Planetary Radio: Space Exploration, Astronomy and Science - Saving the Planet at the Planetary Defense Conference

Episode Date: April 21, 2015

Planetary Radio Live was the only public event at the just-completed Planetary Defense Conference in Italy. Join us for excerpts from an all-star celebration of worldwide efforts to find, track, characterize and eventually deflect killer Near-Earth Objects.Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoicesSee omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.See omnystudio.com/listener for privacy information.

Defending Earth in front of a live audience, this week on Planetary Radio. Welcome to the travel show that takes you to the final frontier, and today takes you to Frescati, Italy. I'm Matt Kaplan of the Planetary Society, and I've just returned from the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference. 2015 Planetary Defense Conference. Nearly 250 leaders of the near-Earth object community came to the headquarters of a division of the European Space Agency called ESRIN to share progress in the discovery, tracking, characterization, and eventual deflection of NEOs that are on a collision course with Earth. For five days, they made presentations, reviewed posters, and formed new collaborations. And on an evening in the middle of the conference, many of them came to the headquarters of OSCE, the Italian space agency, to hear an outstanding international panel of their colleagues.

You're about to hear excerpts of that nearly two-hour event. The almost complete recording is on this week's show page at planetary.org slash radio, and we'll have a video ready for Planetary TV soon. Speaking of video, the show opened with a welcoming message from Planetary Society CEO Bill Nye the Science Guy. Let's meet another Bill. William Ehler is a distinguished scientist at the Aerospace Corporation in Southern California. Bill led creation of the first Planetary Defense Conference. Why did you see a need for a conference about planetary defense? Well, it's interesting.

I joined aerospace in 1974, and I normally do spacecraft reentry and space debris things and so forth. And around 2003, our local Air Force, we support the Air Force space program, the local Air Force got a readiness test, basically. And the test was there's an asteroid headed for Earth. What are you, the Air Force, going to do about it? And so I was a part of the team that was trying to answer that question, and it was clear that we didn't really have a clue what was going on. So I decided that, and given that there really wasn't much money in the game at the time,

I decided a way to stay abreast of what's going on is to start a series of conferences. We had an exercise at our last conference, and basically the purpose of that is to really present a threat in a way that it might actually evolve and make people aware of really the nature of these types of things. And this year, we decided to make it a little bit more of a challenge. So we basically set it up so each day we would reveal a new set of data about this approaching asteroid. And we set up a panel, three people who represent world leaders. Their goal is to decide at the end of the day what we should be doing with the information they've just been receiving. And they also have a panel of advisors.

These are experts, some of whom you'll interview, who know asteroids and know how the threat might evolve, what it would do if it hit, how you would deflect such a thing. In my experience, two years ago, 2013, it was incredibly effective. You had people really getting into this. I mean, tempers were flaring. People can check out our show from roughly two years ago and see what I mean. I wonder if that's going to happen again this year. It's already happening. That's great. Makes for great radio, I can tell you. Oh, it's great fun. I think, I'm sure all the people who are involved in this thing are enjoying it. That's Bill Ehler of the Aerospace Corporation, founder and still co-chair of the PDC. Leading what has become a PDC tradition was our own Bruce Betts,

Director of Science and Technology at the Planetary Society. Bruce announced the names of six amateur astronomers who were about to get a nice boost in their equipment budgets. The Shoemaker-Neo grants we started in 1997, and in the years since then, we've given out $323,000 in 49 awards, 16 countries, five continents. Primarily sports amateurs, but amateur only in probably the formal definition of the world. These are some amazing setups and some very dedicated people that are proposing to this program. I also want to reflect that we named this after Gene Shoemaker, pioneering planetary geologist,

pioneering the field of impact, asteroid populations, and the like, field of impact, asteroid populations and the like, helped establish the importance, did studies of Meteor Crater on and on and on with his wife Carolyn. Did a lot of observation sky surveys for asteroids and comets. It was time for me to open a conversation with six great panelists, including Bruce Betts. Lindley Johnson came to the conference from NASA headquarters, where he is Near-Earth Object Programs Executive in the Planetary Sciences Division.

After a distinguished career in the U.S. Air Force, Lindley became NASA's program executive for the Deep Impact mission that smacked a spacecraft into Asteroid Temple 1 back in 2005. Lindley was the first of our panelists to talk about the tremendous advances made in the discovery and tracking of NEOs. Plenty more out there still to find. Well, there's plenty more out there, that's for sure. You know, the population of near-Earth objects,

if you go down to those of the size, it could still do significant damage if they were to hit the Earth, something somewhat larger than hit Shogun V events, but say if we were to go down to 50-meter size objects, the numbers out there probably come pretty close to a million objects to be found. And at this time, we've only found a little over 12,000 of those million objects. Seated next to Lindley Johnson was his opposite number at the European Space Agency. Detlef Koschny has been a scientist with ESA for 18 years. He studies cosmic dust and small solar system bodies, including NEOs, and co-manages with his colleague Gerhard Drolshagen ESA's Near-Earth Objects segment of the Space Situational Awareness Program, or SSA-NEO. He also finds time for

work as study scientist for an ESA and Russian mission that would return samples from Mars' moon Phobos. I began by asking Detlef about the ESA division that hosted the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference. ESA has several centers spread across Europe, and ESRIN is the one that traditionally focused on Earth observation missions, on the data storage of those, and it does a lot of other things. And one of the things we have there is our Near-Earth Object Coordination Center. So that's where we really focus and will focus even more the European activities funded by ESA in the field of near-Earth objects. Just as NASA has greatly expanded its work in support of this area, that's true for ESA as well, right?

We started with this SSA, the Space Situational Awareness Program, in the year 2008, and the near-Earth object segment is part of that, and we are working on doing our job. Yeah, and here is, if I go to the next slide, there is the website up behind us. For anyone who wants to visit it, for you listening on the radio and the podcast, we will put this link up on the show page that you can reach from planetary.org slash radio. Rosetta and its little sister, Philae, continuing to do of course, and everyone of course hopes Philae wakes up soon, helping us to get a better look at a comet than we've ever had. It's a mission where we can do fantastic stuff for small body science. It's a

comet, it's not an asteroid, so the difference is it's more a icy material. It has a density of just half that of water so it would actually swim on water. One of those crumbly things that Amy mentioned. Exactly. And we landed on it. We actually not just landed on it once. We landed twice

three times because the lander bounced. Yeah, you get three for the same price. And it did in-situ measurements, so that's really a very direct way of measuring the composition. This comet is not a near-Earth object. It doesn't come close to the Earth, but we could have comets coming close to our planet.

So that's why this mission is very important in understanding this type of objects come close to the Earth, but we could have comets coming close to our planet. So that's why this mission is very important in understanding this type of objects, because that may also be something we want to worry about at some point. Detlef Koschny of the European Space Agency. Next up was Paul Chodas. Paul manages NASA's Near-Earth Object Program Office at the Jet Propulsion Lab in Southern California. He must know as much as anyone on Earth about the trajectories of asteroids and comets. He is the principal architect of JPL's software that determines orbits,

computes trajectories, detects close approaches, and calculates Earth impact probabilities. I believe you are the chief planner of that exercise or simulation that's underway at the Planetary Defense Conference. Are you ready to tell us now, is the Earth destroyed? Well, in our exercise, I can't say. I can't say. Because two years ago, the south of France was wiped out. It was, but we're still in the middle of this, and each day we have a new surprise to throw. So we get to play God a little bit and throw a curveball each day. It's really fun, folks. Paul Chodas' NEO program office is paralleled by one in Europe.

Fabrizio Bernardi of the University of Pisa is chief executive officer for Space Dice. He leads operation and maintenance of the NEO Dice and ASTDICE database systems for near-Earth objects and asteroids. Fabrito has also discovered or co-discovered several NEOs. One of them is an infamous rock known as Apophis. As we spoke, I displayed a page from the NEODIS online database. I chose as a page to show off the data that object that became fairly famous, that you were co-discoverer of, Apothos. Yes, I was a co-discoverer with David Fowling and Roy Tucker in 2004.

And this is a very interesting story because we discovered it in June 2004. We discovered that it was going to have a high chance of hitting the Earth in 2029, April 13, 2029. Later on, finally, the story went much better. So now we know very well the trajectory of Apophis, and we can almost rule out that it is going to impact. Of course, not only in 2029, there is still a tiny chance of hitting the Earth in 2068. And difficult to predict, isn't it? And Paul, you can jump into this as well if you like,

because the movements of asteroids, the orbits, they're not all that predictable too far ahead because they're constantly being perturbed by the things they pass, right? Exactly right. Apophis is a real challenge. That one comes very close to the Earth in 2029. And depending on how close it comes, it could pass through a real challenge. That one comes very close to the Earth in 2029 and depending on how close it comes, it could pass through a keyhole. And those little keyholes

are the gateways to impacts in later years. So we have to keep track of, I don't know, dozens of keyholes that Apophis might be able to pass through. And the most probable one right now, it's really a small probability, is 2068. And the keyhole is only two meters

in size. Two meters in size. Almost a real keyhole. Which says something about the kind of precision that we are able to work with now with this data. Yes, it's a very difficult task. We've got links to both Fabrizio's and Paul Chodas' NEO databases on

the show page found at planetary.org slash radio. More excerpts of Planetary Radio Live at the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference are just a minute away. This is Planetary Radio. Hey, hey, Bill Nye here. I'd like to introduce you to Merck Boyan. Hello.

He's been making all those fabulous videos, which hundreds of thousands of you have been watching. That's right. We're going to put all the videos in one place, Merk, is that right? Planetary TV. So I can watch them on my television? No. So wait a minute, Planetary TV is not on TV? That's the best thing about it. They're all going to be online. You can watch them any time you want.

Where do I watch Planetary TV then, Merk? Well, you can watch it all at planetary.org slash tv. Random Space Fact! Nothing new about that for you, Planetary Radio fans, right? Wrong! Random Space Fact is now a video series too, and it's brilliant, isn't it, Matt? I hate to say it, folks, but it really is, and hilarious. See, Matt would never lie to you, would he? I really wouldn't. A new Random Space it really is, and hilarious. See? Matt would never lie to you, would he? I really wouldn't. A new Random Space Fact video is released each Friday at youtube.com slash planetarysociety. You can subscribe to join our growing community, and you'll never miss a fact.

Can I go back to my radio now? Welcome back to Planetary Radio. I'm Matt Kaplan. The last of our panelists at the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference was on stage with us at the last PDC in 2013. She's also the only member of our panel who is principal investigator for a spacecraft, one that has vastly expanded our NEO knowledge. Amy Meinzer is a senior research scientist at GPL. This recipient of NASA's Exceptional Scientific Achievement and Exceptional Achievement Medals leads the NEOWISE mission, the reincarnation of the WISE spacecraft,

for which he served as deputy principal investigator. Welcome back, Amy. Thank you. So a lot of people in our audience probably know about Kepler, that phenomenally successful finder of planets circling other stars. I want to say that what Kepler is to the galaxy, NEOWISE is to the solar system. Is that a fair statement? Oh, wow. Well, thank you. That's a wonderful comparison to be

here. It's good company. Yeah, we're really happy with it. I mean, we've learned so much from this particular spacecraft, and it was really never intended for the purpose of looking for asteroids and comets. The original purpose of this mission was to survey the whole sky in infrared light, in infrared wavelengths, so basically heat-sensing wavelengths. And it turned out it was actually very good at seeing asteroids and comets and making a lot of measurements about their basic physical properties, their sizes, how reflective their surfaces are, things like that. 12,000 total objects observed, 49 near-Earth asteroids, and three comets, all from this spacecraft. Yeah, that's right. This is

a kind of a different way of discovering asteroids. Our other surveys operate on the ground, and they use visible light wavelengths. This is a space telescope that orbits the Earth, and it's actually using a completely different technology. It's, like I mentioned, it's using infrared light, so it's sensing the very faint heat that's coming off of these asteroids. And because of that, and also because of its orbit, it's able to look in a different part of the sky than the ground-based surveys are able to spend a lot of time. It also is allowing us to see the very dark objects, things that have very low reflectivity on their surfaces, things that are kind of like printer toner, if you think about it, really, really dark. That's hard for a visible light telescope to see.

And you can see here, this is a picture of the spacecraft for the folks in the room. It's a fairly modest-sized spacecraft. It's a 40-centimeter telescope, so it's quite a bit smaller than some of our Shoemaker Grant winners if you think about it. But because it's in space and because it's a heat sensing telescope, we can keep it very cold, which makes it

extremely sensitive to these asteroids, particularly the dark objects. I mean, here you've gone from Spitzer, an infrared big telescope in space, to WISE, NEOWISE. We're going to get to another one in a little bit. We'll talk about the next one that you propose.

But is there more that you can say about why infrared is such a good way to do this work? Sure. Well, this picture here kind of tells a little bit of the story, and since we're on radio, I'll try to make the picture in your heads. Thank you. What I've got is a picture here kind of tells a little bit of the story. And since we're on radio, I'll try to make the picture in your heads. Thank you. What I've got is a picture here of two rocks.

One is a larger rock, and it's pretty dark colored. It's quite a bit larger than the one next to it, which is a smaller light-colored rock. And if you look at these two things, imagine that these are two objects floating in space far away. If you have a visible light telescope, if these things are out there, you might have a very difficult time, if these things are out there, you might have a very difficult time telling which one is actually the large object. Because it's dark, it doesn't reflect a lot of sunlight. So if all you have is a visible light measurement, you could be confused between

an object that's small but highly reflective and something that's a lot larger but very dark. Whereas if you have an infrared telescope, now you're actually measuring the heat that comes off of it rather than the visible light that's bouncing off of its surface. And that means you have a much more direct measurement of the size of the object, the true size. That's Amy Meinzer of the NEOWISE mission, speaking as part of our panel at the public event, the Planetary Radio Live event at the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference.

So what makes one near-Earth object more dangerous than another that might be of equal size? JPL's Paul Chodas gave the first response. It's how close it could approach the Earth, and not just how close it could approach the Earth, but how our knowledge of that orbit is. So we have to keep track of not just where the asteroid might be going, but our knowledge and uncertainty about that trajectory.

And if the Earth is somewhere within that uncertainty region, then there's a chance it could hit the Earth. So the ones that have the Earth inside their uncertainty region at some point in time are the dangerous ones. Now, what about what the asteroid's made of? Because they're not all alike, right? Amy? Yeah, that's very true.

I mean, obviously, there's a big difference between something that's kind of soft and crumbly, like a snowball, almost, and something that's a lump of metal. So we need to know as much as we can about the compositions of these objects and what's on the inside. Are they fractured rock?

Are they, you know, piles of gravel? Or are they solid? And that's what we're trying to learn. A great deal of discussion at this year's Planetary Defense Conference was devoted to proposals for moving or deflecting a big asteroid or comet that is determined to be headed toward Earth. There's the Bruce Willis option, but nuking a NEO should probably be the last resort. Paul Chodas talked about other choices under development. Each technique has its advantage. The kinetic impactor is the basic technique that's simple, kind of brute force. You're just hitting the asteroid with a big

spacecraft and as fast as you can to knock it out of the way. But it has its limitations. And what we discussed today is that it can only move the asteroid in one direction. So other techniques are less brute force. They're more finely tuned. Gravity tractors could be used if we had enough time and we needed to have great control over how much we were going to move the asteroid. And if we had to move it in the other direction, for example, then we would want to use gravity tractor. Ion beam deflection is another technique that's discussed at this conference where you go up to the asteroid with a spacecraft with ion propulsion and you fire the ion beam at the asteroid. You'll have to also have an ion beam firing in the other direction so that you don't move away. But you blast that asteroid with an ion beam and that would, over time, move the asteroid a

very controlled amount in the direction you choose. Fabrizio Bernardi applauded the impressive international collaboration represented by the PDC and by other efforts, including the new International Asteroid Warning Network. It was formed by the International Astronomical Union's Minor Planet Center in response to a call for action by the United Nations. But Fabrizio and the other panelists believe this is no more than a good start. We need more and more to collaborate, not only at the scientific level, because we are doing this since a long time now, but we need it also at the decision-maker level.

From my point of view, one of the most important investments in resources and time is in education. Not only the students, brilliant people, but also the general public, because the general public needs to be aware about us. I asked each of the other panelists what they'd most like to see happen in this field. Paul Chodas of NASA's NEO Program Office puts one goal first and foremost. As my former boss, Don Eumanns, used to say, the three most important three things are find them, find them and find them. We need to find them. But this meeting and the scenario we've had has reminded me that we also need the ability to characterize them. We also need the ability to characterize them. If there's one heading our way and with not much warning,

it would be nice to have a mission, very quick, easy mission, to quickly go out and estimate the size, because you are not going to be able to protect yourself, deflect it in whatever way you want, if you don't have a rough idea of the size of the asteroid. So that's my number two thing. Let's have a characterization mission development plan that could respond quickly. Obviously, I think finding them is very important. Finding them, learning more about them, and just learning what asteroids also have to teach us about how we got here and our solar

system. They are interesting objects in their own right. When they come to the Earth, we learn a lot about the history of our solar system, the formation of our solar system. So I think they're a lot of fun to work on. It's often been said about asteroids and comets that studying them may be telling us about the genesis of this solar system, if not beyond. That's right. I want to once again thank this spectacular panel for joining us on stage.

We could have spent so much more time talking to them about every facet of this issue, as is happening over several days here at the Planetary Defense Conference. I also want to thank them, really, just for their efforts to learn about and defend ourselves against near-Earth objects. They are Bruce Betts of the Planetary Society, Lindley Johnson of NASA, Detlef Koshny of ESA, Paul Chodas of JPL, Fabrizio Bernardi of Space Dice, and NEOWISE Principal Investigator Amy Mainzer.

Could you please let them know how appreciative we are one more time? Thank you. In every weekly episode of Planetary Radio for the last 12 1⁄2 years, Bruce and I have finished the show with our What's Up segment, and tonight is no different. So, Bruce, what's up? Well, we've got a bunch of asteroids, but most of them are really hard to see. We've got some planets that are really easy to see.

You can check out Venus low in the west, looking like a super bright object. You can see Jupiter high in the the west, looking like a super bright object. You can see Jupiter high in the south, also looking very bright. They're going to be coming closer and closer over the next two, three months. We've also got Saturn coming up a little later in the evening. If you want something a little tougher, look for Mercury in the low in the west, shortly after sunset for the next couple weeks. Maybe Mars, but it's really tough and really low and really dim. What kind of week has this been in space history? In space history, we had Apollo 16

landed on the moon. Not bad. In 1972. It's a pretty good accomplishment. Random space hack! Impressive. Oh, yeah. So in near-Earth asteroid theme,

we inferred a little of this from the charts we saw, but not all of it. We certainly talked about the fact that near-Earth asteroid discovery rates and discovery has gone way up. Well, to give you a little perspective, in 1900, there was one known near-Earth asteroid. In 1950, there were 13. near-Earth asteroid. In 1950, there were 13. In the year 2000, there were 879. And as of a few days ago, on April 11, 2015, there were 12,417. Yeah, I'm talking that. That's progress. All right. I'm going to jump in here, if you'll indulge me, with a shout-out to my great-aunt Dora. Today is her 104th birthday. So now, think about that.

She was born eight years after the first airplane took flight. eight years after the first airplane took flight. And she is still around to see us flying throughout the solar system and learning to save ourselves from asteroids and comets. So she met Neil Armstrong a couple of weeks before his moon flight, but that's a story for another day. We have a trivia contest. All right, in the trivia contest, set it up. Last time we were talking about trans-Neptunian objects, objects out beyond the orbit of Pluto, and the category of objects in three to two orbital resonance are called Plutinos. Well, I asked you what are trans-Neptunian objects in a two to one orbital resonance with Neptune. So Neptune orbits once, these things orbit twice.

What are they at least informally called? How did we do? We had a big response, because a whole bunch of people out there would love to get one of these 200-point, that's worth a couple hundred dollars, itelescope.net accounts. itelescope.net, the non-profit network

of public, remotely operated telescopes around the world. You get an account, you can point it at anything you want, take an image, maybe you'll find a Neo. That end. But don't count on it. No, don't count on it. And a Planetary Radio t-shirt. So, according to Random.org, our winner this week, if he got it right, is Andrew Jones of Finland. We quoted him just last week. He said the answer is Tutinos. Indeed, the people naming

the trans-Neptunian object orbits have a sense of humor, I think. So they're Plutinos, Tutinos, and my personal favorite named after the 1992 QB1 are QB1Os. Are you serious? Yes, QB1Os. Andrew Jones, congratulations. We're going to get you that itelescope.net account and a Planetary Radio T-shirt. Mark Schindler, Honolulu, Hawaii, said, Tutinos, not to be confused with neutrinos, which have an orbital period ratio of infinity. I thought that would get a bitter laugh from a science crowd. Thank you. Martin Harjovsky of Houston, Texas. He said,

when you order a double of tutinos at the solar system bar, do you ask for a tutini? It should have been the bar at the end of the universe, I think. What was the first near-Earth asteroid to be discovered? A genuine fake rubber asteroid

with the Planetary Society logo and a Planetary Radio t-shirt. You'll be the toast of the conference tomorrow. Hi, sir, what's your name? Dave Tholen. 433 Arrows. Yes, that is indeed correct. Excellent! Give that man a hand. Had to be the guy in the back, didn't I?

We move on to the contest for the folks at home. So, you folks in the audience, no yelling out the answer. So as of April 11th, 2015, about how many near-Earth comets are there known to be? How many near-Earth comets?

Near-Earth comets. Okay. All right, go to planetary.org slash radio contest. And your prize, if you are the one who gets it right and are chosen by Random.org, is going to be yet another signed copy of Jim Bell's The Interstellar Age, his personal account of the 40-year history of the outstanding Voyager mission that continues today as the Voyager Interstellar Mission, signed by Jim Bell.

So get those cards and entries. No, no cards. Just get those online entries in. You might be the winner. All right, everybody. Go out there, look up at the night sky, and think about saving the world. Thank you, and good night. The contest deadline this week is Tuesday, April 28th at 8 a.m. Pacific time.

That's it for our brief sampling of the April 15 Planetary Radio Live at the 2015 Planetary Defense Conference in Italy. Again, we've got nearly the entire event on the show page at planetary.org slash radio. I want to thank our hosts at ASI, ESRIN, and ESA, along with the primary sponsors of the conference. Together with the Planetary Society, they were NASA, Airbus, the Aerospace Corporation, the International Academy of Astronautics, and Space Dice. Transcription by CastingWords and is made possible by its Bella Bella members. I'm Matt Kaplan. Clear skies.