It was not a question of if. It was just the question of when. When was it due to hit us? The sooner we knew, the better were our chances to do something about it. It was entirely possible for one of these space missiles to sneak up on us and we would then just be helpless and mute spectators to our annihilation, our extinction, our doomsday. These impact events were not too rare either. Throughout our planet’s geological history, it has been bombarded by such impacts. In fact, these have been responsible for formation of the Moon, probably responsible for all the water that we see on Earth, possibly responsible for bringing the proto-molecules that led to formation of the first self-replicating chemical assembly on Earth. These impacts, that possibly made life take roots on Earth, have also been responsible for at least three extinction level events (ELEs), the last of which wiped off the giant reptiles and led to a mammalian conquest of Earth.
This global apathy of the Governments and of the Institutions left Hiroki Masaoka, a graduate student at the Research Centre for the Evolving Earth and Planets, Tokyo University, who volunteered occasionally at the Bisei Spaceguard Centre, to make the most important discovery of astronomy in the history of human kind on this New Year’s Eve night of 2018.
Hiroki woke up from his momentary slumber and heard the static of the air-conditioner humming above him. There was no one else at the center. He ambled to the nearest washbasin and splashed cold water on his face. He had to make his round of the computers all over again to see if everything was running fine. He sat down at the first console and scrolled up the data being spewed out. Everything seemed in order. He got up and sat down at the next.
It was the eleventh computer that drew his attention. A particular entry was flashing in alarm. The computer had identified a flash in the sector that it was analyzing. The location of the flash was a tiny dot, and therefrom spewed a couple of lighted pixels that blazed a tiny trail across the static of the sky over the last couple of days. This trail was inconsistent with any previously known objects. Hiroki drew up references for manmade objects like satellites or dead junkets floating in space. It was neither but Hiroki had to be sure. There had been an embarrassing false alarm a few months ago when one of his rookie colleagues had marked up the International Space Station as an asteroid. But this time, the preliminary computer check turned negative. It was a hitherto unknown body.
Hiroki was cautiously excited by the find. All his residual sleep and slumber had disappeared by now. He ran the reference guide again and came up with naught. He repeated the analysis again, with the same results. Half an hour later, he was still in the same chair and was now literally shaking with excitement. All he could say was that it was something new, having what looked like a large obtuse orbit, probably more consistent with a comet than an asteroid.
Asteroids roam a vast expanse of space in our Solar system, between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter. They are thought to be either the dying remains of a big planetary mash-up or a proto-planetary debris, which was influenced by the behemoth, Jupiter’s gravitational tug and never could coalesce together to form a planet. All planets are gradual conglomerations of the gas and debris left behind from the early days of the solar system. In the very beginning, enough gas coalesced together under gravity to form the Sun, which was slowly compressed by its own gravity to an extent where its innards lighted up due to hydrogen fusing into helium, releasing enormous amounts of energy by this fusion reaction. The Sun as all stars do, stabilized between the opposing forces of an inwardly pulling gravity and the outwardly pushing force of a nuclear fusion furnace. Once the Sun stabilized, the gas and debris left behind started revolving around it in a dance of gravity and angular momentum. This revolution ultimately led to particles colliding with, and merging with one another, forming all that we see today in the solar system, namely the planets, the satellites and all else that goes around the Sun. The Jupiter is the largest of the planets and between the orbits of Mars and Jupiter lay enough debris which could have formed another planet but which never came to be, possibly due to the gravity of the massive Jupiter not allowing these pieces to fit together. This belt of debris is what we know today as the asteroid belt. These asteroids collide with each other frequently; on most occasions, triggered by the massive gravitational pull of Jupiter, which flings these bodies out of their orbit, hurtling them towards each other or sometimes propelling them out of their orbit, into a new orbit, criss-crossing that of other planets or bodies. Most of these wayward asteroids are gobbled up by the gravitational pull of the Jupiter that serves as a shield for the smaller inner planets.
Most, but not all of them.
That necessitated a watch on these occasional wayward bodies because, there is at least one asteroid out there, free of Jupiter’s embrace, with Earth’s address postmarked on it and we need to find it before it was too late.
Comets are a different matter altogether. They are remnants of the formation of Solar system and found today in its far-out reaches, receiving only a fraction of the influence of the Sun that we receive. This debris of rocks continues to revolve around the Sun in highly eccentric orbits, occasionally bringing them closer to the Sun and the other planets. A few of them, like the Haley’s Comet, return with clockwork regularity, providing a spectacle of a bright streaking heavenly body, followed by an icy tail lit up by the reflected sunlight. A few of these comets have very eccentric and large orbits and humans chance upon them for the first time, as it is possible that they are returning to the inner solar system for the first time since the beginning of our stargazing days.
However, this speck of light that loomed over Hiroki on his screen looked too massive to be an asteroid or a comet. It was rather unusual, but not unheard of, that such a large body was not in the database already.
Hiroki ran with the results repeatedly and was shocked with the results in front of him. His mind started racing with the possibilities and he surmised that it had to be a comet, judging by its trajectory that placed it on a far out eccentric orbit probably bringing it in right from the edge of the Oort’s cloud. He checked the data once again. The findings were not wrong. His mind was agog with possibilities now. He ran the data against a comet database on the system.
The results took a while but came out negative. It was not a comet either. Correction, it was not a known comet.
Could it be that…?
Hiroki was shaking with nervous excitement, perspiring in the cold of the conditioned air. He could not even think through his line of thought. He made a conscious effort to cap his excitement and concentrate on what was in front of him on the screen. He went through the results once again, confirming and re-affirming which he knew now to be true.
He, Hiroki Masaoka, had discovered a comet.
Chapter 2
Emergency
NSA Headquarters, Fort George G. Meade,
Maryland, USA
21st Jan 2019
Sienna Dunbar had been searched, her things X-Rayed, then submitted to a re-search and her things re-X-Rayed before she was finally led into the visitors’ center behind the front office of Fort George G. Meade headquarters of the National Security Agency (NSA). The NSA had requested information on Comet Masaoka and since she had been heading the team of scientists looking into the comet for the past ten days, she was asked to report to NSA for a briefing.
She had never come here before. The NSA office was a gargantuan enterprise, spanning numerous floors above and many below the ground. After being flustered by the numerous identity checks and the body searches at the gate, she had got lost in the parking lot that held more than twenty thousand vehicles at any one time. After a taxing hour and a half, she was finally on her own at the visitors’ center as she waited to be led to the briefing hall.
The receptionist at the front office was a cheerful young girl who had checked Sienna’s ID and her visitor’s tag yet again before seating her where she was. She came in a couple of minutes later with a cup of coffee. She must be twenty, just barely out of her teen
years. She wore a chic white shirt and a military green skirt, her attire completed with an olive beret on her head. There was a hint of a nipple, where her ample young breasts struggled against the fabric of the tightly worn shirt.
‘What was she doing here? Was it a part time job? How does NSA employ someone so young? Maybe she is just a receptionist.’ Sienna thought to herself as she saw her walk in with the cup.
Sienna just smiled at her as she accepted the cup of hot coffee from her hand.
She smiled back
‘They will be with you in a minute.’
Sienna nodded and shook her head in acknowledgement. She was getting restless and wanted this to get over fast. She had work to get back to. Sienna was also expecting her husband Alex to be back from his camping and trekking trip today. She checked herself in a mirror across the hall from where she was sitting. There was a black halo around her puffy eyes, a sign of not having slept well for the last few days. Nevertheless, the curls of her hair were neatly tucked in and she was as presentable as she could get, given the circumstances.
By the time she finished her coffee, a young semi-tonsured man in a service uniform entered her room
‘Madam, we are ready for you. If you will follow me, this way please.’
Sienna left the cup of coffee on the table, let out a sigh and followed the stiff sergeant to a room three floors above. She checked herself once again, in the mirror in the elevator. She was wearing a white shirt and a grey skirt with a grey tunic over her shirt. She was a natural brunette with a few colored blonde streaks in her hair. She adjusted her glasses so that the rim hid the nascent crow’s feet on the side of her eyes. The glasses gave her a professorial look and she had found that to some advantage a long while ago. The sergeant escorted her to the door and held it open for her as she walked into the room.
The room was already occupied by about twenty people sitting around a central mahogany table with laptops and speakerphones before them. Two large LCD screens occupied the end of the hall and multiple small monitors lined the walls of the hall all around. The large LCD monitors had a static image from her presentation that she was required to mail to the NSA the day before.
The men around the table got up as soon as she entered the room and Sienna felt a bit awkward with the gesture. She diffidently motioned for them to stay in their seats and an elderly gentleman in uniform walked up to her with an outstretched hand.
‘Hello Dr. Sienna. I am General Keith Marshall, Director, NSA.’
Sienna took his hand
‘Hello Sir, I am Dr. Sienna Dunbar, Senior Science Officer at NASA, working with the Rosetta Orbiter data for the past fifteen years.’
‘Welcome doctor. We have Mr. Underwood from the Defense Secretariat’ he pointed to a gruff looking old man sitting at the opposite center of the table, who nodded a dismissive hello towards her.
The General continued
‘And most of the rest are staff, here at NSA. We are all very excited by what you have to tell us and if you are comfortable, we will start right away.’
Sienna nodded and the General led her to the space between the table and the LCD screens and handed her the slide changer.
She fumbled for a moment with the buttons on the remote, before heading to the console and minimizing the page on the screen and then started from the beginning
‘A very good morning to all. As all of you may be aware, we came across Comet Masaoka-Bisei after its discovery in the Tokyo observatory three weeks ago. It was assigned to my unit ten days back and since then we have been tracking its course and trajectory. This is a fairly large body that had hitherto gone undetected.’
The General interjected
‘Is that unusual?’
‘I am sorry, what is unusual?’ Sienna did not understand the question.
‘The fact that such a large body was not detected earlier.’
‘Well’ Sienna thought for a moment ‘Not exactly usual, but not unheard of either. We do come across fairly big chunks of rock once in a while. To tell you the truth, we have devoted an awfully little amount of our resources to the detection of asteroids and comets and are currently tracking only about ten percent of all these bodies. So it is not entirely inconceivable that Comet Masaoka has missed detection till now, notwithstanding its size. This Comet has a highly eccentric orbit and it is perhaps entering the inner solar system for the first time in our recorded history.’
The General nodded and Sienna continued
‘So, as I was telling you, we were tracking this comet and everything seemed very routine, as far as comets go. Like other comets, judging by its trajectory, it seemed to have its origins in the Oort cloud…’ she paused for a moment, looked at the blank faces around the table and felt compelled to explain herself, ‘the Oort cloud is the large icy graveyard of our Solar system that harbors rocks and debris of all sizes, orbiting the Sun in large, eccentric orbits. These form the fringes of our Solar system and are the last objects that receive the meager but finite influence of our Sun. Looking at the comet’s trajectory, we have a rough estimate that it takes an average of twenty six thousand years for completing a single revolution around the sun in its highly eccentric and hyperbolic orbit. We had calculated its closest proximity to Earth to be about 0.3 AUs in about twenty years time.’
Sienna fidgeted nervously when she got to this point in her presentation. She paused for a second and then continued, hesitatingly
‘But since yesterday, things seem to have changed.’
‘What do you mean?’ the guy from the Defense Secretariat whose name Sienna had forgotten by now, asked impatiently.
‘Well, the comet seems to have changed its direction and also it seems to have changed gears.’
‘Changed gears? How? Can it do that?’ this time it was General Marshall.
‘No, naturally it cannot. I guess that’s why I am standing here in front of you guys in the NSA office.’ Sienna quipped. Sienna had been very surprised to get the summons from the NSA the previous evening. Her team’s findings had been very securely logged in their department’s computer and they needed to run a few more tests before they presented their findings. There was no way NSA should have known about them and about what they were doing in a small lab at NASA.
Sienna continued
‘What we saw yesterday was that the comet seemed to have changed its direction. The deflection was minute but I mean it was there, minute but measurable. We went through the results again and again, and still came up with the same conclusions. It was a shift in the comet’s path and in its speed, what we can call an acceleration, both linear and angular.’
The General spoke up
‘Dr. Dunbar, do you have an explanation for your observations?’
‘Well I mean, it could be a collision with an asteroid but we have pretty much discounted that theory. We had our eyes on it the whole time and we did not register anything.’ Sienna was at a loss for words and mumbled further ‘we are working on it and hope to have some answers soon.’
‘Where exactly is this thing now?’ this time it was a uniformed NSA senior with a bevy of medals pinned on his chest.
Sienna had that information
‘It is currently about 600 million miles from us, somewhere in the Jovian system, around Jupiter.’
‘Is it in orbit around Jupiter?’
‘I can’t really tell you if it is going around Jupiter. By the looks of it, it isn’t influenced by Jupiter as of now.’
‘Well, if you have nothing else to add’ the General rose from his seat and motioned Sienna to take her seat, ‘I guess I have something for you then’.
Sienna hesitated a moment but, she did not really have to add anything else. She and her team had no clue to the cause of the comet’s acceleration and thought that the General was a little brusque in his dismissal of her now. However, she picked her things up and silently walked to her chair. On the General’s cue, a smart uniformed officer got up and took her place at the head of t
he table. He was young, dressed in military fatigues, having the physique of a marine and the wooden mannerisms of being in discipline for far too many years. He pulled up his presentation on the screen
‘Lieutenant Nicholas Carter from the Space Innovation and Development Center, Colorado.’ he introduced himself to the gathering. Sienna had heard of SIDC. SIDC was a front under the United States Air Force (USAF), formerly known as the Space Warfare Center, primarily dealing with unlocking new frontiers and horizons for military warfare using cutting-edge technology and billions of dollars of taxpayers’ money.
Sienna detested these guys. Compared to what they spent at SIDC, her annual budget was peanuts. She had to account for her thousands and people like Carter at SIDC probably had, unaccounted for, millions.
Lieutenant Carter continued,
‘We have been following the ‘Masaoka’ comet since its discovery. Whatever Ms. Sienna has presented before you is in concordance with what we have found until now. We have also found some disturbing oddities with the comet, which I am going to share with you today.’
He pulled up a series of slides that showed the comet’s position over the last couple of days. The pictures were definitely a better resolution compared to Sienna’s.
‘As you can see, the object in question has moved abruptly from its position on at least two different occasions. As a result of these accelerations, the final pathway that it has acquired gentlemen…’ he paused for effect and then continued ‘will lead it to a collision course with Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter.’
The General shot his question almost immediately
‘Is it going to collide with Europa?’
‘In all probability, yes.’
‘In how many days?’
Exodus (The Domus Series Book 2) Page 2
