Astronomers and space enthusiasts around the world today collectively marvel at our mercurial presence in space, especially as we drift through space amid large asteroids like the one that wiped out the dinosaurs 66 million years ago.
June 30 is Asteroid Day, an annual holiday observed to reflect on the prospect of a planet-destroying space rock hitting the planet and what scientists are doing to mitigate that risk.
The day is celebrated on the anniversary of 1908 Tunguska event in Russia, when a space rock about half the size of a football field disintegrated in mid-air over a remote forest in Siberia – the largest asteroid impact ever witnessed on Earth. A flash brighter than the sun, followed by a sound like thunder, the fireball killed herds of reindeer, knocked people more than 40 miles (64 kilometers) off their porches, and flattened some 80 million trees. The impact threw so much dust into the air that sunsets were fiery red for days, and people as far away as Asia could read newspapers outside until midnight.
More recently, in February 2013, a 20-meter (66 ft) space rock hit Earth near the city of Chelyabinsk, Russia, injuring about 1,500 people and breaking over 3,000 windows in apartments and commercial buildings. The shock wave generated by the impact was so powerful that it circled our planet twice, scientists say.
Related: Phosphate in a NASA OSIRIS-REx asteroid sample suggests the Bennu space rock is from an oceanic world
Although such destructive space rocks land more often in the oceans than on land, the asteroid strike in 2013, just a decade ago, “reminded us that these things happen,” Nick Moskovitz of the Lowell Observatory in Arizona told Space.com. “Asteroids have a strange duality in that they probably delivered ingredients for life to Earth, but at the same time, the wrong impact in the right place could lead to significant damage to anyone who might be in the vicinity.”
Asteroid Day is a global awareness campaign led by the Luxembourg-based Asteroid Foundation and has been an official day on the United Nations calendar since December 2016. In previous years, the day has been celebrated with dozens of local events in institutions around the world. world, with interviews focused on the science of asteroids that were current that year.
Last year, for example, many events focused on the wildly successful NASA DART missionwhich smashed a refrigerator-sized spacecraft into an asteroid named Dimorphos and pushed the space rock out of its orbit by 33 minutes, very likely changing the shape of the object also. DART was humanity’s first test of planetary defense and proved that scientists have the technology necessary to defend Earth if a similar space rock were ever to be on a collision course with our planet. “Last year, Asteroid Day was very similar to the DART festival,” Moskovitz said. “It’s a fun day.
This year’s celebration, which is taking place at around 30 institutions around the world, including institutions in India, Africa, Europe and Mexico, includes talks on Europe’s Hera mission, which follows on from DART, which is due to launch in October and is designed to assess consequences of the mission. On Friday and Saturday (June 28 and 29) in Luxembourg, home of the Asteroid Foundation, events ranged from seminars on asteroid science and space sustainability to workshops where visitors could build Lego spaceships. At night, participants explored the night sky in real time by virtually controlling telescopes in Tuscany, Italy, led by astronomer Gianluca Masi, who directs the Virtual Telescope Project.
Here is a map outlining locations of similar ongoing events around the world. If none are nearby, you can tune in to online asteroid discussions from astronauts and industry experts that the Foundation recently aired.
Across the US, hundreds of people are expected to join scientists today (June 30) for full tours of Meteor Crater, where asteroid science demonstrations and themed games are planned along with food and drink.
“Right here in northern Arizona, we can see the literal impact of asteroids on our planet,” said Matt Kent, president and CEO of Meteor Crater and Barringer Space Museum. prior notification. “What better place to host an Asteroid Day event than here?”
At 7 p.m. local time, visitors will begin heading to the Lowell Observatory, about a half-hour drive away, for telescope viewing and science presentations by astronomers, including Moskovitz. Because Asteroid Day falls on a weekend this year, “we could see some pretty large crowds between the two locations,” he said.
In Lowell, scientist Brian Skiff will discuss the strange quasi-moon of Venus. The space rock, which is also thought to be a near-Earth asteroid, was discovered in 2002 and recently received a distinctive name Zoozve. It appears to be orbiting Venus, but is not permanently bound to the planet’s gravitational tides, meaning it will eventually be flung away. It is considered a potentially dangerous space rock, but is not on a collision course with Earth.
Moskovitz will also present a project at Lowell that uses common security cameras to take pictures of the night sky in search of meteors, cataloging up to 500 each night. The project, called LO-CAMS (short for Lowell Observatory Cameras for All-Sky Meteor Surveillance), “is all about low-cost hardware that is put to good scientific use,” he said. “The night sky can be very active if you have the right instruments.”
The project began as a hobby project eight years ago for Moskovitz and has since grown into a full-fledged operation with dozens of cameras on the roofs of scientific institutions, schools, colleges and, occasionally, private residences throughout Arizona. From the HD photos captured by these cameras, Moskovitz and the LO-CAMS team can predict the paths of pea-sized meteors and later look for pieces that may have survived their journey to earth, “like the ultimate scavenger,” he said. Moskovitz.
By an interesting cosmic coincidence, this year’s Asteroid Day comes on the heels of two asteroids that just flew past Earth. Neither was on its way to impact our planet, to be clear, but the encounter was remarkable nonetheless. The larger of the pair, a Mount Everest-sized space rock named 415029 (2011 UL21), whizzed past our planet on Thursday (June 27), flying an average of about 17 times farther from Earth than where the Moon sits. But a smaller asteroid, called 2024 MK, hurtled into Earth’s lunar orbit on Saturday (June 29), close enough for stargazers using small telescopes in dark-sky spots to see it.
If an asteroid were ever to be on a collision course with Earth, asteroid-deflecting missions like DART would be critical to mitigating the risk of an impact. Widely seen as a success on many levels, the mission is a testament to our current technology and the team of more than a hundred scientists and engineers who developed it. However, the effectiveness of any strategy really depends on the size of the space rock and how much time we get to prepare. The only way to reduce the risk of a sudden asteroid strike is to find and track as many asteroids as possible, since those that pose a risk to Earth are “usually objects discovered now with potential impacts decades or centuries in the future.” Moskovitz said.
Technological advances in recent years have allowed scientists to catalog the growing number of asteroids in our solar system, including artificial intelligence software that previously detected more than 27,000 asteroids. overlooked in telescope images. At least several million more space rocks are expected to be discovered in the coming period Vera C. Rubin Observatory, which starting next year will image the southern sky every night for at least ten years. At that cadence, the observatory is expected to double the number of known asteroids in just the first six months of operation.
Within the next few decades, scientists may be able to mitigate — if not largely extinguish — the risk associated with large asteroid impacts, Moskovitz said.
“That’s a luxury that dinosaurs didn’t have, and it’s something that will forever benefit us moving forward as a species.”