What A asteroid asteroid of dangerous dimensions that hit the planet? If you wait enough, it is 100 percent. They do not even have to be particularly scared to inflict widespread damage: the so-called cities-to-cities of the football field that can evaporate from the city with their explosion similar to nuclear-commonly disturbed in the nearby land area.
If we find that the city’s killer is heading towards us, there are only three possible results: the asteroid strikes on the planet, affects a populated area, and millions of people perish; The asteroid affects a remote spot in the desert or in the middle of the ocean, and no one dies; Or, the intruder is discovered a long time before the next effect, and we somehow succeeded in implementing or detonating it to Smitherens.
On paper, planetary defense is one of the easiest global problems to solve. If you can find the asteroids heading to the EarthBound in space before you find us, and you get the technology available to strike them from blue marble – or if you are short on time, then the technology that you take completely – then you can judge outside everything except for a smaller asteroid. You can effectively cancel a full category of natural disasters.
It is striking, it seems that we are on our way to do so. NASA’s double asteroids redirect test or SheThe non -closed spacecraft was shocked by the city’s killer (not harmful) in 2022, and was successfully swept away and showed that humanity can rearrange the universe to Keep the Earth’s safety. Before the end of the contract, a telescope that depends on asteroid hunting will be launched, which is the task of the areas of beings close to the ground in NASA; By infrared eye, almost all the city’s killers are to find near the planet.
The planetary defense is a universal necessity, of course, but for the time being, NASA – and thus the United States – leads the charge. Other players, including the European Space Agency, Japan, and ( Their task like arrowsChina, also contributes to fighting fatal asteroids.
At the present time, it seems that the world is to save America. However, the planetary defense does not work unless the government funds it and has space policies that give it priority. Nassa Planetary Defense Coordination Office It is responsible for things like DART, Mission Neo Surveyor, and America from the asteroid Earth that discovers telescopes-get funding from the federal government to work for all its goals. The annual financing amount changes on an annual basis, but it is Rise From millions of two numbers to more than $ 100 million in the past 15 years only.
If you can find the asteroids heading to EarthBound in space before you find us, and hit them away from our blue marble, you can effectively cancel a full category of natural disasters.
Now it seems that the Ministry of Governmental Efficiency, or Dog, run by the CEO of Spacex and Elon Musk, is scheduled to take an ax to a large part of the federal government. Several agencies have already been martyred as targets, including, as Some suggestedNASA herself. With frequent musk initiatives about Send astronauts to MarsAnd with the artistic billionaire Jared Ishaq – who made the first special space with Spacex – is nominated by Donald Trump To lead NASA It is also not difficult to imagine a strong American axis towards Mars, while leaving other major programs in the field of space agency in dust. “Elon, get these missile ships, because we want to reach Mars before the end of my state,” Trump He said During a campaign gathering, according to a video of the MUSK speech in September.
So the future of American planetary defense research is not certain. But there are reasons to be multiple.
The first is that, as of the year 2022, the NASA’s Play Defense Office receives $ 150 million per year. This is almost an error in the documentary government of federal spending. (As a comparative point, the Artemis program, which hopes to return American astronauts to the moon in the next few years, costs tens of billions.) For this low cost, the benefit is very high: defending everyone on the planet, which, to mention what is clear, It also includes America, which is something He should Hold the impact with the new government.
However, perhaps most importantly, the planetary defense has long been one of the few issues that had strong support from the two parties inside and outside Congress.
In 1998, Congress gave NASA a legal condition to find 90 percent of asteroids size-those who are able to cause global destruction-rotating near Earth as soon as possible. (They managed to do this during 12 years.) In 2005, Congress also asked NASA from NASA to find 90 percent of the city’s killers close to the land, a goal they are still working on, but they were rapidly being scored. Congress worksand Conferences of gatheringsAnd Listen sessions Support is often provided by planetary defense by Democrats, Republicans and independents.
“Elon, get these missile ships, because we want to reach Mars before the end of my state.”
Neo Surveyor, in particular, has received unintended support from both parties in recent years. In 2022, the Supreme NASA leadership, which was struggling to manage the budgets of the enlarged planetary science mission, was reluctant to claim the full amount of the annual amount of the mission of the surveyor. (I needed 170 million dollars for 2023, but NASA requested $ 40 million.
That year, many Republicans in the Parliament Science Committee student NASA makes sure that the task gets the funding you need. When writing to the NASA official at the time, Bill Nelson, they complained that NASA’s Upper leadership was not doing enough to find asteroids that could be dangerous, and that they had no plan to replace ARCIBO Observatory collapsed In Puerto Rico – Radar attachment, among other things, helped describe asteroids – and it seems to be wandering with the budget of the NEO spaces unnecessarily. In reference to the 2005 law that directed NASA to find the city’s killers, they are books “NASA has failed to plan, develop and implement a program to achieve this goal.”
It has left the composition of the House of Representatives and the Senate and pouredly over the past three decades. But it seems that, regardless of the party, it has control, the planetary defense – even if it deepens in the background, is behind many other issues -. Perhaps this is because the benefits of protecting the world from asteroid strikes are clear to politicians, especially if the United States can credit.
Or perhaps it is because voters, too, appear to be very careful to planetary defense. In recent years, the Pew Research Center has wiped the American public regarding their opinions about NASA, and asked them about its goals that it should be. that it 2023 survey It revealed that “monitoring asteroids, other things that can strike the land” came first, as 60 percent of the respondents said that it should be a top priority for NASA; 30 % of others said that it should not be of utmost importance, but NASA still has to follow NASA. (Pio 2018 survey On the same topic, he had similar results.)
Among the respondents, both Democrats (64 percent) and the Republicans (57 percent) said that the monitoring of potential asteroids on Earth should be a top priority. As happens, sending astronauts to the moon and Mars at the bottom of the priority list – which may not affect Musk Uninterrupted The enthusiasm of the red planet.
At least, the ongoing planetary defense work in NASA should be funded as planned, with the continued financing of the new surveyor, as well as its telescopes in the asteroids.
Casey Dreyer, head of space policy at the Planetary Association, is a non -profit collection for planetary exploration and defense recently, books It is difficult to predict what will happen with NASA during the second Trump administration. Artemis is likely to be a large axis during the transition; The planetary defense did not appear as a management point of management.
In a survey of 2023, the Democrats (64 %) and the Republicans (57 percent) said that the monitoring of potential asteroids on Earth should be a top priority.
It should be noted that during the first period of Trump, the administration took a move to More financing insurance For planetary defense research. In her last days, she issued a a report Looking at the emergency protocols in America the effect of the asteroid, indicating that the planetary defense is an issue that it considers important.
If the Republicans remain a fan of planetary defense, there is also an opportunity to accelerate anti -prestci efforts over the next four years. DART is a way of planetary defense known as the effect of kinetics: a partially independent spacecraft that moves to an asteroid, only by speed and right angle, to hit it over a different course around the sun, one endlessness in violent collision with the Earth.
It is clear that the asteroid’s deviation with something like a DART works well, but if you make a mistake in estimating this asteroid, this asteroid is fixed with a lot of gravity, the asteroid may break, and turns the ground cannon ball into a spray of a gun of the things that are still deadly.
But there are many planetary defense methods. It is only, at the present time, they are purely understanding. Take the gravitational tractor, for example: If you stop a huge spacecraft next to the asteroid, you can gradually use the spacecraft of the asteroid heating from the ground. (This is a concept that he talks about not only in planetary defense circuits, but in discussions of the asteroid and mining arrest.) Such a program will require many years, perhaps contracts of work, but it is a more accurate and kind way for planetary defense.
Some NASA officials, and that are further, are keen to try alternative methods of planetary defense, including something like gravitational tractor. Meanwhile, others want to move forward in DART 2 – to influence other types of asteroids. Not all organisms have the same structure, size, or composition, and some behave like rocks that fly more than anything rigid and homogeneous. Thus, these experts say, we need to deviate a variety of space rocks to see if they all respond in the same way to a motor effect.
Planetary defense experiences are creative in nature, almost science fiction, so therefore A call to people from any political persuasion It seems clear-especially with how dangerous asteroids (and comets) in our collective psyche that are equipped in pop culture. But conducting these space -based experiments also encourages humanity’s ability to prevent a global catastrophe.
In 2021, Lindley Johnson, who was then head of the NASA Coordination Coordination Office, was He said During an interview: “I think we got the planetary defense program in NASA now about the right level of resources and attention,” before we add: “Our challenge will be to keep it there.”
Hope at that time is the same as it is now: that regardless of those who carry political power, NASA gets the continuation of the research, and gives the ability to protect the only house we know.
Robin George Andrews is a award -winning scientific journalist who writes on space and terrestrial sciences including New York Times, Atlantic Magazine, National Geographic, Scientific America, ATLAS DOBSA, and Quanta Magazine. His previous book “The super volcanoes: What they reveal about the earth and the world behind it.” He lives in London.
This article was originally published on Unreasonable. Read The original article.
