NASA, FEMA Hold Asteroid Emergency Planning Exercise

#20 by Blackstar on 06 Jan, 2017 17:41
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/pdc17/

The 2017 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario

A hypothetical asteroid impact scenario will be presented at the 2017 IAA Planetary Defense Conference (PDC), to be held in Tokyo, Japan, May 15-19, 2017. Although this scenario is realistic in many ways, it is completely fictional and does NOT describe an actual potential asteroid impact. The scenario is as follows:

An asteroid is discovered on March 6, 2017, at magnitude 21.1, and confirmed the following day. It is assigned the designation "2017 PDC" by the Minor Planet Center. (To reinforce the fact that this is not a real asteroid, we are using three letters in the designation, something that would never be done for an actual asteroid.)

Initial calculations indicate that 2017 PDC's orbit approaches well within 0.05 au to that of the Earth, and it is therefore classified as a Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA). (The unit "au" stands for "astronomical unit", which is the mean distance of the Earth from the Sun, 149,597,870.7 km, or 92,955,807 miles.) The orbit is eccentric, extending from a distance of 0.88 au from the Sun at its closest point to 3.60 au at its farthest point. The asteroid's orbital period is 1225 days (3.35 years), and its orbital plane is inclined 6.3 degrees to the orbit of the Earth.

The day after 2017 PDC is discovered, JPL's Sentry impact monitoring system, along with ESA's similar CLOMON system, both identify several future dates when this asteroid could potentially impact the Earth. The date of the most likely potential impact is July 21, 2027 - over ten years away - but the probability of impact is very low, about 1 chance in 40,000.

When first detected, the asteroid is about 0.36 au (54 million kilometers or 33 million miles) from Earth, approaching our planet and getting brighter. It is observed extensively, and as the observational dataset grows, the impact probability for 2027 increases. The asteroid peaks in brightness at magnitude 20.4 on April 7, by which time the impact probability has risen to nearly 0.2 percent.
#21 by mikelepage on 08 Jan, 2017 14:34
Quote from: Blackstar on 06 Jan, 2017 17:41
http://neo.jpl.nasa.gov/pdc17/

The 2017 PDC Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Scenario
(snip)
The date of the most likely potential impact is July 21, 2027 - over ten years away - but the probability of impact is very low, about 1 chance in 40,000.

Interesting. In playing with the orbit viewer app, I notice that the last time the asteroid passes through the inner solar system prior to the impact is in 2023, and the Earth crosses the impact point somewhat ahead of the asteroid in July of that year. I'm guessing this would be the time to launch any payload(s) aimed at rendezvousing with the asteroid years ahead of the impact.
#22 by su27k on 07 Nov, 2022 00:21
NASA Asteroid Threat Practice Drill Shows We’re Not Ready

Quote from: scientificamerican.com
On August 16, 2022 an approximately 70-meter asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere. At 2:02:10 P.M. EDT, the space rock exploded eight miles over Winston-Salem, N.C., with the energy of 10 megatons of TNT. The airburst virtually leveled the city and surrounding area. Casualties were in the thousands.

Well, not really. The destruction of Winston-Salem was the story line of the fourth Planetary Defense Tabletop Exercise, run by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. The exercise was a simulation where academics, scientists and government officials gathered to practice how the United States would respond to a real planet-threatening asteroid. Held February 23–24, participants were both virtual and in-person, hailing from Washington D.C., the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Lab (APL) campus in Laurel, Md., Raleigh and Winston-Salem, N.C. The exercise included more than 200 participants from 16 different federal, state and local organizations. On August 5, the final report came out, and the message was stark: humanity is not yet ready to meet this threat.