Subsidies Of Planetary Society Help Astronomers Track Dangerous Asteroids

Last week, some 250 scientists, engineers, disaster experts and officials from the world's space agencies met in Washington, DC for the biennial Planetary Defense Conference. There, NASA directed attendees through a five-day disaster response simulation centered on a killer asteroid heading toward Earth.

The scenario: an asteroid the size of a newly discovered city block is on track to crash into us in 2027. How do we respond?

Every day of the conference, the participants decided on a course of action, since NASA advanced the fictitious timeline by months or years. Ultimately, the group decided to launch a fictitious fleet of international ships to divert the asteroid. But they were only partially successful: the simulation masters broke a 60-meter-wide piece of rock and aimed it directly at New York City, sending 10 million fictitious people fleeing the region.

Such a direct impact in one of the largest cities in the world is very unlikely. However, the threat from moderately sized asteroids is very real, according to a 2018 report from the White House Office of Science and Technology. There are about 25,000 near-Earth asteroids with diameters of more than 140 meters, and we do not know where most of them are.

"What we are looking for is to characterize 90% of the asteroids that are 140 meters or more," said NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine at the conference. "What does that mean, 140 meters? That means it's big enough to destroy a state in the United States of America, and so far, we've only been able to detect a third of those objects."

The work of finding these asteroids corresponds mainly to the professional sky surveys of the world. You may have heard of some, such as Pan-STARRS at the University of Hawaii, LINEAR at MIT, and Catalina Sky's survey at the University of Arizona. These surveys generally operate with a combination of governmental, institutional and private funds, and are a crucial tool for planetary defense.

But what happens after the sky surveys find something? Your observations represent unique points in time as an object passes through the field of view of a telescope. Usually, that's not enough to tell us how fast the object is spinning, whether it's a binary asteroid, or, more importantly, whether it's on its way to hit the Earth.

That's where amateur astronomers come in. These very capable sky watchers often have advanced observatories or equipment located in dark places that can operate remotely. Observers may have day jobs outside of astronomy but have managed to turn a pastime into a genuine scientific endeavor.

By: Preeti Narula

Content: https://www.skyandtelescope.com/astronomy-news/planetary-society-grants-astronomers-track-dangerous-asteroids/