An asteroid is a rocky object in space that can be a few feet wide to several hundred miles wide. Most asteroids in the solar system orbit in a belt between Mars and Jupiter (asteroid belt). The question is though when will the next asteroid hit earth? The last huge asteroid that caused trouble hit Earth 65 million years ago. An asteroid will hit Earth again, but that won’t be in the immediate future. The chance of Earth being hit by something small it is very little but it can happen because there are place in the asteroid belt where asteroids can escape. The odds of an asteroid hitting Earth is very small. The asteroid would have to be at least a kilometer in diameter. Such asteroids only hit the Earth one in 100,000 or more years. A comet hitting Earth only occurs once in 500,000 years. Even if astronomers did find an asteroid that large coming to Earth, they would have ways to change the direction of it. Astronomers could use missiles to change the direction of the asteroids.
I chose this topic because it sounded very interesting. I thought that I could learn a bit more about asteroids. I wanted to learn about when asteroids come in impact with the Earth’s atmosphere. Asteroids are big topics in the field of science. Asteroids can be so small or range to be a kilometer in diameter and could cause a huge destruction to Earth. I want to learn from this topic how to stop a huge asteroid that is coming to us. It’s been 65 million years since a devastating asteroid hit Earth. With today’s new technology and NASA will we be able to fight off an asteroid. Asteroids can have many subtopics but overall I want to know how the world can defeat such a large solar system object.
PT
http://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/k-4/dictionary/Asteroid.html
http://starchild.gsfc.nasa.gov/docs/StarChild/questions/question11.html
