Planetary Society Announces Winners of Asteroid Tracking Competition at Parabolic Arc

Planetary Society Announces Winners of Asteroid Tracking Competition

Published

on March 2, 2008

. Tags: Apophis, asteroids, robotic spacecrafts, robotics, SpaceDev, Spaceworks.

The Planetary Society has announced the winners of a competition to design a spacecraft that could intercept and track asteroids that might impact on Earth.

The Society awarded the $25,000 first-place prize to a team led by Spaceworks Engineering of Atlanta and SpaceDev of Poway, California. The team’s $137 million Foresight mission focuses primarily on tracking an asteroid.

Spaceworks and SpaceDev are hoping to launch Foresight between 2012-2014 to rendezvous with asteroid 2004 MN4, also known as Apophis. The asteroid will pass close to the Earth in 2029 and has a slight chance of striking our planet in 2036.

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