NASA, FEMA, Other U.S. Partners Simulate Asteroid Impact Response
LAUREL, Md. (NASA PR) — This past month, NASA, FEMA, the United States Space Command, and other federal, state and local agencies convened for the fourth iteration of a Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise to inform and assess our nation’s ability to respond effectively to a (simulated) asteroid impact threat to Earth. While there are no predicted asteroid impact threats to our planet for the foreseeable future, this exercise—sponsored by NASA and FEMA and hosted by the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Laurel, Maryland—focused extensively on federal and state government coordination that would be necessary to respond to such a threat should one ever be discovered.
Conducted in part to address activities called for in the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan, which outlines the nation’s strategy to address the hazard posed by near-Earth objects (NEOs), exercises of this nature are one of the many activities the government regularly conducts related to potential natural disasters to ensure our nation’s preparedness for any occurrence.
“While NASA has previously led and participated in simulated asteroid impact scenarios, this specific exercise marked the first time an end-to-end simulation of this type of disaster was studied, to include assessing a scenario from discovery of the asteroid impact threat through the aftermath effects of its hypothetical impact with Earth” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA Headquarters. “An asteroid impact to our planet is potentially the only natural disaster humanity is capable of accurately predicting and preventing. Conducting exercises of this nature enable government stakeholders to identify and resolve potential issues before real-world actions to respond to an actual asteroid impact threat would ever be needed.”
Over the course of two days, multiple U.S. government agency officials worked through a detailed hypothetical scenario in which astronomers “discover” a simulated asteroid, designated 2022 TTX, that has a probability of impacting the Earth six months after its discovery. As more information was revealed to exercise participants through a series of modules, it became clear the (simulated) asteroid, which is large enough to cause substantial regional damage, would indeed impact Earth near Winston-Salem, North Carolina.
Specific details of the asteroid such as its size—and therefore its impact energy and detailed damage it would cause—remained highly uncertain until just days before the asteroid’s simulated impact, mimicking how this information could unfold in the real world due to limitations of current capabilities, including ground-based radar technology, which requires an object to be within a relatively close proximity to Earth for current facilities to image and analyze. Thus, exercise participants navigated remaining in close coordination across federal and state government levels to ensure all stakeholders knew how and where to access information as it became available to planetary defense experts.
“FEMA is an ‘all-hazards’ agency and responds to all domestic disasters and emergencies, so when it became evident this simulated asteroid would impact somewhere within the United States, it required this level of interagency coordination” said Leviticus “L.A.” Lewis, FEMA Detailee to Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters. “This fourth interagency asteroid impact tabletop exercise provided a forum for federal and local government officials to work through what an impending asteroid impact threat to the United States would look like, with the real people that would be needed for such discussions given this type of impact scenario.”
The completion of this interagency asteroid impact exercise marks another important milestone for the agency’s efforts in planetary defense, which continue to ramp up. Later this year, NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be the world’s first mission to demonstrate technology for defending Earth against potential asteroid impacts. DART, which is currently on its way to a well-known asteroid that is not a threat to Earth, will squarely impact the moon of the asteroid to change its motion in space such that it can be accurately measured using ground-based telescopes.
DART is designed to validate asteroid deflection computer models and demonstrate kinetic impact deflection as one viable method of responding to a future asteroid threat. However, for a technology like DART to be viable, it is imperative an impact threat be discovered with enough warning time—many years to a decade in advance. Thus, the development continues on the agency’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor mission (NEO Surveyor), which will be an infrared space telescope specifically designed to expedite the agency’s ability to discover and characterize most of the potentially hazardous NEOs, including those that may approach Earth from the daytime sky.
An after-action report for this specific exercise is currently in work and expected to be released publicly later this year.
The Johns Hopkins APL manages the DART mission for NASA’s PDCO as a project of the agency’s Planetary Missions Program Office (PMPO). NEO Surveyor is being developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, teamed with the University of Arizona, and managed by NASA’s PMPO with program oversight by the PDCO. NASA established the PDCO in 2016 to manage the agency‘s ongoing efforts in Planetary Defense.
For more information about NASA’s planetary defense efforts, visit:
12 responses to “NASA, FEMA, Other U.S. Partners Simulate Asteroid Impact Response”
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One of the conclusions is depressing if accurate. The size and composition wouldn’t be known until a few days before impact due to limitations of Earth based radar and such. The study postulated a six month lead time knowing there would be an impact. Known word wide risk and a survey mission can’t be cobbled together and flown???
When I was part of the ASCE Impact Mitigation Committee a couple of decades ago the importance of having an accurate survey of the impact, along with its path, was considered essential to civil defense efforts. The solution determined was to develop a very simple small spacecraft the could be launched quickly and accelerated to allow an intercept as far out as possible to characterize the threat. It was pointed out that the same design could serve to conduct a survey of NEOs in the interim as practice missions. Sounds like a good job for SpaceX and USSF.
Yes. If we don’t know exactly what may be prowling around our campsite, the least we need to do is run some string around a useful perimeter and hang some tin cans as alarms.
And that is really a job for the USSF as NASA is not designed as an agency to do guard duty. Asteroid surveys have always been seen as a fringe activity if you look at how little NASA spends on them.
Imagine if Chelyabinsk had occurred during the current war….
That’s a thought that hadn’t occurred to me. A relatively small impacter triggering a nuclear response. A 10 meter body hitting the ground at escape velocity giving the destruction and signature of 150 kilotons. A nervous country at war may not wait for confirmation of cause. Even a much smaller airburst could trigger an unfortunate response. And a Tunguska level in the wrong place and time could set civilization back decades with the response.
That possibility should cause some insomnia.
Yep, another good reason to develop a system to monitor and provide warning of impactors.
Well, the USSF has made it a high priority to establish situational awareness within the entire volume of cislunar space so that should certainly help.
Nuclear weapons in space on human crewed “space boomers” would be my plan. It would realize the decades old dream of removing nuclear weapons from Earth and end the launch on warning in minutes situation that has threatened civilization for so long. Nuclear Pulse Propulsion seems almost designed for this mission as the pulse units are not only the highest thrust and Isp system available, they can push ice and rock just as effectively as a spaceship.
The screaming bloody murder from the NewSpace fans is always deafening over this and it is infuriating to me. They know that only governments can do this which is blasphemy to their cult of entrepreneurship.
Unfortunately basing nuclear devices in space is a violation of the 1963 Limited Test Ban Treaty and 1967 Outer Space Treaty, so treaties would need to be amended to allow it to occur.
Nuclear devices also are not going to be that effective against a NEO unless you have detailed information on the structure and composition of the object. In the case of those that are basically just a loose aggregate of rocks their use could actually do more harm than good.
Bottom line is that a lot of research and testing will be needed first to determine the best way to use them, both of which are now prevented by the treaties above.
Yes…treaties would be amended.
Nuclear devices will always be effective against NEO’s. That B.S. about making things worse comes from some “experts” who wanted to sell their “gravity tug” concept. I corresponded with them about it many years back. The B612 foundation.
They are a non-profit but in my opinion it is still about the money.
They don’t like nukes or maybe they don’t want the competition. Or both.
With bombs not much research and testing necessary.
Enough megatons make up for not having most of that.
That surprised me when I first read about it. Turning a bomb into a cluster bomb was the easiest explanation to understand. A gigaton impacter in one place being horrible. Hundreds of separate megaton impacters scattered across a hemisphere being worse plus being blanketed with kiloton airbursts in between. WOW. Evacuate one huge area vs trying to evacuate multiple continents is just mind boggling.