," said McLean.

With that recognition, they may start to take steps to preserve this ecosystem, MacLean said.

In its initial stages, the project is asking people to get involved by helping to document some of the species found in the sand barrens. In future years, the organization hopes to expand to restoration efforts, by encouraging people to change how they manage their land to include more plants that grow naturally in the ecosystem.

The sand barrens wouldn't support growth of Kentucky bluegrass lawns, "but a lot of people want their lawns to look like that," said McLean. "Unfortunately, [sand barrens] has a bad reputation. I recall one person kind of lamenting … 'How do we get rid of it?' So there's still that work to do to help people understand that this is something we should be excited to see and celebrate."

In the long term, McLean said the work CARP is doing now could help make a case for designating the sand barrens as an entire ecosystem in need of protection. Sherman Boates agrees.

"Just like we don't want to see the piping plover disappear, we don't want to see the Annapolis Valley sand barrens get smaller and smaller, and more and more degraded, and blink out before we even know."

— Moira Donovan

The Big Picture: Wildfire damage in the U.S.

It's been a week of hellacious weather in the U.S. While the country is contending with Hurricane Laura on its southern coast, California is in the middle of another pitched battle with wildfires. It is estimated that 90 per cent of wildfires are caused by humans (either deliberately or through negligence), but scientists say that climate change tends to make them worse. While California has become synonymous with fires, it isn't the only state with this problem. The graphic below shows the states with the highest susceptibility to wildfires — and how many homes are at risk of damage.

(CBC)

How cold was the ice age? Researchers now know

by University of Arizona
  

Credit: Unsplash/CC0 Public Domain

A University of Arizona-led team has nailed down the temperature of the last ice age—the Last Glacial Maximum of 20,000 years ago—to about 46 degrees Fahrenheit (7.8 C).


Their findings allow climate scientists to better understand the relationship between today's rising levels of atmospheric carbon dioxide—a major greenhouse gas—and average global temperature.

The Last Glacial Maximum, or LGM, was a frigid period when huge glaciers covered about half of North America, Europe and South America and many parts of Asia, while flora and fauna that were adapted to the cold thrived.

"We have a lot of data about this time period because it has been studied for so long," said Jessica Tierney, associate professor in the UArizona Department of Geosciences. "But one question science has long wanted answers to is simple: How cold was the ice age?"

Tracking Temperature

Tierney is lead author of a paper published today in Nature that found that the average global temperature of the ice age was 6 degrees Celsius (11 F) cooler than today. For context, the average global temperature of the 20th century was 14 C (57 F).

"In your own personal experience that might not sound like a big difference, but, in fact, it's a huge change," Tierney said.

She and her team also created maps to illustrate how temperature differences varied in specific regions across the globe.

"In North America and Europe, the most northern parts were covered in ice and were extremely cold. Even here in Arizona, there was big cooling," Tierney said. "But the biggest cooling was in high latitudes, such as the Arctic, where it was about 14 C (25 F) colder than today."

Their findings fit with scientific understanding of how Earth's poles react to temperature changes.

"Climate models predict that the high latitudes will get warmer faster than low latitudes," Tierney said. "When you look at future projections, it gets really warm over the Arctic. That's referred to as polar amplification. Similarly, during the LGM, we find the reverse pattern. Higher latitudes are just more sensitive to climate change and will remain so going forward."


Counting Carbon

Knowing the temperature of the ice age matters because it is used to calculate climate sensitivity, meaning how much the global temperature shifts in response to atmospheric carbon.

Tierney and her team determined that for every doubling of atmospheric carbon, global temperature should increase by 3.4 C (6.1 F), which is in the middle of the range predicted by the latest generation of climate models (1.8 to 5.6 C).

Atmospheric carbon dioxide levels during the ice age were about 180 parts per million, which is very low. Before the Industrial Revolution, levels rose to about 280 parts per million, and today they've reached 415 parts per million.

"The Paris Agreement wanted to keep global warming to no larger than 2.7 F (1.5 C) over pre-industrial levels, but with carbon dioxide levels increasing the way they are, it would be extremely difficult to avoid more than 3.6 F (2 C) of warming," Tierney said. "We already have about 2 F (1.1 C) under our belt, but the less warm we get the better, because the Earth system really does respond to changes in carbon dioxide."

Making a Model

Since there were no thermometers in the ice age, Tierney and her team developed models to translate data collected from ocean plankton fossils into sea-surface temperatures. They then combined the fossil data with climate model simulations of the LGM using a technique called data assimilation, which is used in weather forecasting.

"What happens in a weather office is they measure the temperature, pressure, humidity and use these measurements to update a forecasting model and predict the weather," Tierney said. "Here, we use the Boulder, Colorado-based National Center for Atmospheric Research climate model to produce a hindcast of the LGM, and then we update this hindcast with the actual data to predict what the climate was like."

In the future, Tierney and her team plan to use the same technique to recreate warm periods in Earth's past.

"If we can reconstruct past warm climates," she said, "then we can start to answer important questions about how the Earth reacts to really high carbon dioxide levels, and improve our understanding of what future climate change might hold."


Explore further   Ancient plankton help researchers predict near-future climate
More information: Glacial cooling and climate sensitivity revisited, Nature (2020).  

DOI: 10.1038/s41586-020-2617-x , www.nature.com/articles/s41586-020-2617-x
Journal information: Nature


Provided by University of Arizona

Asteroid passing Earth before the election is real, but NASA isn't worried
The Michael Jordan-size asteroid has a 0.41% chance of entering Earth's atmosphere.
Amanda Kooser
Aug. 26, 2020
  

Enlarge Image
Artist's concept of a near-earth asteroid.NASA/JPL-CalTech

It's easy to look at 2020 and assume an asteroid coming in close to Earth this year will be just one more disaster to add to the pile. But it's going to be OK, at least as far as asteroid 2018 VP1 is concerned.

Yes, the asteroid is scheduled to get uncomfortably close to Earth on Nov. 2, the day before the US elections. It may even enter our atmosphere, but it doesn't herald doomsday.

NASA Asteroid Watch, which keeps an eye on these space rocks, tweeted some reassurances on Sunday.

Asteroid 2018 VP1 measures roughly 6.5 feet (2 meters) in diameter. "It currently has a 0.41% chance of entering our planet's atmosphere, but if it did, it would disintegrate due to its extremely small size," NASA said.

Asteroid 2018 VP1 is more of a space speck than a big bad harbinger of destruction. Space is a busy place and asteroids sweep past Earth all the time, including the occasional surprise asteroid that sneaks up on us.

NASA has been tracking 2018 VP1 since, well, 2018. We knew it was coming back for a visit. If it does hit our atmosphere, it will be much worse for the asteroid than it will be for us.