An anonymous reader writes:
A $50,000 (£25,000) competition has been launched to find the best way to tag a 400m-wide asteroid, and tracked it with the most precision.
The Plantery Society is organising the competition in cooperation with the European Space Agency (Esa), the US space agency (Nasa), the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), and the Universities Space Research Association (USRA).
The Apophis space rock is set to make a pass closer than the orbits of many communications satellites and scientists would like to confirm that it poses no danger to our world- but it will not hit the planet, that is clear.
"The threat of a strike from asteroids is always a very low probability at any given time, and yet bad things will happen," said the Planetary Society's director of projects, Bruce Betts. "We need to know whether Earth's name is on it," he told BBC News.
The concern centres on the small chance that its orbit could be perturbed enough in the flyby to put the rock on a collision path for its return in 2036.
And the Planetary Society thinks an innovative tracking mission could make doubly sure. Hence, the prize for an individual or team that can put together the best concept for tagging a huge lump of rock.
"You could use a beacon; you could put a reflector on it that you ping; you could put a spacecraft in orbit and track that. There are any number of possibilities and ones we haven't thought of, I'm sure," said Betts.
The winning entry or entries will be submitted to space agencies to see if they want to carry the ideas through.
The Planetary Society competition was launched here at the American Geophysical Union Fall Meeting.
