NEO
Scientists Planning Now for Asteroid Flyby a Decade Away
Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel
NASA Headquarters, Washington
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
On April 13, 2029, a speck of light will streak across the sky, getting brighter and faster. At one point it will travel more than the width of the full Moon within a minute and it will get as bright as the stars in the Little Dipper. But it won’t be a satellite or an airplane – it will be a 1,100-foot-wide (340-meter-wide) near-Earth asteroid called 99942 Apophis that will cruise harmlessly by Earth, about 19,000 miles (31,000 kilometers) above the surface. That’s within the distance that some of our spacecraft that orbit Earth.
The international asteroid research community couldn’t be more excited.
NASA, FEMA, International Partners Plan Asteroid Impact Exercise
Dwayne Brown / JoAnna Wendel
NASA Headquarters, Washington
DC Agle
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.
While headlines routinely report on “close shaves” and “near-misses” when near-Earth objects (NEOs) such as asteroids or comets pass relatively close to Earth, the real work of preparing for the possibility of a NEO impact with Earth goes on mostly out of the public eye.
For more than 20 years, NASA and its international partners have been scanning the skies for NEOs, which are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun and come within 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit. International groups, such as NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), the European Space Agency’s Space Situational Awareness-NEO Segment and the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) have made better communication of the hazards posed by NEOs a top priority.
MedIa Event: NASA Invites Media to Learn More About Near-Earth Asteroids, Comets
April 25, 2019
MEDIA ADVISORY M19-034
Media are invited to hear experts from around the world discuss the latest research on near-Earth objects (NEOs) at the International Academy of Astronautics’ 2019 Planetary Defense Conference, Monday, April 29 through Friday, May 3 at The Hotel at the University of Maryland.
NEOs include asteroids and comets that orbit our Sun and come within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit, where some may pose an impact hazard to our planet. NASA experts will talk about the agency’s first mission to demonstrate a technique to change the motion of an asteroid in space and other aspects of the nation’s planetary defense program.
