“Every time we participate in an exercise of this nature, we learn more about who the key players in a disaster event are, and who needs to know what information and when,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer. “These exercises ultimately help the planetary defense community to communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure that we are all coordinated if a potential impact threat is identified in the future.”
To date, NASA has participated in seven impact scenarios – four at previous Planetary Defense Conferences (2013, 2015, 2017 and 2019) and three in collaboration with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The joint NASA-FEMA exercises included representatives from several other federal agencies, including the Department of Defense and State.
“Hypothetical impact exercises for asteroids give us the opportunity to think about how we would react if a large asteroid had a great chance of affecting our planet,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, director of CNEOS, said. “Details of the scenario – such as the probability of the asteroid impact, where and when the impact may occur – will be disclosed to participants during the conference days in a series of steps to simulate how an actual situation may develop. “
The fictional scenario begins on April 26, when astronomers ‘discovered’ a potentially dangerous NEO as a risk to Earth. Details about the threat to the imaginary asteroid for our planet will develop during the days of the conference, and participants in exercises will discuss and plan the possible preparations for asteroid reconnaissance and deflection missions to mitigate the effects of a potential impact. But it is a true parameter that the international community has decided that a chance of impact of 1 in 100 is the threshold to act with response.
The Planetary Defense Conference and its exercise serve as precursors to the launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which is the very first demonstration of an asteroid deflection technology, and the first test mission of the agency’s Planetary Defense program. DART will be launched later this year and will affect the asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022 to change its orbit into space, which could be an important technique to launch a potentially dangerous asteroid that is in a collision with Earth. , to soften, it would be discovered. in the future. Through an international observation campaign, follow-up observations of Dimorphos using ground telescopes will monitor the orbit of Dimorphos and measure the time change it takes to orbit the asteroid around its larger companion, Didymos, due to the impact of DART.
“DART will be the first test for planetary defense, and the data returned after it has an impact on Dimorphos will help scientists better understand how we can mitigate a potentially dangerous NEO in the future,” he said. Andrea Riley, DART program manager at NASA headquarters, said. . “Although the asteroid DART impact poses no danger to Earth, it is the perfect place to perform this test of the technology before it is needed.”
Starting April 26, this page will be updated during the week with quick screenshots recording the results of each step of the exercise. More information about the exercise, including a “fact sheet” of updated findings, will be available in the exercise sheet on the 2021 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario page.