NASA to formulate asteroid defense plan

Unfriendly fire
There’s been no shortage of ideas how to fend off unfriendly fire from the cosmos: employing laser beams, space tugboats, gravity tractor or solar sails, for example, as well as using powerful anti-NEO bombs, conventional as well as nuclear.

Ailor, also director of The Aerospace Corp.’s Center for Orbital and Re-entry Debris Studies, told Space.com that creative ways to deflect Earth-harming NEOs are far from being exhausted.

“People have put a lot of concepts on the table over time,” Ailor said. “Now we’re beginning to try and develop an organized way of looking at those things and finding out which ones are really viable in the short-term, medium-term, and what technologies do we need to protect and develop for the long-term as well.”

A key message early in the workshop is that detection of NEOs is a first priority. The ongoing, three-part mantra agreed to by attendees is simple and direct: “Find them early … and find them early … and find them early.”

Realistic alternatives
A likely setting is one where a modest Earth impact probability by a NEO is identified decades in advance — then, future mitigation technologies would be most appropriate.

Furthermore, “opportunity science” could be derived from such a response. NASA has an interest in harvesting NEOs for their minerals as well as siphoning from them water to further long-range space exploration goals.

Former shuttle astronaut Tom Jones, taking part in the meeting, has had a longstanding interest in asteroids.

“The NEO workshop this week is both informative — with the latest NEO data presented by experts in the field — and encouraging as the space agency seems intent on developing realistic alternatives for detecting most of the potentially hazardous NEOs,” he told Space.com. “That’s good … Congress expects NASA to answer the mail on how to deal with NEOs. This meeting is an important move forward in beginning to materially address the hazard.”

As a warning shot of sorts, several workshop attendees made note of next week’s close flyby of Earth of asteroid 2004 XP14. Discovered in late 2004, the space rock will slip by Earth on July 3, passing just beyond the moon’s average distance from Earth.

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