Preparing for Asteroid Impact

April 7, 2023
April 7, 2023 Hal Jordan

Preparing for Asteroid Impact

At the 8th Planetary Defense Conference held in Vienna, Austria, the manager of NASA’s Near Earth Object Program Office, Paul Chodas, presented a hypothetical asteroid scenario that illustrates the potential devastation an asteroid strike could cause. Chodas’ scenario begins with the discovery of a new asteroid called 2023 PDC, initially classified as a “potentially hazardous asteroid.” The asteroid’s impact probability, which is initially low, steadily increases as asteroid tracking facilities on Earth continue following the rock, better constraining its orbit around the sun. By April 3, 2023, the impact probability has reached 1%, and the potential impact date is calculated as October 22, 2036. Despite this decade-plus preparation time, important decisions must be made now as there are still several uncertainties regarding the asteroid’s size and characteristics that will be key to how humanity deals with the threat.

One of the first things astronomers will do with their 13-year lead time is to calculate the size of the asteroid better. The size of the asteroid is important because it determines how much damage it can do and what measures need to be taken to divert it, or whether this would be possible at all. Estimating an asteroid’s size is normally done by measuring its albedo, the light reflected from its surface. But this measurement comes with uncertainty, because we don’t know whether the asteroid’s surface is light or dark. Chodas explains that 2023 PDC is too close to the sun to use infrared astronomy to help determine its size, so the space-based telescopes that rely mainly on infrared observations won’t be much help observing this rock. One option decision makers will have during the 13-year lead time is to dispatch a reconnaissance spacecraft to 2023 PDC. This would help us better ascertain the size and mass of the asteroid, as well as another crucial aspect of the asteroid that is vital to mitigating its impact on Earth: its orbit. The reduction of the red “hitbox” in the team’s calculation to less than the size of the Earth means that 2023 PDC is going to hit the planet. Scientists use this scenario to emphasize the need for planetary defense.

NASA Advanced Supercomputing expert Lorien Wheeler has explained that the evaluation of the potential damage caused by 2023 PDC involves building an asteroid impact risk assessment model and considering several different factors. These factors include asteroid size, properties, and limited observational data. There are three main types of impact hazards that the NASA team models: local ground damage due to an explosive blast or fireball, tsunami potential for large ocean impacts, and potential global climate effects for the largest cases.

Wheeler explains that the asteroid’s angle of entry to the atmosphere is another factor that contributes to the uncertainty in the range of potential impact energies, and thus the resulting damage severity. For the potential sizes of 2023 PDC, the lower size estimation of around 1,000 feet in diameter represents devastation on the scale of a continent, while at 2,000 feet, the impact would border on a global catastrophe scale. At 3,330 feet wide, the 2023 PDC impact scenario becomes exceptionally grim, and the team calculates that 2023 PDC is much more likely to trigger a global catastrophe.

Wheeler continued that for smaller impacts, the outer damage areas are a band that could extend to diameters of between 62 to 124 miles outside the main impact zone. This extended damage zone could stretch out to diameters as great as 372 miles for scenarios in which the hypothetical asteroid approaches sizes of 2,000 feet.

In case 2023 PDC struck any ocean, it would trigger a tsunami, but the most harm to populations would come from the asteroid touching down in the Atlantic Ocean, carrying the greatest risk of triggering a tsunami that could reach populated areas. The eventual climate change effects of a larger 2023 PDC asteroid strike could eventually affect anywhere from millions to billions of people across the globe.

It’s important to stress that 2023 PDC is a purely hypothetical object and is not on course to impact Earth. Currently, there are no large asteroids predicted to hit Earth for the next 100 years. To consider how likely such a scenario is, the team laid out the probability of Earth being bombarded by objects from space of various sizes, suggesting impacts involving larger bodies should be rarer.

In fact, the European Space Agency’s (ESA) Director of Operations Rolf Densing congratulated the scientists for developing a challenging and dramatically unfolding scenario for decision-makers to consider.

Reference:

How to Measure the Size of an Asteroid

IAA PLANETARY DEFENSE CONFERENCE 2023

Planet Earth: Everything you need to know – Space.com

This is what would happen if scientists found an asteroid heading to Earth – Space.com

What are asteroids? – Space.com

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CinC and DCinC – Offices explained and expanded upon
UFS Restructure – Effective 230304
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THIS WEEK IN STAR TREK HISTORY

8 April
1942Douglas Trumbull is born.
1955Kane Hodder is born.
1993Stephen Hawking films his scene for TNG: “Descent.
2003Kathie Browne dies.

9 April
1922Arthur Batanides is born.
1962John Eaves is born.
2018David Quashnick dies.

10 April
1951Allan Kroeker is born.
1988Haley Joel Osment is born.
1991Kevin Peter Hall dies.

11 April
1955Michele Scarabelli is born.
2010Darrell Anderson dies.

12 April
1909Irving A. Feinberg is born.
1913Oscar Katz is born.
1936Charles Napier is born.
1942April Tatro is born.
1959Tracy Tormé is born.
1972Matt E. Levin is born.
1979Jennifer Morrison is born.

13 April
1939Paul Sorvino is born.
1945Tony Dow is born.
1950Ron Perlman and William Sadler are born.
1952Erick Avari is born.

14 April
1924Joseph Ruskin is born.
1930Jay Robinson is born.
1936Arlene Martel is born.
1964Robert Clendenin is born.

TODAY’S HUMOR

The United Federation Starfleet Blog is written by Fleet Captain Hal Jordan and is published every Friday. Join in the discussion! Engage with us on Discord at: discord.io/ufstarfleet

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