This year’s Asteroid Day has scheduled events, including one at the Skyland Lodge Conference Center in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, on Sunday at 9 p.m.
June 30, 2015 was the first “Asteroid Day” – “a global awareness movement where people from all over the world come together to learn about asteroids and what we can do to protect our planet” from asteroid and comet impacts.
This year’s Asteroid Day has scheduled events around the world and online, including mine: “The Sky is Falling: Space Rocks and You” at the Skyland Lodge Conference Center in Shenandoah National Park, Virginia, on Sunday, June 30 at 9:00 PM ET.
NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory has created an excellent Asteroid Day resource website full of “teachable moments, student activities, and educator guides about asteroids and comets.”
A significant date in Earth’s history
On this date in 1908, “a rocky (not icy) body 164 to 262 feet in diameter entered the atmosphere at approximately 34,000 miles per hour and produced an explosion of 10 to 30 megatons, equivalent to the energy of the 1980 eruption of Mt. Eruption St . Helens at an altitude of 6 to 9 miles” occurred over Tunguska, Russia, according to NASA’s 2019 update on the “Tunguz Event”.
The Tunguska event devastated 830 square miles and flattened 80 million trees in the largest such event to occur in modern times. That’s why Asteroid Day is held every year on June 30 to remind the world that planetary defenses against asteroids and comets matter.
In 2013 we had the Chelyabinsk impact event which was historic due to the number of injuries and damage to buildings it caused – the most on record for an asteroid/meteorite event.
The Chelyabinsk event was the most documented asteroid explosion and meteorite fall ever, thanks to the abundance of videos, audio recordings, photographs, interviews with witnesses, and the precise recovery process of the associated meteorites.
Chelyabinsk has also improved our knowledge of the threat posed by asteroids that are smaller than a kilometer. Smaller asteroids like Chelyabinsk pose a greater risk of damage than previously thought.
In December 2018, a 40% Chelyabinsk power release event took place over the Bering Sea, confirming once again that such events occur more often than we would like.
The United Nations, NASA, ESA and the B612 Foundation are working to develop defense capabilities as well as better detection of millions of asteroids.
A direct connection to the DC area with Asteroid Day
The B612 Foundation announced Friday that a local researcher has won the first-ever Planetary Defense Award, called the Schweickart Prize, which was launched in 2023 to honor Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart.
The award was presented to Joe DeMartini, Ph.D. student at the University of Maryland for his outstanding proposal for Saturday’s twilight viewing campaign. Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart presented the prestigious award at a special ceremony attended by NASA astronauts Steve Smith and Nicole Stott, as well as YouTuber Scott Manley.
Below are important planetary defense strengths that have significantly improved or will improve our protection against an incoming asteroid through detection and deflection:
- NASA established the Planetary Defense Coordination Office.
- Interagency exercises, such as the “Fifth Biennial Interagency Planetary Defense Tabletop Exercise” held in Maryland, are conducted regularly to test real-world scenarios and responses.
- In 2021, we finally got the go-ahead for the NEO Surveyor space telescope mission, which is designed specifically to search for large and small space rocks – like Chelyabinsk. This mission will greatly improve our ability to detect space rocks, especially those that lurk close to the Sun (like Chelyabinsk) and as a result are not easily seen with Earth-based telescopes. In an e-mail, the principal investigator of NEO Surveyor Dr. Amy Mainzer said: “We are excited to begin work on the spacecraft bus this fall in preparation for a September 2028 launch.”
- NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission impacted and changed the orbit of an asteroid in September 2022.
- A worldwide community of citizen astronomers in association with the SETI Institute actively participates in planetary defense by making real-time observations using telescopes manufactured by Unistellar. I bought one of their telescopes to participate in their citizen science projects.
One last point to consider: “dinosaurs are dead because they didn’t have telescopes or a space program.” I use this phrase of mine to emphasize to my viewers what we must do to avoid the path of the dinosaurs that were killed by the impact on the Yucatan Peninsula 66 million years ago.
The cosmic clock is ticking. Asteroid Day became part of the movement.
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