- So this next set is finishing up.
We'll have some new
data here pretty quick.
Potentially hazardous asteroids
can show up anywhere in the
night sky at any time.
So we were up here for 12
to 13 hours sometimes
making decisions about
the objects we're seeing if they're real
or if they're just
noise in the background.
And so the odds of finding an
asteroid are gonna increase
as we move toward the, toward the east.
- 6 3 0 2 5
- Oh this might be something,
oh, you guys look at that.
Based off these four images,
this is a new brand new
near Earth asteroid.
We got one. No, like I didn't
think that was gonna happen.
We got I Yeah. No, it's brand new.
Yeah, I just got the notice back from,
from the minor planet center
that they published it.
So there it is. Bam. Live.
This is actually a big rock too right now.
It is absolutely a potentially
hazardous object if you guys
were gonna be here for a discovery.
A PHA is definitely what you
want. Yeah, this is a big rock.
Yeah, it is nominally about 230
meters in diameter, which is quite large
and it's a minimum orbit
intersection distance with earth,
which means how close it comes
to the earth's path in
the Earth's orbit is
between us and the moon.
It's only about 150,000 kilometers away,
which is a significant P-H-A-A-P-H-A
like this only comes up
a couple times per year, so,
so these are the ones we want.
Yeah, that's a nice one.
- When a two mile wide fragment
of the comet traveling
40 miles a second, pieces
of the comet that will hit Jupiter,
three fragments are scheduled to hit,
the planet will slam into the same area,
the same spot on the planet Jupiter.
- About 1993 we learned
that there was a comet heading for Jupiter
- Comet.
Shoemaker Levy nine was a
comet that was discovered
by Eugene and Carolyn
Shoemaker and David Levy.
It was shown to be broken
up into a bunch of pieces.
- They traced back the orbit.
This thing had gone by
Jupiter and got disrupted
- And then they tracked the orbit forward
and found out these are
getting to hit Jupiter and
- That got
- Everyone excited.
It's really the, the first time
that these impacts have been observed.
Impacts were very important in
the formation of everything.
- We could observe an
impact on another planet.
- Scientists still don't
know what they're going
to see tonight, but they
do know that they've come
to the best place in the world to see it.
- The whole world community,
scientific community was
preparing to observe these events.
- Any telescopes that could
observe the impact did many,
- Many ground-based
- Telescopes.
- The Hubble Space Telescope,
- All of the images from Hubble
that went on the web were
suddenly got everyone's attention,
- Which was a real key to many
of the scientific results.
- Also, - Galileo, which was
on the way to Jupiter at the
- Time, the NASA Infra telescope
facility had a campaign
dedicated to observing Shoemaker Levy.
- This observing run for the
shoemaker Levy Nine Impacts.
That was my first observing run ever. We
- Were starting tonight with
the near infrared spectometer.
- God that's gorgeous.
- We were seeing something
pop up on the screen.
It was really just shouting,
literally dancing about
and we saw this bright thing just light up
and it was like, yes, we did it.
- We were all like kids
in a candy store. I
- Guess a lot of the energy
we saw wasn't just the impact
itself, but it was the
sort of the splashback.
- And when those pieces
plowed into the atmosphere,
they brought up big plumes of material
that rained back down on the
upper part of the atmosphere,
- We're able to measure changes in the
upper atmosphere of Jupiter.
It taught us a great deal about how
- Impacts take place.
- Scientists say if a fragment
the same size hit Earth,
it would leave a crater
the size of Rhode Island.
- It was one of those wake
up calls that you know,
not only our impact something
that happened in the past,
but there're happening
now in our solar system
- And here it is this awakening.
They kind of precipitated
this NASA planetary
defense coordination office
- To make sure to find the
asteroids that come close
to earth and the comets
that come close to earth.
Get them cataloged, figure
out where they've been
and where they're going
to be in the future.
Just so we understand, are we at risk
of being impacted on the earth?
- So that's a big component
of what NASA does.
Now it has planetary defense
to find potential impacts
for the earth and protecting it.
- Let's go back to
Senator Cruz's question.
What would an asteroid that
is a kilometer in diameter,
what would it do if it hit the earth
- That is likely to
end human civilization?
- The impacts of comets,
shoemaker Levy nine
with Jupiter in 1994 that
showed us that you know
what impacts are still happening
in the solar system today
- That really spurred some interest on the
part of the Congress.
- NASA was tasked by Congress in 1998
to catalog 90% of all the
large near earth objects.
So those that are one
kilometer or more in size,
- Those objects are big enough to cause
what we would call truly
global devastation.
Meaning that they could cause
global extinction events.
The good news is that we found
more than about 95% of them.
- The catalog includes almost
900 asteroids, one kilometer
or larger in size.
- That said, none of these
known large NES pose any threat
of impact to the earth within
the next a hundred years.
- And then eventually in 2005,
that direction from Congress
to NASA was set to find
the population of asteroids
that are 140 meters
and larger in size
that could do regional
damage should it impact earth
- A city k*ller.
Now the picture's not so rosy.
We know of about 40%
of those objects today.
- Today we do not have
a complete inventory
of all the possible impactors
- And that is something that NASA
and the worldwide planetary
defense community has
been endeavoring to do.
- Well here at nasa, what I
lead is the Planetary Defense
Coordination Office.
We are helping
to coordinate efforts not
only in the United States
and across the US agencies,
but also around the world,
- Finding asteroids, tracking them,
calculating their orbits,
figuring out where they're going
to be in the future, studying
their physical properties.
And then you get that
information you might
need in the event.
And impact threat is discovered.
- We've discovered more than
30,000 near Earth objects
so far and we are discovering, you know,
hundreds you know, every year. But
- We haven't found them all.
So that's really the big question.
There's almost certainly a,
a decent sized asteroid out there
that is gonna pose an
impact threat to the planet.
We're just trying to find it right now.
So the way we approach
finding near earth objects is
basically just to make a
short movie of the night sky
that consists of four frames
and then our software will pick
out objects that are moving
inside of the four frames
and we have to identify if they are real
or if they're false detections.
I first started hunting
asteroids in my backyard
and I just had the hope
of maybe discovering one.
And when that happened, it was a very
special moment in my life.
My interest in astronomy
started at a fairly young age.
I remember as a kid seeing
Comet hell bop in the
sky from southern Utah.
It was really a
spectacular side as a child
and just trying to wrap my mind around
what I was looking at was difficult.
This is one area of science
where discoveries are still
happening on a nightly basis
and it's really a neat
feeling to, to step into that
where you can be sitting
in a telescope at night
and discover a new minor
planet that's in orbit
around the sun that nobody
has ever seen before.
It's, it's a special thing
and I think that's what draws a lot
of people into this business.
- The first order of planetary defense is
finding the asteroids.
And so one aspect of the
program is funding institutions
with telescopes that can
image wide swaths of the sky
to be able to look at
the starry background
and look for objects moving
with respect to the stars
to see is there something there
that we haven't seen before.
- This is the whole sky,
that's a all sky camera.
So you can see this is a
live video feed from the end
of the telescope and you can make out the
Milky Way right here.
And this is the size of the
images we're taking right now.
And then we subtract the known objects
and the stars from those images
and then we look for moving targets.
- The object is moving because it's closer
to the earth than the background starts.
- I can tell this first one is a star.
You can see that that object stays there.
So if I load up a catalog image,
which is a very old image,
you can see that first
it is actually a star.
That one's actually a star.
Those moving targets
are gonna be asteroids
that are in orbit around the sun.
So that's a known asteroid.
It comes up green and it has
the designation above it.
And oftentimes they're new,
we've never seen them before.
So what we have here is
a near earth asteroid
that is likely brand new
and I can already tell that
it's not coming up in any
of the known databases.
- And then what you have to do is go
and identify whether it's a known
asteroid or a new asteroid.
So that's the next step.
- When the asteroid is first discovered,
we submit the information
almost immediately
to the minor planet center at Harvard
and we are gonna send this
data off in real time here.
The temporary designation
we're going to assign
to it the date and the time
and the location on the
sky that it was located
and then it's approximate
visual magnitude.
I'm going to report it
as a brand new near earth
object candidate.
- It's important to turn that
information around quickly.
The different survey telescopes
quickly feed those position
measurements to the minor planet center,
which is the internationally
recognized repository
for position measurements
of small bodies throughout
the solar system,
- Minor planet.
I like to think as the link
between the astronomic community
and everything that comes after
that in planetary defense.
My name is Federica Spotto
and I'm the project scientist
of the minor planet center.
So part of the role of
the minor planet center is
to actually distinguish what
is known and what is not known.
We keep all the observations
and all the orbits of the objects
so we don't see the imagery,
we just see this spines
and does represent a different position
of the object moving.
And so it tells you very
accurately the time of the app
of the observations and
then then the position.
So once we have the position
and the time we can get the orbit
- So all the data comes in from,
everyone gets consolidated there.
So we have a common catalog
that we are working from
- An arch archive of
everything that is known
and everything that is not known.
The cool thing about the
minor planet center is
that everything we do is public.
So as soon as we receive the observations,
the observations goes out,
- That information can
all be rolled up there
and available for other
observatories to see them
and then go get additional observations so
that there is enough
information to get an orbit
- And anyone can then access that data
to track these objects down
and help us determine
if they are gonna be an
impact risk in the future.
- Once we find an asteroid
and we've got an orbit for it,
the next logical question is,
is it going to hit the earth?
Fortunately there's a group
here at the Jet Propulsion
Laboratory called the Center
for Near Earth Object Studies
or CNOs for Short that is
tasked with doing exactly this.
- They assess the hazard potential
of this newly discovered near earth object
- And they do orbit determination
to see both short term
and way out into the future a
hundred years into the future.
Could any of those pose an impact threat?
- My name's Ryan Park
and I'm the supervisor
of the Solar Assistant
Dynamics Group at the Jet
Proportional Laboratory.
And I'm also serving as the
project manager for Center
for nearest object studies.
So date, we maintain about
a little over 1.3 million
objects, most of them being asteroids.
We predict the motion of unknown asteroids
and we process the entire
data set from the minor planet
center to predict
and reconstruct the
orbit of the asteroids so
that we can perform statistical assessment
of the potential earth impact.
Yeah, so what we do is the,
we process the astro metric collected
by ground-based observers
and we fit those through
what we call the orbit termination
process to get the orbit
of the asteroid as a function of time
so we can propagate backwards forwards
and figure out where the o where the
asteroid is in real time.
So this basically catalogs all
the potentially hazard SRUs
that might come close to the earth
and we document the, the probability
of potential earth's impact
and if it were to hit the
with certain probability,
when is it going to be and
where is it going to be?
And we do this for next hundred years
and assess whether it's
going to be hitting the earth
and if so with what probability.
And that information gets
shared with the senior's website
as well as with the entire world.
- This data gets disseminated immediately
to many different organizations
and NASA's center
for Near Earth object
studies runs watchdogs
that are constantly ingesting this data
and calculating the odds of
an impact in the near future.
And if they find that this
object has any probability
of hitting the earth in the near future,
we will get an alert on
our systems within about
10 or 15 minutes.
- And then when people
start receiving this type
of like warning, then
there's a huge community
of astronomers that
start observing it from
- All around the globe
as the earth rotates
and nighttime falls across Asia or
- Europe.
And so we start getting
observations from all over the world
at every time and we start
processing them really quickly.
- It's a very smooth running machine.
It transcends boundaries of countries.
- Asteroids don't care about
international boundaries.
- It doesn't matter where the
asteroid impacts, it affects,
you know, the entire humanity.
In fact any anything
alive on the earth, it
- Transcends basically anything
except what makes us human
and what, what it means to help discover
and protect the planet from a hazardous
asteroid that might be incoming.
- Yeah, I'm really proud of it.
I would say it's, that's
like, yeah, I'm proud
and I'm proud that I'm
working on something
that is actually very
useful for the community.
Like we are part the defense
but also like we do everything so
that we can help the community.
- It was a great honor to have
an asteroid named after me.
So there's Ryan Park asteroid.
I mean this was a huge deal for me.
I mean I, this basically led me to believe
that I'm making some
contribution to the field.
- We didn't even know
asteroids existed 200 years ago
and it's only been in the last few decades
that we even had the technology to be able
to detect these things.
So yeah, I might be referred to the follow
of planetary defense.
I created the term perhaps, but it is only
because I, you know,
stand on the shoulders of,
of those asteroid hunters
before me that we are now able
to protect the world from asteroid impact.
- So this object has already
been ingested by the Center
for near Earth object studies
scout watchdog right off the
bat it tells us that the
probability this is a near earth
object is already 100%
and the probability it is a
potentially hazardous asteroid
is 67%.
There is no real impact
rating or probability.
So it's not currently
a threat but long term
after the arc is extended
and we have a better idea
of the orbit of this object,
this might be a brand new unknown,
potentially hazardous asteroid.
- So finding asteroids,
that's probably the most important
part of planetary defense
or the fundamental part
of planetary defense.
But it doesn't help
to see an asteroid if you
don't have enough information
to know where it's going
to be in the future.
- You can't do anything about
'em unless you find them and
and know where they're going.
- That means the race is
on to try to figure out
how can we get more data, can
we get more exposures of it so
that we can figure out which
way it's actually going
and then eventually get a
really good orbit for it so
that we can predict far into
the future where it's gonna go,
especially with respect to the earth.
- So then there are telescopes
that go zero in on those initial
observations by the surveys
and they get even more
measurements of those positions.
- My name is Cassandra Luli Space watch is
where follow up survey essentially.
So the telescope behind me
is a 0.9 meter telescope
that we use to follow
up near earth objects.
But when they're first
discovered they have very short
orbital arcs so they have
very imprecise orbits
and so if we follow them
up we get a better orbit
to determine if there's a higher chance
of them hitting the earth or not.
So these are the type of I images
that we get back from the telescope
and so you can see that our
asteroid is essentially a dot
that's moving and then the
stars look like long lines
because of how we track on the asteroid
and not on the stars.
When an asteroid is first discovered,
the minor planet center
is able to calculate kind
of a location on the
sky where it should be.
So we already have an idea of
how the asteroid's gonna
be moving so we take
that assumed motion and move with it.
So my typical day
or night I guess we
typically observe for four
to six nights straight and
we come up to the mountain
and we have dorms up here.
So we stay up here the
whole time we're observing
and what happens is that we'll
open the two telescopes we
then have on our computers kind of a list
of all the objects we can see
that needs follow up right away.
There's a few objects we can choose here.
I like to go for virtual impactors
'cause they're top of our list.
They have a probability of hitting us.
We'll pick the best targets for the night.
Some of them come in as
we're observing overnight.
If they're newly discovered
and they need follow up then
so let's say I want to go
for this object, what I would
do is I would accept it in my
queue and then I would accept the value
and send it for recovery.
What that would do is that
would move the telescope.
So we get three images
of it to see it move
and to see what speeds and move
and then we measure its
location on the sky,
that is the measurement we report back
to the minor planet center.
Well that's an asteroid right here.
It's really cool when you're
looking like at an image from
the sky and you see a moving dot.
Like every time I find that
moving asteroid, I'm excited
by it because it means you
found it like you found a thing
in space that is moving, like
it's right there on my image,
I can see it.
So right there is our object
and it's moving right there.
So the first image is in the
star, so we can't measure that.
But then the second and
third image are right there.
So we can actually measure those
and that new measurement then
helps better predict the orbit
fit and thus better predict
where it would be in the
sky next time someone needs
to observe it to follow it up.
- The most important thing
is always get more data
because the more data you get,
the better you are at refining the
orbit and know where the object
- Is.
And if you take another
image a little bit further,
you can then put another data point
and then you can keep
tracing that orbit around.
- As you collect more
observations, the orbit
of the asteroid in question
will get better and better.
- I really like that I'm
protecting the planet
and yes, I'm not the one that's like
with a cape pushing the asteroid away.
That's not what I do. In
some ways like my little
contribution might help not just myself
but someone in the future
and I think it's very
important to do that.
- So last night while
surveying in an area of the sky
where we don't typically
find a lot of objects,
I di discovered an object
that had to be fairly large
to be visible for where it was in the sky.
- So here is the asteroid
that Catalina Sky survey
discovered a few days ago
and we can also tell that
it's a pretty big object.
- The asteroid has to be
observed for many weeks
and months into the future so
we can extend that data arc
- So the orbit of
that potentially hazardous
asteroid is known
into the future.
- So the discovery arc
of the asteroid consists
of just four points of
data over 20 minutes
and that is a really small snapshot
of the entire orbit of the asteroid
- And it was able to be followed
up all around the globe so
that we didn't lose that asteroid.
And you can see that it's been followed up
by several different
telescopes right here.
So the R arc length means it's been
observed for more than a day.
So that is where it comes the closest
to intersecting the earth's orbit
and telescope around the
world will continue taking
observations of this object
to keep seeing if it has a potential
of hitting the earth or not.
- Well at the current rate of detection
of near earth asteroids is
gonna take us about another 30
years before we have this catalog
that we've been tasked by Congress to do.
- We've only discovered
less than 40% of the 90%
of the object we need to discover.
- Finding the asteroids isn't something
that can just happen overnight
because telescopes can
only see so far away
or they can only see so faint into
what they might be looking for out there.
- Ground-based telescopes
are kind of limited
to looking at night away from the sun
- And we have to wait for the solar system
to bring asteroids around.
The earth is traveling around the sun,
the asteroids are traveling around the sun
and so it isn't possible
to see the entire solar
system at the same time.
- It's hard to find asteroids
because relative to the size of the earth
and the distances within
the inner solar system,
they don't get bright enough to spot
until they get closer to the planet.
- One of the tricky things with searching
for neuro objects is that some
of them are extremely dark,
they're darker than lumps of coal
and that means that when we
look for them using the sunlight
that reflects off their
surfaces, they're actually hard
to spot because they're dim and faint.
- There are asteroids out there
that are very darkly colored
and don't reflect a lot
of light from the sun
and so they're difficult for
the telescopes on the ground
to discover that are looking at the light
that we can see with our eyes.
- So how do you overcome this?
We have to go into space, we have
to use different wavelength
and reflected light.
All the telescopes on the earth
that are currently finding
near the asteroids are
discovering in the visible wavelength.
They're primarily looking
at light reflected
by the asteroid from the sun.
The sunlight hits the
asteroid reflects just like
everything in the solar system.
- One way we can kind of
get around this is instead
of looking at the sunlight
reflecting off their surfaces,
we can use the heat that
they emit to search for them.
If we have a heat seeking
telescope working at infrared
wavelengths, even the dark
objects just pop right out.
They stick out very brightly
because they've got a lot
of heat that they reradiate
and we can see that energy.
- Once you go into space,
you're away from the heat of the earth.
You can start looking in
the infrared wavelengths
because in in in the infrared wavelengths,
asteroids have more energy being given out
because a lot of them are darker.
So they absorb that
radiation in the daytime
and in the nighttime they re reradiate.
So they're very bright. You don't need
that big a telescope in
space to detect the asteroids
that you would from the
earth using visible light
and near earth object surveyor
is one such telescope.
- The near earth object surveyor mission
or NEO surveyor for short neo
surveyor is a space telescope
that we're building that's
designed to detect track
and characterize asteroids
and comets that have the potential
to get close to the earth.
- That'll also be positioned in such a way
that it can survey closer
to the sun than the
telescopes on the ground.
- Because of this nice tall sunshade,
we can actually point
relatively close to the sun
and that lets us look far
across the solar system so
that we can spot the asteroids
when they're far away from us
- So that working in concert
with the telescopes on the ground is going
to really accelerate those
objects getting into the catalog.
- With new surveyor, we should be able
to see something like a few
hundred thousand new near earth
objects over the course of its survey.
- We expect the numbers
will increase by somewhere
between factor of five
to 10 in the next decade.
- They're gonna give us lots of data
and they're gonna require from us
to have different tools ready
to handle the data in the best way we can.
- This increase rate of
detection in the number
of observations that are
will be coming into the minor
planet center does require
the minor planet center
to be able to process
things at a more rapid rate
and we are ready for it.
- And hopefully that's gonna
tell us a lot about the largest
objects in the populations.
The ones that are, are really truly large
that have the potential for a large amount
of ground damage if they
were to impact the earth.
- This is still kind of
a golden age of discovery
for asteroids.
One day in the future
we will have found all
of these objects and this period
of asteroid discovery will come to a close
for the most part, at least the, the rocks
that could pose a significant threat
to the earth will eventually
all be catalog characterized
and either dealt with or
removed from the risk lists.
- Any piece that you can
do to help you should do it
and I think that's really important.
You don't have to be a planetary scientist
to go into planetary defense.
- It's just an amazing
thing to take science
and apply it in such a way
that it affects people's everyday lives.
- Well for me it's very
personally satisfying
to be involved in in,
in an effort like this found
my role in life so to speak.
- So for me it is very personal
because I have a chance, I'm
fortunate enough to contribute,
you know, using science to
protect the humanity, you know,
to protect the planet for
that matter, you know,
and everything that is on it
because we only have one earth.
- The expl*si*n of a meteor
over Russia last month injured
1500 people.
- The recent meteorite
that hit the Russian murals
with the force of an atomic
b*mb was a stark wake up call
regarding threats from space.
- When the arid passed through
the earth's atmosphere,
it did so at a really high speed,
something like 40,000 miles an hour.
- I had an expl*sive energy
about 25 times the ex,
the b*mb used in Hiroshima
or about 470 kilotons of TNT.
- It did cause a massive shockwave
that shattered windows all over the city.
- This much smaller meteorite
was not observed prior
to its entry into the atmosphere.
- The bins impact came from
the direction of the sun.
- It was on a very difficult
tr trajectory for us to be able
to see from ground-based telescopes.
- Scientists testified about
how these objects are tracked
and how those risks can be minimized.
- As we were reminded
a couple of weeks ago,
the earth is sometimes hit by asteroids.
- Impacts have happened and
they will happen in the future.
- That asteroid was only
about 18 meters across
that would fit inside this room. Roughly
- This asteroid never made a big impact
crater on the ground.
That's because it wasn't big
enough originally to make it
to the ground fully intact.
- So the impacts of airbus
are different from an impact
that is physically going
to touch the ground.
- The asteroid slammed
through earth atmosphere.
It was like hitting a brick wall
and it just pulverized
it into a million little
pieces like this one here.
- Even just from that 20 meter
asteroid disintegrating in
earth atmosphere, the shockwave
from that that did damage
- The inside of the asteroid is stony.
It looks like an ordinary rock.
- We need to know more about these objects
that could impact us.
- How big is it? What it made
out of? How does it spin?
How much potential for damage
it might pose on the ground?
- The earth has been bombarded
by asteroids of its history
and it will be hit by asteroids.
Again. The questions that we're trying
to answer in planetary
defense are when, where,
and which rock is gonna do it.
- So what we have here is a
diversity of meteorites where
they range from stony meteorites
like the ones you see here.
A, a great example of that is
bins which fell in Russia in 2013.
We want to understand the threat
that is coming towards us.
Part of understanding the threat is
understanding the capabilities.
Oftentimes the physical make makeup
of an object tells us about
its capability, its impact,
potential, what can it do on the earth?
So studying the composition
tells us whether it's an iron,
whether it's stones or
stony iron or carbon ace.
A weak object which has low
density is not going to make it
to the, into the atmosphere
and intact onto the earth.
Okay? So you would have
an airbus for example.
Whereas if you have really
dense object like this iron
meteorite, it'll punch right
through the atmosphere
even if it's a small object
and then it will create
a crater like the meteor
crater we see in Arizona.
So what do these meteorite tell us, right?
Why do we need to
characterize these objects?
So by understanding the
composition we can figure out
what is the mitigation
mechanism we are gonna use
because the tools we would
use vary vastly depending
upon what they're made of.
To understand what asteroids
are, you had to go back to kind
of the beginning of our solar system.
- Asteroids are rocky bodies that are kind
of left over fragments from when our
solar system first formed.
A long time ago, more
than 4 billion years ago,
- Major planets formed when
the first solids condensed
out of the solar nebula.
These solids slowly coalesced, you know,
came together eventually
to form what you call
as planetesimals.
These are objects that
are, you know, a few tens
to a few hundred kilometers across
and you had, you know, internal
heat, you know that led to
what you call as differentiation.
They'll have a core, a mantle and a crust.
So these iron meteorites we
see here represents the cores
of those planetesimals.
So we believe that they
were more than a hundred
planetesimals that
differentiated between the orbits
of Mars and Jupiter.
But most of these planet als
were destroyed catastrophically
due to impacts over the next
few hundred million years.
And what we see now in the
asteroid belt on remnants
of those catastrophic destructions,
- Most of the material that
made up our solar system kind
of got swept up into the sun
and to the individual
planets. But not all of it,
- You know, it's kind of like shattering a
plate on the floor.
You know you have a
few big pieces but lots
and lots of small pieces.
- So asteroids are kind of
those leftovers of the formation
of the solar system.
A lot of them keep their
distance very nicely in the
asteroid belt between the
orbits of Mars and Jupiter.
But some of them over time
because of being tweaked
by the gravitational pole
of Jupiter and whatnot,
have made their way into
the inner solar system.
And so some of these
leftovers from the formation
of the solar system can
get a little too close
for comfort to earth.
- That's how we end up
with near the asteroids.
- We'd really like to
understand the distribution
of these objects, their compositions
and kind of where they come from.
- So that's what we're trying to find out.
- How do they leak into the
inner part of the solar system
and get into this region
near the Earth's orbit?
- You don't wanna just know
that the asteroid is there.
You wanna know how large
is it, what is it made of?
So there are telescopes that then go out
and study particular
characteristics of asteroids
to the extent they can from the ground.
- So we want to find out
what is the composition
of the object, how fast it's spinning,
whether it's one object or two objects.
And of course we want to
know, you know, the mass
of the object and for that we need
to have an accurate idea on its size.
That's where radar comes into play.
- Yeah, that's cool to finally see it.
- This is the biggest in this complex.
The it's 70 meters in diameter,
all the other ones are 34.
This is the most powerful
planetary radar on earth.
So here we are at the Goldstone
Solar System radar in the
middle of the Mojave Desert
about a few hours drive from
Pasadena at the Jet Propulsion Lab.
This is where I connect
remotely to observe
near earth asteroids.
I'm Shante Nunu, I'm a asteroid
radar researcher here at
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory.
- Oh that's amazing.
- Whenever an asteroid comes close
to earth, we use this radar to observe it,
which can tell us about
the shape of the asteroid.
It can show details on the
surface of the asteroid such
as ridges, concavities, craters.
We can also measure the precise
distance to the asteroid.
- And then from all of that you get,
you get really fantastic science
and then you get that
information you might need in the
event an impact threat is discovered.
- So radar is an active form
of observing an asteroid in the sense
that we generate our own
electromagnetic waves.
We use really high power transmitters
to transmit electromagnetic waves in the
direction of the asteroid.
The asteroid reflects these waves.
They get distorted during this process
and they come back towards earth.
So you have signals from
space coming in, reflecting
of the primary dish, reflecting
onto the secondary dish
and then they reflect
onto the instruments.
We can compare the
distorted received waveform
with what we sent.
And using this comparison we are able
to generate highly detailed
images or maps of the asteroid.
So one example I can show you is 2024 mk,
which was a recent
target that we observed.
We were able to obtain these
very high resolution images
where each pixel is under
two meters in resolution.
If I zoom in here,
you can see all these
intricate details on the
surface of the asteroid.
Like you can see these radar dark regions,
you can see it's a very irregular shape.
There's a lot of things
that look like ridges.
So we can, we can track these features
and we can measure the
spin rate of this asteroid.
So there's a control room in the pedestal.
This is where the telescope operators sit.
We send them the orbits of the asteroid,
we send them the observing plan,
we send them the configurations we want
to observe the asteroids with.
So this is where the
telescope, the operators sit
and this is where they
control all the equipment from
and that's where the data
gets collected in the
computer behind.
And that's what we connect to
to download the processed images at JPL.
This seems like a nice
setup, so I'll send it
to the telescope operators.
When we start observing an asteroid,
we need a very accurate orbit
so we can point accurately at the target.
We get a spectra, update the orbit,
we get a course revolution
image, we update the orbit again.
And so we transmit for
a fixed amount of time,
which is the round trip
light time to the asteroid.
And as soon as that time elapses,
that is when we start receiving the echo.
We switch from the
transmitter to the receiver.
It takes a few seconds to
travel a few million miles
back into space and
reflect off the asteroid.
So we transmit for an
entire round trip time
and then as soon as the
echoes start reaching back
to the telescope, that's when
we switch to the receiver and,
and then we record the
whole transmitted wave.
So for one round trip time and
that constitutes one image.
And once we get a good orbit,
we can start getting these
higher resolution images.
It's always exciting
because it's the first time
anyone is looking at the
features on the surface of this asteroid.
Most of the asteroids that we observe,
we've not seen them before.
And so whatever you see
with the radar is a surprise
and a lot of the times it's
discovering something new.
It is very cool to know that
at least for a few minutes
or maybe even a few days,
you're the only person in the
world who knows this thing.
It's, it's very exciting,
it's a very exciting feeling.
There's a sense of
responsibility knowing that,
that I'm part of such an important team
and we are all tackling
such an important problem
of asteroid threat
assessment and medication.
- Let's say we discovered something
and we only had a small
window to observe it
and quickly turn around
information about its properties.
- What if we find an asteroid that's going
to impact the earth next week?
- Then all of a sudden
an opportunity came up
that nature gave us an
asteroid designated 2023
DZ two was discovered.
- So this object was discovered
by a team in the Canary
Islands in in Europe
- When it was discovered, the
observations were directly
sent to the minor planet center
and then we publish everything.
The role of the minor planet
center is to distinguish
what is known and what is not known.
We define them as a complete new object.
And so in the following
couple of hours, a lot
of observers from all over the
world that started observing it.
And then it was like a really
large impact probabilities,
which means it could impact the earth
- Over a period of a few days.
It was had high impact potential
three years from the discovery date
- And originally it had a
decently high probability
of hitting earth at its first discovery
and then it was followed up
and the probability went up
- And that this IMP probability
stayed high even if people
were sending more and more observations.
Which means that the path
on which the asteroid was,
was really towards the Earth.
- 2023 DZ two was a significant asteroid.
That kind of close approach
to the earth of a rock
that size might only happen a
handful of times per century.
- And then eventually it turned out
that it was coming really close
but it wasn't hitting the earth.
- Other observations had been made
to take 2023 DZ two off the risk list.
So that was a good thing.
- Suddenly the probability
of hitting earth goes down
and that's because the
more points you gather,
the better refined your orbit can become.
- At nasa, we thought this
would be a good opportunity
to launch an observing
campaign in coordination
with the International
Asteroid Warning Network to try
to get the worldwide community together
to gather observations
about physical properties
of an asteroid and turn
that around quickly.
- So we essentially had a
very short five day campaign
where we had to reduce the impact risk
by observing the object
and collecting more
positions along its orbit,
understand its rotation period,
understand its composition,
try and observe it with radar
to get some physical information
like the size and volume
and try and input all this
information in an impact hazard
model to see what would be
the impact on the ground.
So we were able to pull all
of this stuff off within
a matter of five days.
- We took this real world
opportunity to exercise the whole
system and campaign that would
be done if a potential impact
or was found
- In case we were ever
faced with a situation
where we needed to do that
to measure the properties
of an asteroid during a
short window in a coordinated
fashion with the worldwide community.
- So we used the Goldstone
radar to observe it
and we managed to obtain
images with the resolutions
of under four meters on
this asteroid, which showed
that it was an irregular body,
it was spinning extremely rapidly
based on the visible
extents in the radar images,
we could tell that the
asteroid was somewhere about
30 to 40 meters.
So a bit smaller than
what we could estimate
using just the visible,
it was an important target
to practice working together
to exercise the systems in
order to refine the orbit
and improve the characterization
of the asteroid.
- So my students
and I, we observed this object using
telescopes one on campus.
We use the NASA infrared
telescope facility,
which is on Monica Hawaii.
It is one of the few telescopes
in the world that is capable
of telling what asteroids are made of.
So we try and do geology
with the telescope.
We're trying to do
prospecting, you know, trying
to understand what minerals
are there on these asteroids
and using those ral signatures, kind
of the spectral fingerprints to identify
what fingerprint matches
with those of as meteorites
that we have in the lab.
So that's what we were
trying to do with DZ two.
- So this is the 2023 DZ two,
- This is the motion,
this is the, the object
that's moving there is DZ two, correct?
- Yeah. So you can see it
moving through the starfield
- Starfield and that's the spectrum
of the visible spectrum right next to it.
The first order visible spectrum. Yeah.
So in the end what we
assess about DZ two was
that it was a much
brighter than we expected
because when an asteroid is
discovered, we don't know
how bright or dark it is.
So that sets a range in size, okay?
You can slowly narrow down
the size depending on more
characterization information.
So if you have radar that
gives you a very accurate,
you know, diameter, you know,
pretty close to the final thing.
If you have thermal infrared measurements,
you can constrain the observation.
So you can constrain
the diameter for that.
But you also have composition,
composition tells you something about
how bright the object is.
So that gives you an additional
piece of information.
So no one technique gives
you the ultimate answer,
but complementary sets
of information from different telescopes,
different techniques kind
of let us converge to
to, to one answer.
And the case of DZ two, what
we've done is with the IRTF,
we spectrally characterize, we
looked at the light reflected
of DZ two in different wavelengths
and in the infrared, in the
wavelengths we cannot see,
but rattlesnakes can see, you know, kind
of like heat seeking stuff.
What we see is a unique spectral signature
for a specific mineral
that is only found in this particular type
of meteorite called alite.
And we have a few of
those in our collection.
You know, both that fell on
the earth fell in Antarctica.
So here's an example of it.
This is an alite, it's
essentially white, okay?
It's reflecting 60 to 70% of the light.
What we do is that take this meteorite,
crush them into a powder
and put them in a lab
spectrometer to get the spectrum
of this meteorite.
In other words, how is light interacting
with it at different wavelengths?
So what we do here is
that we take a sample
and then we crush it and
we have it, you know,
being observed by the spectrometer
that we have it here instead of the sun.
We have a light source that
is reflecting, you know,
off the sample and we're
collecting visible infrared spectra
off that sample that we have.
Spectrum is nothing but light
split into many wavelengths
and using that spectrum we
compare the same thing we get
from the NASA infrared
telescope and we can try
and match, you know, the spectrum
of the meteorite in the lab
versus the telescopic spectrum,
you know, off the near
earth object itself.
And by taking this spectrum
and comparing it to the one
that's coming off the telescope
off the near earth asteroid,
we should be able to compare
and tell what the near
earth asteroid is made of.
Because it was so bright,
you don't need the object to be that big.
So it ended up being smaller than
what we expected of the size range.
And because if it's smaller,
you know, hopefully we pray
that the atmosphere takes care of it
and we won't have much
impact on the ground.
So that's what ended up
happening is that we managed
to nail the composition
of the object very well using the NASA
infer telescope facility.
- So 2023 DZ two was a really interesting
example of planetary defense working
on an international scale.
So it's really a resounding success in
multiple organizations across
the planet coming together.
And the fact that we
were able to discover it,
characterize it, determine it was a risk,
and then remove that risk all
before it passed close
to the planet was a pretty amazing feat.
- Let's say we do find something
that poses an impact
threat to earth. What next?
- The day is coming when
Earth will get impacted.
The D source went to extend
because they didn't have a space program.
We do have one
- We can, so why stop there?
- 10, 9, 9, 8, 7, 6, 5, 4, 3, 2, 1
- And lift off of the Falcon nine
and DART on NASA's first
planetary defense test
to intentionally crash into an asteroid.
- We're embarking on a
new era of humankind.
- We're doing this mission to prove
that we can deflect an asteroid
- Even if we do everything
right, our sensors work well,
our spacecraft is doing well.
Even then we might still miss
- 4, 3, 2, 1.
- For the first time ever,
humanity has changed the orbit
of a planetary body.
- NASA confirms
that DART successfully
changed the targeted
asteroids trajectory.
Now this is a watershed
moment for planetary defense
and a watershed moment for humanity
- As was demonstrated
with the DART mission.
If an asteroid were ever discovered
that could pose an impact threat to earth
and we do have the capability
to deflect an asteroid in space
and to change its orbit.
- You know, once we've found an object
and determined that it
could be an impact threat
to the earth, what do
we do to mitigate it?
- Eventually we have to be ready
to nudge an asteroid off its scores.
- NASA's recently demonstrated
a a particular type
of mitigation technique
that we call kinetic impact
- In case there was an
asteroid coming towards earth
and you are there, you
can actually stop it.
I mean that's kind of fantastic.
- Our double asteroid
redirection test dart always a
demonstration of using a
kinetic impactor technique.
- The idea is pretty simple.
You basically just take a spacecraft
and you run it into an asteroid
and bump it out of the way what
- You think science fiction.
But this is real.
Never in my life would I have
thought I would take a couple
hundred million dollars spacecraft
and crash it into an asteroid.
- Its main goal was to go
to an asteroid with its moon
to hit the moon and see
how much it changed the orbit of the moon.
- The moonlit dim morphos,
which orbits the asteroid did.
Amos, in order to change dim Morphos orbit
and show that we can deflect incoming
asteroids if we need to.
- Dart will only be changing
the period of the orbit
of Dior FOSS via a tiny amount.
And really that's all
that's needed In the event
that an asteroid is
discovered well ahead of time
before it might impact
- Earth and space just a
little bit is just enough
to make an asteroid actually miss us.
So behind me you see the
spacecraft, it's really cool
to see it coming together in
- Real life.
It is fantastic to see it in real life,
- To see it turn from
ideas into real pieces
that are gonna go into space.
- The solar arrays will actually roll out
to 28 feet in length.
Once the solar arrays
are deployed, it's going
to be the size of a school bus.
As the solar array opens out, it's going
to swing out in this direction.
To me the most important thing
and the most exciting things is all the
technical challenges.
My job was primarily
to make sure all the systems on the
spacecraft work together.
On top, you see the next
sea thruster over here is
our star tracker.
And then over here is
our high gain antenna.
My job is to make sure we launch.
My job is to make sure we're
able to receive data back.
My job is to make sure we hit,
there's Draco on the bottom
of the spacecraft as well,
of course is integration
and test
the asteroids.
Only two football fields in size
- We're flying at over
six kilometers a second.
- 30 days out we see one
pixel on our field of view.
- They can see did Amos and demo
Morphos is one point of light.
- About four hours out our
spacecraft becomes autonomous.
- And then that's where
everything gets really exciting.
- You actually are seeing impact.
- The algorithm has to identify
and hit the target in the
field of view of the camera.
And so you could just imagine
if it was a human being
joysticking this because
we don't know for sure
what the asteroids look like.
Our simulation gives us the capability
to use different asteroid shapes
and asteroid objects to see
that our smart NAV algorithm performs
against all these unknowns
- Astronomers that are going to measure
how much DART changed DIM
Morphos is orbit using
ground-based telescopes
all over the world.
These curves show the
brightness change due
to dim morphos moving
in front of and behind.
Did Amos, we can tell
how quickly DIM Morphos is moving around.
Did Amos, we make these
measurements before DART arrives
and then this is the same
technique that we'll use
after the impact to determine
how much we've changed the orbit by
- This is Lowell Observatory.
Lowell is one of many
observatories around the world
that will be observing the dark impact.
NASA's first ever planetary
defense test mission to see
how much a spacecraft impact can
deflect an asteroid in its orbit.
This is where Pluto was discovered
and we are still doing
research in all areas
of astronomy today.
So let's go check it out.
This is the Pluto telescope,
the telescope that was used
to discover Pluto almost
a hundred years ago.
So here we are at the Clark Telescope.
This is where first of all,
low's at to observe Mars.
Let's head on over to the
Lowell Discovery telescope about
an hour south of Flagstaff,
which is where we are going
to be collecting data
for the DART mission.
And the reason we're all the
way out here in the middle
of this forest is that we
have really dark skies here.
And this is the lull discovery telescope.
This is what a 4.3 meter
telescope looks like.
This is what we'll be using to
study DIDYMO and DIM Morphos.
In the days and weeks
after DART impact,
the DART spacecraft will be
hitting an asteroid called Dior
foss a special because
it's a binary asteroid,
which means a satellite
around a larger asteroid
called Diddy Mouses
and DART will actually
be hitting DIM morphos.
And what we will be measuring is
how much DART changes the orbit
of DIM morphos around Didymo.
And so this is an important test
for planetary defense
mitigation strategies in case we
have to do this for real.
The Lowell Discovery Telescope
is one of many telescopes
around the world, which will be used
to study did IMOs and Dior fos.
It's really a global coordinated effort.
And what we're looking at here
is a large 4.3 meter primary
mirror that's in the middle
of the telescope tube here.
Up at the top is a secondary mirror.
The secondary mirror up top there is
what is focusing the light
down onto the instruments
and allows us to take
images with the camera
that's located down at the bottom.
This is maybe one of my
favorite hidden rooms
at the telescope.
We're like standing inside the telescope
and underneath the telescopes,
a hundred tons above your head.
Held up by this and this, which is cool.
It's sort of as you can see the
the highest peak around here.
Just over 8,000 feet. And
come up here for sunset.
Oh my god, you know,
sun setting right there.
It's just, it's perfect.
For dart, we're gonna be
collecting images of the night sky
and typically an observer
would be here in front of one
of these consoles
controlling the instrument
and taking images like these
as they're coming in off the telescope.
DART is really a sort of
before and after experiment.
We need to understand the system
before the spacecraft
intentionally impacts,
and then we have to
understand what the outcome of
that impact event is as
we watch from the earth.
Dior FOS will pass in front of did mouses
and behind did mouses.
What we will be doing with
those images is measuring the
brightness of Diddy mouses in those images
and looking at how that
brightness changes.
And those dips and brightness
allow us to measure when
these eclipse happen
and measure the orbit
period of dim morphos.
And so you have essentially
a fixed star field here.
All the white dots or stars
of different brightness.
And moving through this field is Didi Moss
and DIM morphos, which again,
we can't distinguish them
as discrete points of light,
but we have that small object moving
through the field of view.
So after impact, we will
then be able to go back
and start observing intensely looking
for those mutual events,
those eclipse events
of dim fos passing in front
of and behind DIDI Mosts.
And on each one of these frames,
we're measuring the
brightness to assess whether
or not it's undergoing one of these events
where Dior FOS is passing
in front of or behind.
This is such a cool experiment.
It's such a singular experiment
using the ground-based
telescopes like this one
and others around the world
to to watch the systems
and see how it's affected
by this impact event.
Because that's really what's
gonna give us the answer to
what did DART do at the time of impact.
And that will be exciting to see how
that evolves over the days and
weeks following that impact.
- Good afternoon everybody.
Two weeks ago we conducted humanities,
first planetary defense test.
- The team is measured
that the orbital period
of dimorphic has changed.
- Astronomers have been using
telescopes on earth to measure
how much that time has changed.
- These telescopes have been
observing this system nightly.
And that's what you see
going across here on this
graph on the top.
Just this nightly telescopic data night
after night after night.
- And it resulted in moving an asteroid
and actually changing its orbit
by a few millimeters per second.
Now that doesn't sound like a lot,
but acting over a long period
of time, it could be enough
to help move something out of the way
of the earth should we ever need to do so.
- It was expected to be a huge
success if it only slowed the
orbit by about 10 minutes,
but it actually slowed it by 32 minutes.
- The whole world has been watching this.
Wow, I need, what an exciting
- Day for the DART team in
case you're keeping score.
Humanity won asteroids zero.
- So dart, the dinosaurs
are made completely extinct
by an asteroid impact so many years ago.
Here we are, we can actually
do something about it.
I think this is just wonderful.
- There are times, you know, in a year
or in in a decade when
you are in awe, humanity.
You know what I mean? Despite everything
that happens in the world on
a day-to-day basis in a new
cycle, there are times when
you know, human beings kind
of come together to do great things.
And I think for me personally,
dart was one of those moments
where you are just in
absolute awe of humanity.
You know, here we are taking a spacecraft
and flying it, you know, hundreds
of millions of, you know,
kilometers away and hitting
an object with that Christian
and it all happens in,
in, in a blink of an eye.
You know what I mean? It was
not a long mission, you know,
and, and, and I think
I, I'm very, very proud
of my colleagues who
managed to pull that off.
- It demonstrates how far
we've come as a species
in the last few centuries,
even from the first rockets
launched into outer space,
the first asteroids being
discovered to the ability
to realize what threat
asteroids pose to the planet.
And now the capability
demonstrated to send a spacecraft
to an asteroid that's in
orbit around the sun and
and show that we have the
capability if we have enough lead
time to alter its orbit.
That to me was just a fascinating
moment in human history.
- Oh yeah, did watch it. I
was like, it was super cold.
I did watch the the Dark Mission.
- Yes, I have watched the dart
impact. It was pretty amazing
- Last video that they were showing live
and then you saw everything
up until to the last moment.
I thought that there was
such a big achievement
as something like people
work on it for so long
and it proved that we can do it.
- The dart impact day was one
of the most exciting days in my career.
We watched the impact here at JPL.
The impact was bigger than I had expected,
but I was also excited
because we had an observing run
for observing Didymo just
about 11 hours after impact
and it would be the first
opportunity to see how much
of an effect the impact had did.
Amos was all I was thinking
about the whole day.
I couldn't sleep. The observing
run started at about 3:00 AM
that night and we had our first echo
of did Amos after impact.
We weren't expecting to measure
the deflection that night,
but the echo was off from
where it should have been
if there was no dark impact
and I couldn't believe my eyes.
I was like, either there's some
problems in the measurement
or this is a real detection,
just 12 hours after impact.
So this was the first
Goldstone radar detection
of the effect
of the dart impact on the
orbit of Dim Morpheus.
The yellow circle, it circles the location
where the echo from amorphis
should have been had there been
no dart impact.
But then the red is circles,
the echo of dim morphos,
which you can see is this white.here
and you can see it's quite far away from
where it should have
been without the impact.
- And it just gave it a small nudge.
But if you wanted to
do this in the future,
potentially it could potentially work,
but you'd want to do it years in advance.
Warning time is really key here
in order to enable this sort
of asteroid deflection to
potentially be used in the future
and is part of a much larger
planetary defense strategy.
- The dart mission was the first kinetic
impact or demonstration.
- It was a successful
demonstration of of that technique.
There are also other possible techniques
- If you do find one that is coming.
Definitely there are several options.
- There are different type of mitigation
and they actually depend
on when you discover
that the object is gonna impact.
- Well, one of the most important
things we can do to ensure
that mitigation actually works
is we need to provide time.
- Time is your best friend.
- I have time to build a
spacecraft, go to space,
analyze the object, try
to understand what type
of physical properties this object has.
- Then what we call the
reconnaissance mission to fly
by a rendezvous so that we
have a better understanding of
what the asteroid is,
such as the size, the mass
- Chemical composition for example.
It is a solid rock as it has
boulders, something like that.
And then you wanna know its
target in a very accurate way
because you wanna track it down
and like go straight on it.
- The next step is to
figure out a, the mission
that could potentially
deflect the asteroid.
- There are other techniques
though that still remain
to be tested for asteroid deflection.
- A gravity tractor for instance,
where you just have a spacecraft of, of,
of some significant mass a station keep
with the asteroid in
the right position and,
and the mutual attraction
between the two objects
will allow the spacecraft
to slowly tug the asteroid off
of the impacting trajectory.
Another technique might
be an ion beam deflector
where you've got a spacecraft
that turns its ion
engines onto the surface
of the asteroid, continuously
bombarding the surface
of the asteroid, does create
a pressure on its surface and
therefore a force that
changes the velocity of the asteroid.
Of course, all the Hollywood movies like
to use nuclear expl*sives.
It's very dramatic and exciting,
but we wouldn't blow the asteroid up
like they do in the movies.
You detonate the device, the
bombards, the surface of the
asteroid with heavy radiation
that causes the surface
material to vaporize
and jet off and
and creates instantaneous
rocket engine so to speak,
and shoves the asteroid.
- Really the goal that NASA
is to find the asteroids years
or decades in advance
that could pose an impact threat to earth.
And then you have the gift of time
to address possibly not having
that impact happen at all.
NASA is just one piece in the puzzle.
NASA has its role
as the information gatherer from space
and conveying that
information to other agencies.
- Every piece of the puzzle mu
must rise up to the occasion
and perform seamlessly.
To do that, we have to practice.
- NASA also participates
in interagency exercises
with many others across
the US government to step
through a situation where
an asteroid is discovered
so many years ahead of time.
Here is the type of information
that is known about it.
Here are the possibilities
of what could happen next.
- Good morning everybody.
Thank you for coming.
It's been a pleasure. This
is our fifth exercise.
- Welcome to the fifth
Interagency Planetary Defense
table tap exercise.
- This exercise is incredibly important
to bring together the world
experts and decision makers.
Op Planetary Defense,
national Space Council,
- Shema
- NASA headquarters,
- US Space Command,
- The Department of State
to better prepare us for
what is an inevitable
future asteroid impact.
We know it will happen.
We, we just don't know
when it will happen.
- You know, really this
exercise is focuses on is
how we plan and coordinate
our activities in response
to a potential impact for it all
to come together into a plan
on, on how we save the world.
- And with that, I invite you all
to open the blue envelope in your folder.
And what you have in front of
you is a notification from the
International Asteroid
Warning Network about this
hypothetical scenario of a asteroid impact
for the near Earth asteroid 2023 TTX.
- At this point in the
scenario, the impact probability
of the asteroid is 72% as calculated
by NASA JPLC Neos, and by the
ISA NIO Coordination Center.
The impact date would be
the 12th of July, 2038.
The potential impact locations
would span a corridor from
the South Pacific across
North America, the Atlantic,
the Iberian Peninsula, the
Mediterranean coast of Africa,
Egypt to the coast of Saudi Arabia.
Now the size of the object
based on observations from the
ground, it's highly uncertain
based on the brightness
and the unknown surface reflectivity,
the coloring of the asteroid.
And so it's most likely
estimated to be in the range
of a hundred to 320 meters based on, on
what is known about asteroids,
but potentially at the extreme range of 60
to 800 meters in diameter.
- Alright, so the next
critical factor to consider is
of course, how many
people could be affected
by these different damage sizes along the
different impact locations.
- It's certainly regional to
country scale based on that,
that size range
- Four asteroids in
this general size range,
the primary hazard is
going to be local blast
and thermal ground damage.
And the larger sizes
could also cause tsunami.
So overall the average population risk is
around 270,000 people
among all the potential
earth impacting cases.
And then of course there's
still that 28% chance
that the asteroid could swing
by earth and miss us entirely.
- We have filled out the
uncertainty in 2038 with a bunch
of white dots and,
and we really don't know which
of those white dots is the real asteroid.
And so we just, we
simulate virtual asteroids
and we just run them
all towards the earth.
The current situation is
that we don't know where it will hit.
We just know that it
will hit along this line.
- For this exercise
over the next two days,
we're gonna stay frozen in
time right here, right now,
14 years ahead of the asteroid impact
and figure out what do we do
with the information that we have now.
- Disaster preparedness planning,
international space
response information sharing
in public messaging. So the
- Challenge now is to
figure out how do we respond
and prepare for an uncertain
event like this where
we're not sure what could happen,
but the potential
consequences could be cut
quite catastrophic.
- This gets at sort of what
we were hinting at there,
starting to talk about not
just what the threat is,
but what we could potentially do about it.
- The good news is this asteroid
impact may be preventable.
We have at least three technologies
that we can consider for this.
And they have different physical effects.
So the first, it's kinetic impact,
which is like the dart mission,
whereas spacecraft impacts the asteroid
to change its speed very slightly.
The second is an ion beam
where you use a controlled
electric thruster to slowly push
or pull on the asteroid
and change its speed.
And then finally it's a
nuclear expl*sive device
where you literally boil off part
of the asteroid in order
to change its speed.
And we also need to know
the physical properties
of the asteroid because all
of these methods, whether
or not they work and the specifics of
how you would design them, are tailored
to the specific asteroid properties
- Through forums like this
one today and tomorrow
and bringing together all
of you the world experts,
we can tackle the detection
and characterization of asteroids, ways
to improve coordination
among allied nations.
- That's why we wanna exercise
all of these capabilities now
and not wait until then.
- We took this opportunity
to exercise the whole system
and campaign that would be
done if a potential impactor
was found.
- Planetary defense is a
team sport Asteroid impacts
our shared risk.
And so we really need to work as a team.
- It's really important that
we have a global effort to try
to understand the problem.
- No one nation can independently
save the world in case
of an impending impact.
- It's a fantastic community.
- I'm part of a global team
of planetary defenders.
Very proud to be part of that
planetary defense family.
- The not only protects Earth today,
but provides protection for the.
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