NASA Creates Planetary Defense Office

Existential Risk  

NASA's new Planetary Defence Coordination Office (PCDO) will now arrange  all of the space agency's attempts to catalog risky Near Earth Objects, as well as work with government agencies to protect the Earth should the threat become reality.

Showing that the organization is committed to averting a potential existential risk, NASA has formalized its ongoing program for detecting and tracking near-Earth objects (NEOs) as the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). The office remains within NASA's Planetary Science Division, in the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. The new organization will be responsible for supervision of all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earth's orbit around the sun.

"The 2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent 'Halloween Asteroid' close approach remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky."

The PDCO will also take a leading role in coordinating inter-agency and intergovernmental efforts in response to any potential impact threats.

So far, more than 13,500 near-Earth objects of all sizes have been discovered to date, with  more than 95 percent of them only discovered since NASA surveys began in 1998. Typically, about 1,500 NEOs are now detected each year.

"Asteroid detection, tracking and defense of our planet is something that NASA, its interagency partners, and the global community take very seriously," said John Grunsfeld, associate administrator for NASA's Science Mission Directorate in Washington. "While there are no known impact threats at this time, the 2013 Chelyabinsk super-fireball and the recent 'Halloween Asteroid' close approach remind us of why we need to remain vigilant and keep our eyes to the sky."

This diagram maps the data gathered from 1994-2013 on small asteroids impacting Earth’s atmosphere and disintegrating to create very bright meteors, technically called “bolides” and commonly referred to as “fireballs”.  Sizes of orange dots (daytime impacts) and blue dots (nighttime impacts) are proportional to the optical radiated energy of impacts measured in billions of Joules (GJ) of energy, and show the location of impacts from objects about 1 meter (3 feet) to almost 20 meters (60 feet) in size. Image Source - NASA

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In addition to detecting and tracking potentially hazardous objects, the office will issue notices of close passes and warnings of any detected potential impacts, based on credible science data. The office also will continue to assist with coordination across the U.S. government, participating in the planning for response to an actual impact threat, working in conjunction with FEMA, the Department of Defense, other U.S. agencies and international counterparts.

"The formal establishment of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office makes it evident that the agency is committed to perform a leadership role in national and international efforts for detection of these natural impact hazards, and to be engaged in planning if there is a need for planetary defense," said Lindley Johnson, longtime NEO program executive and now lead program executive for the office, with the title of Planetary Defense Officer.

Astronomers detect near-Earth objects using ground-based telescopes around the world as well as NASA's space-based NEOWISE infrared telescope. Tracking data are provided to a global database maintained by the Minor Planet Center, sanctioned by the International Astronomical Union.

Once detected, orbits are precisely predicted and monitored by the Center for NEO Studies (CNEOS) at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. Select NEOs are further characterized by assets such as NASA's InfraRed Telescope Facility, Spitzer Space Telescope and interplanetary radars operated by NASA and the National Science Foundation. Such efforts are coordinated and funded by NASA's longtime NEO Observations Program, which will continue as a research program under the office.

With more than 90 percent of NEOs larger than 3,000 feet (1 kilometer) already discovered, NASA is now focused on finding objects that are slightly bigger than a football field — 450 feet (140 meters) or larger. In 2005, NASA was tasked with finding 90 percent of this class of NEOs by the end of 2020. NASA-funded surveys have detected an estimated 25 percent of these mid-sized but still potentially hazardous objects to date.

SOURCE  NASA JPL

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