“Every time we participate in an exercise like this, 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 global defense community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure that we are all coordinated if a potential threat of impact 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 with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The joint NASA-FEMA exercises included representatives of other federal agencies, including the defense and state departments.
“Hypothetical asteroid impact exercises give us opportunities to think about how we would respond if a significant asteroid had a significant chance of impacting our planet,” said Dr. Paul Chodas, CNEOS director. “The details of the scenario – such as the probability of the asteroid’s impact, where and when the impact could occur – are communicated to participants in a series of steps during the conference days to simulate how a real situation might evolve.”
The fictional scenario begins on April 26, when astronomers “discover” a potentially dangerous NEO considered a risk to Earth. Details about the imaginary asteroid threat to our planet will evolve during the conference days, and participants in the exercise will discuss potential preparations for asteroid reconnaissance and diversion missions and planning to mitigate the effects of a potential impact. But it is a real parameter that the international community has decided that a 1 in 100 chance of impact is the threshold to start response actions.
The planetary defense conference and its exercise serve as precursors to the launch of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection (DART) test, which is the first real demonstration of asteroid deflection technology and the agency’s first planetary defense program testing mission. DART is scheduled to launch later this year and will impact the asteroid Dimorphos in the fall of 2022 to change its orbit into space, which could be a key technique for attenuating a potentially dangerous asteroid that is on its way. collision with Earth if he discovered one in the future. Through an international observation campaign, subsequent observations of Dimorphos using ground-based telescopes will monitor Dimorphos’ orbit and measure the change in time the asteroid will orbit its larger orbit, Didymos, due to the impact of DART.
“DART will be the first test to defend the planet, and data returned after the impact of Dimorphos will help scientists better understand how we can mitigate a potentially dangerous NEO discovered in the future,” said Andrea Riley, program director. for DART at NASA headquarters. “Although the impact of the DART asteroid is not a threat to Earth, it is in a perfect location for us to perform this technology test before it is actually needed.”
Starting April 26, this page will be updated during the week with quick snapshots that capture the results of each stage of the exercise. More information about the exercise, including an “information sheet” with updated findings, will be available on the exercise page on the PDC 2021 Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario page.