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The 6th Annual International Academy of Astronautics Conference on Planetary Defense ended this past Friday. I watched about half of the presentations. I have little astronomy background but was interested in what was being done about NEO detection, characterization effects and mitigation of potential hazardous asteroids. I have to say I was surprises at the availability of this conference to the general public. Those who are interested in such things should check out the agenda at https://sservi.nasa.gov/event/2019-iaa-planetary-defense-conference-live-stream/ which also links to the respective talks, videos. These were still available as of May 6.
There where a few things that might be of general interest.
A number of talks on the fly by of Apophis on Friday April 13, 2029 a 370 m wide asteroid that will pass within 25,000 miles of the Earth and will be visible to the naked eye. It is elongated and may be a contact binary body.
There are plans to rendezvous with it to study it up close and the effect of the Earth's gravity on it.
Prior to the arrival of Apophis there will also be 5 NEO's Jun 6 and August 7, 2027; June 26(?) and October 26, 2028; January 28 2029 although not nearly as close.There where talks on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022 when the binary asteroid Didymos will pass by Earth at 11 Mkm. A kinetic impact craft will be launched sometime between 2020 and 2021 to intercept the minor body 140 m wide early October 2022. The device is powered by a Nasa's NEXT (Xe) ion thruster and will impact the body at about 6 Km/sec. The European Space Agency will also send a cube satellite to rendezvous with the asteroid to get a close up of the impact. Earth based telescopes will also study the collision.
Also of interest was the progress on the development of NEOCam to be placed in orbit at the Langrange point L1 to detect and characterize asteroids using two IR cameras which will be more sensitive for detecting the > 140 m size asteroids for which it is designed.
There were also talks on studies of effects of collisions with Earth and the issues associated with such disasters as well as the geo-political issues associated with attempted mitigations.
I believe it is worth while for anyone interested in NEO's to peruse the agenda to find presentations of interest. Most are about 11 minutes long.
There where a few things that might be of general interest.
A number of talks on the fly by of Apophis on Friday April 13, 2029 a 370 m wide asteroid that will pass within 25,000 miles of the Earth and will be visible to the naked eye. It is elongated and may be a contact binary body.
There are plans to rendezvous with it to study it up close and the effect of the Earth's gravity on it.
Prior to the arrival of Apophis there will also be 5 NEO's Jun 6 and August 7, 2027; June 26(?) and October 26, 2028; January 28 2029 although not nearly as close.There where talks on the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) in 2022 when the binary asteroid Didymos will pass by Earth at 11 Mkm. A kinetic impact craft will be launched sometime between 2020 and 2021 to intercept the minor body 140 m wide early October 2022. The device is powered by a Nasa's NEXT (Xe) ion thruster and will impact the body at about 6 Km/sec. The European Space Agency will also send a cube satellite to rendezvous with the asteroid to get a close up of the impact. Earth based telescopes will also study the collision.
Also of interest was the progress on the development of NEOCam to be placed in orbit at the Langrange point L1 to detect and characterize asteroids using two IR cameras which will be more sensitive for detecting the > 140 m size asteroids for which it is designed.
There were also talks on studies of effects of collisions with Earth and the issues associated with such disasters as well as the geo-political issues associated with attempted mitigations.
I believe it is worth while for anyone interested in NEO's to peruse the agenda to find presentations of interest. Most are about 11 minutes long.