Planetary Defense at NASA

In 2016, NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage the agency's ongoing mission of finding, tracking, and better understanding asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. Here you can stay informed about the PDCO, NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, and upcoming planetary defense flight missions, including NASA'S NEO Surveyor mission.

Planetary Defenders

NASA’s Planetary Defenders is a gripping documentary that delves into the high-stakes world of asteroid detection and planetary defense by journeying alongside NASA’s dedicated team of scientists, astronomers, and engineers who discover, track, and monitor near-Earth asteroids to safeguard Earth from potential impacts. Available now on NASA+ and other streaming platforms.

How would humanity respond if we discovered an asteroid headed for Earth? NASA’s "Planetary Defenders" is a gripping documentary that delves into the high-stakes world of asteroid detection and planetary defense.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-defense/2025/07/02/nasa-discovers-interstellar-comet-moving-through-solar-system/

#space #asteroids #astrophotography #photography #science #astronomy #tech #security #defense#NASA#ESA

Planetary Defense at NASA

In 2016, NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) to manage the agency's ongoing mission of finding, tracking, and better understanding asteroids and comets that could pose an impact hazard to Earth. Here you can stay informed about the PDCO, NASA's Near-Earth Object (NEO) Observations Program, and upcoming planetary defense flight missions, including NASA'S NEO Surveyor mission.

Planetary Defenders

NASA’s Planetary Defenders is a gripping documentary that delves into the high-stakes world of asteroid detection and planetary defense by journeying alongside NASA’s dedicated team of scientists, astronomers, and engineers who discover, track, and monitor near-Earth asteroids to safeguard Earth from potential impacts. Available now on NASA+ and other streaming platforms.

How would humanity respond if we discovered an asteroid headed for Earth? NASA’s "Planetary Defenders" is a gripping documentary that delves into the high-stakes world of asteroid detection and planetary defense.

https://science.nasa.gov/blogs/planetary-defense/2025/07/02/nasa-discovers-interstellar-comet-moving-through-solar-system/

#space #asteroids #astrophotography #photography #science #astronomy #tech #security #defense#NASA#ESA

June 30, 2017

NASA Planetary Defense:
Backyard Asteroid Observer

Backyard astronomer Robert Holmes of Westfield, Illinois, is part of NASA's army of observers scanning the night sky for asteroids.

"We do follow-up observations with NASA's near-Earth observations program. All night long, I'm running big telescopes. One's a 24-inch, a 30-inch, and a 32-inch. And then the 50 inch is my… my biggest telescope [...]."

"[...] We do follow-up observations for the discoveries that are made by the large sky surveys. By looking at these asteroids, and measuring these asteroids, we can determine what their possibilities of actually hitting the Earth in the future are going to be.

NASA provides coordinates of specific objects that they need observations on. I'm gonna punch in the coordinates here, and I'm doing this remotely from inside a control room, not at the telescope. And so, we look these objects up and then use those coordinates to look at a tiny piece of the sky that this object happens to be in. And then we follow those objects, and define and refine orbits for those objects, and reduce the uncertainty of where it's going to go in the near future.

I started off as a volunteer in 2006. It's just blossomed into a full-time opportunity to work for NASA under their grant program, where I'm now doing this every single clear night.

Now we're starting the observing run for 2017 KK3. You don't build a telescope that's this big without having… being passionate about what you do. I'm really driven to be a part of a program that's important and has importance to the future. And we're not talking about next year or the year after, We're talking about asteroids that could potentially hit the Earth 100 years from now. And the work we do today may make a difference 100 years from now."

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/videos/nasa-planetary-defense-backyard-asteroid-observer/

FYI:
https://science.nasa.gov/planetary-defense/

CREDIT
Jet Propulsion Laboratory

#space #asteroids #astrophotography #photography #science #astronomy #nature#NASA#ESA #defense #tech

The Cretaceous–Paleogene (K–Pg) extinction event, formerly known as the Cretaceous-Tertiary (K–T) extinction event, was the mass extinction of three-quarters of the plant and animal species on Earth approximately 66 million years ago. The event caused the extinction of all non-avian dinosaurs. Most other tetrapods weighing more than 25 kg (55 lb) also became extinct, with the exception of some ectothermic species such as sea turtles and crocodilians. It marked the end of the Cretaceous period, and with it the Mesozoic era, while heralding the beginning of the current geological era, the Cenozoic Era.
[...]

As originally proposed in 1980 by a team of scientists led by Luis Alvarez and his son Walter, it is now generally thought that the K–Pg extinction was caused by the impact of a massive asteroid 10 to 15 km (6 to 9 mi) wide, 66 million years ago causing the Chicxulub impact crater, which devastated the global environment, mainly through a lingering impact winter which halted photosynthesis in plants and plankton. The impact hypothesis, also known as the Alvarez hypothesis, was bolstered by the discovery of the 180 km (112 mi) Chicxulub crater in the Gulf of Mexico's Yucatán Peninsula in the early 1990s, which provided conclusive evidence that the K–Pg boundary clay represented debris from an asteroid impact. The fact that the extinctions occurred simultaneously provides strong evidence that they were caused by the asteroid. A 2016 drilling project into the Chicxulub peak ring confirmed that the peak ring comprised granite ejected within minutes from deep in the earth, but contained hardly any gypsum, the usual sulfate-containing sea floor rock in the region: the gypsum would have vaporized and dispersed as an aerosol into the atmosphere, causing longer-term effects on the climate and food chain.
[...]
Read more
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cretaceous%E2%80%93Paleogene_extinction_event

#space #earth #asteroids #science #history #astronomy #physics #tech #defense#NASA#ESA

Chaos, panic, total devastation: #asteroids in films are devastating, and only an unlikely, heroic mission can save humanity.

But what would happen if an #asteroid hurtled towards us for real?

On the occasion of #AsteroidDay, tune in to Chasing Starlight to find out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaONsiiu5r4

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science

Chaos, panic, total devastation: #asteroids in films are devastating, and only an unlikely, heroic mission can save humanity.

But what would happen if an #asteroid hurtled towards us for real?

On the occasion of #AsteroidDay, tune in to Chasing Starlight to find out:
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BaONsiiu5r4

#astrodon #astronomy #astrophysics #space #science