NASA Creates A ‘Planetary Defense Coordination Office’ That Will Track Meteors

kalibex

Dagobah Resident
A major step has been taken to coordinate U.S. agencies and intergovernmental efforts to respond to future near-Earth objects that threaten Earth.

NASA has announced the creation of a Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). Lindley Johnson, NASA's current near-Earth object (NEO) program executive will lead the newly established office. The PDCO will reside within NASA's Planetary Science Division, in the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

_http://www.space.com/31551-nasa-planetary-defense-office-launched.html_
 
The announcement of this new office was made on Friday, and very few mainstream news outlets covered it. (Michael Snyder)

NASA Creates A ‘Planetary Defense Coordination Office’ That Will Track Meteors Headed Toward Earth
http://endoftheamericandream.com/archives/nasa-creates-a-planetary-defense-coordination-office-that-will-track-meteors-headed-toward-earth

Why is NASA suddenly so concerned about meteors and asteroids hitting the Earth? After telling us that “no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years” last year, NASA is now spending millions of dollars to set up a “Planetary Defense Coordination Office” that will be headed up by a designated “Planetary Defense Officer”.

According to NASA, more than 13,500 near Earth objects have been found so far, and another 1,500 new NEOs are being discovered each year. Approximately 10 percent of all near Earth objects are one kilometer or larger in size, and if one of those giant space rocks ever hit us, it would likely be considered an “extinction level event”.

It makes sense that NASA would be concerned about this threat, but why now?

The announcement of this new office was made on Friday, and very few mainstream news outlets covered it. But I did find this story on CNBC…

If and when the interplanetary asteroid apocalypse comes, NASA plans to be prepared.

In a little noticed move this week, the space agency announced that it had created a directorate for “detecting and tracking near earth objects (NEOs).”

The new Planetary Defense Coordination Office—which, despite its science fiction-sounding name, is part of a very real effort to ward off the potentially deadly impact of asteroids that may hit the planet—is charged with supervising “all NASA-funded projects to find and characterize asteroids and comets that pass near Earth’s orbit around the sun.”

Of course once again NASA played down the idea that there is any sort of “imminent threat” during the announcement of this new program, but if there is no threat why go to so much trouble and effort?

According to the Washington Times, one of the things that this new Planetary Defense Coordination Office will be focusing on is a way to “redirect” potentially dangerous asteroids…

The office is also developing long-term planetary defense goals. They include “asteroid redirect” concepts that could could push the threatening object off course and away from Earth – a program also of interest to the European Space Agency. NASA is poised for the worst case scenario as well.

“Even if intervention is not possible, NASA would provide expert input to FEMA about impact timing, location, and effects to inform emergency response operations. In turn, FEMA would handle the preparations and response planning related to the consequences of atmospheric entry or impact to U.S. communities,” the space agency noted.

So why is this happening now?

Do they know something that they aren’t telling the rest of us?

Last year, we learned that NASA had teamed up with the National Nuclear Security Administration to figure out a way to use nuclear weapons to “nudge a large asteroid off course”. The following comes from an article in the New York Times about this effort…

The two agencies — NASA and the National Nuclear Security Administration — have long studied such threats on their own. They have surveyed the cosmic debris, designed rocket interceptors and run supercomputer simulations to see if a nuclear blast could nudge a large asteroid off course.

In interviews, federal officials and private experts said the new interagency agreement would deepen the levels of expert cooperation and governmental planning, ultimately increasing the chances of a successful deflection.

“It’s a big step forward,” said Kevin Greenaugh, a senior official at the nuclear security agency. “Whenever you have multiple agencies coming together for the common defense, that’s news.”

Someone over at NASA sure does seem concerned about these things all of a sudden.

After all these years, why have asteroids and meteors become such a high priority?

Something does not seem quite right, because NASA has been insisting that there is absolutely no threat in the foreseeable future. This is something that I covered in a previous article. According to NASA, “no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years”…

A NASA spokesman said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small.

“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”

A NASA spokesman said: “NASA knows of no asteroid or comet currently on a collision course with Earth, so the probability of a major collision is quite small.

“In fact, as best as we can tell, no large object is likely to strike the Earth any time in the next several hundred years.”

At a time when the federal budget is very tight and many federal agencies cannot get money that they desperately need, for some reason the sky is the limit for tracking dangerous meteors. In fact, CNBC says that funding related to tracking NEOs is now more than ten times higher than it was when Barack Obama first entered the White House…

NASA said that the recently passed fiscal year 2016 federal budget included some $50 million for observing NEOs and the new PDCO—a more than tenfold increase in funding since President Barack Obama took office.

But of course there is nothing to worry about according to NASA.

They assure us that no large object is going to hit our planet “in the next several hundred years”.

They are telling us that they have everything under control and that we should all remain calm.

So do you believe them?
 
Here's NASA's article on the above:
http://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-office-to-coordinate-asteroid-detection-hazard-mitigation

Could be they are late to the game, or could be they covertly may have long-term facilitation for this and haven't let the public in on the real concerns or tracking programs.

Either way, they are not going to make much difference without a solution to a real and impending threat.
 
I just noticed this video on YouTube that has me wondering the real purpose of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office. This guy says some interesting things that make me wonder if NASA even really wants to "deflect" asteroids away from earth. What if they want to do the opposite or are just going to blame an asteroid for a secret weapon caused major impact situation (whether atomic or otherwise). It could be another way to aid implementation of martial law and empower FEMA. Or there really is/are a cosmic impact/impacts coming. This fellow seems to be very thorough in his researching.

Published on Sep 20, 2016

https://youtu.be/E1lS8gvVEjY

Also this brings to mind this session:

http://cassiopaea.org/forum/index.php/topic said:
Q: (L) What are you excited about?
A: Peace will come!
Q: (L) And when will this peace come? Well, maybe "when" isn't the
right question. How is peace going to come?
A: The cosmos is going to clean house!!!
Q: (Perceval) Doesn't sound very peaceful. (L) Yeah, that doesn't
sound very peaceful to me!
A: Believe us it will be after!
Q: (L) Well. Okay, that leads to my... Do you have anything further
to say before I get on to the questions?
A: No, we know the questions!
Q: (L) So, what you're saying is that your remarks at the beginning...
{relate to what we have been discussing which is all the really weird
stuff going on).[planchette zooms around on the board] Boy, you're
full of energy! I want to know if this fire in Colorado was caused by
fireballs?
A: Indeed and did you notice that feeble cover-up? They are getting
desperate.
Q: (L) Yes, we noticed that feeble cover-up. Speaking of fireballs,
there was an article that Kniall put together about this supposed
comet/missile launch. We're just kind of a little bit curious about that
because there was a lot of weird stuff going on around that.
A: You should remember what we told you years ago about
"chemtrails" in relation to MIC activity, that it was fully known that
the real enemy was "out there" not "over there." Don't discard what
Clube said about this matter so easily. You should be aware that
there are swarms of missiles ready and waiting to be launched at the
order of the military sky watchers so as to mask what is going on. In
this case and even others there was both: A comet explosion
followed by a missile launch to keep the masses calm. Can't have the
PTB looking like they are angering "the gods", ya know!!!
 
ESA is indicting it has a plan. With some strange ideas, and maybe wishful thinking preventing the inevitable.

Experts from NASA and other government agencies are gearing up to tackle an asteroid hurtling towards Earth. No, it’s not another remake of a Hollywood blockbuster, it’s part of a simulation to prepare for the doomsday scenario.

72f8f256fa1e523e0109964785667c8b.png

Estimated risk corridor for the impact of a hypothetical asteroid. © ESA

When the International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference kicks off next week, NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office will team up with other agencies and scientific institutions, including the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), to work on how they would handle an asteroid on a collision course with Earth.

The group hopes to learn the best strategies for dealing with the threat, starting from the instant a potentially dangerous asteroid is detected by astronomers.

The experts will work on the following fictional scenario:

Astronomers discover an asteroid on March 26, 2019 and give it the name ‘2019 PDC.’ Very little is known about the asteroid’s physical properties, and experts have determined it could be anywhere from 100-300 meters in size. The astronomers class 2018 DPC as a ‘potentially hazardous asteroid.’

Initially, the European Space Agency and NASA’s ‘impact monitoring systems’ forecast that the asteroid has a 1-in-50,000 chance of striking Earth and it is most likely to strike on April 29, 2027. However, after monitoring the asteroid for a month, they conclude that the chances of the object hitting Earth have increased dramatically to 1-in-100.

Once again, this is fictional – there’s no need to call Bruce Willis just yet.
NASA says the exercise won’t be tightly scripted. The goal is to investigate how all the relevant agencies and citizens might respond to an actual impending asteroid strike. The space agency has already taken part in six similar exercises in recent years.


“These exercises have really helped us in the planetary defense community to understand what our colleagues on the disaster management side need to know,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA’s planetary defense officer. “This exercise will help us develop more effective communications with each other and with our governments.”

So there you have it. When the asteroid comes, they will be ready. We hope.


Meanwhile:
 
By Mike Wall a day ago Includes three movie like scenarios:
The good news is, we can do something about it. :shock:
People are too complacent about the asteroid threat for Bill Nye's liking.

The former TV "Science Guy," who currently serves as CEO of the nonprofit Planetary Society, warned that catastrophic impacts like the one that offed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago are not confined to the past.

"The Earth is going to get hit with another [big] asteroid," Nye said yesterday (May 2) at the International Academy of Astronautics'2019 Planetary Defense Conference in College Park, Maryland.

Related: Potentially Dangerous Asteroids (Images)

"The problem is, we don't know when," he added. "It's a very low probability in anyone's lifetime, but it's a very high-consequence event. If it happens, it would be like control-alt-delete for everything."

Unlike the dinosaurs, however, we don't just have to sit around and wait for doom to rain down on us. We can do something about the asteroid threat — and we should start prepping for it now, Nye stressed.

The first step is to find the dangerous space rocks. There's good news on this front: NASA scientists think they've already discovered more than 90% of the potential civilization-endersnear-Earth asteroids at least 0.6 miles (1 kilometers) wide — and none of these mountain-size space rocks pose a threat for the foreseeable future. :shock:

But there are lots of undiscovered asteroids zooming through near-Earth space that could do serious damage on a local scale — wiping out an area the size of a state, for example. So, it would behoove us to get some better detection tools online, Nye said.

Such help is coming, and soon. For instance, the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope, a big instrument set to start observing the heavens next year from Chile, will likely be able to discover and catalog 80% to 90% of potentially hazardous asteroids at least 460 feet (140 meters) wide, project team members say.

And NASA is considering launching a dedicated asteroid-hunter called the Near-Earth Object Camera. This proposed mission would scan for space rocks in infrared light, spotting their heat signatures in the darkness.

Coordination is the next step after detection, Nye said. A big asteroid hurtling toward Earth would be a global issue, so the international community would have to work together to deal with it.

And we'd have several options at our disposal. If we had enough warning time — years or, preferably, decades — we could launch a probe to fly alongside the asteroid, gradually nudging the rock off course via a gravitational tug. This "gravity tractor" craft would ideally boost its pull by plucking a big boulder off the asteroid, said NASA Chief Scientist Jim Green, who participated in yesterday's event with Nye.

If we were pressed for time, we could slam one or more spacecraft into the asteroid, knocking it onto a benign trajectory through brute force. Or we could detonate a nuclear weapon near the rock, vaporizing much of its surface. The resulting mass loss, and the flow of material off the asteroid, would change the rock's path, experts say. And the shock wave from the blast might do the trick by itself, Nye said.

Nye also mentioned the "Laser Bees" strategy, which involves sending a swarm of small spacecraft out to the potentially dangerous asteroid. Each little probe would focus a laser beam on the same spot on the rock, vaporizing material and causing a jet to erupt. This jet would serve as a sort of engine that would push the asteroid onto a different path.

During his portion of the presentation, Green highlighted the many things we can learn from asteroids — they're time capsules from the dawn of the solar system, after all, and carbon-rich rocks may have helped life get started on Earth — and their potential benefits for exploration. Tapping into asteroid resources could make voyaging spacecraft and astronauts more self-sufficient and improve life here on Earth as well, he said.

But Green agreed with Nye that the space-rock threat is real: There are catastrophic impacts in our future if we don't do something about them.

"It's not a matter of if; it's only a matter of when," Green said.
Mike Wall's book about the search for alien life, "Out There" (Grand Central Publishing, 2018; illustrated by Karl Tate), is out now. Follow him on Twitter @michaeldwall. Follow us on Twitter @Spacedotcom or Facebook.

6th IAA Planetary Defense Conference - Day 5
Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute
Streamed live 6 hours ago
 
The asteroid impact exercise article published on SOTT in Science & Technology section April 26th, International space agencies team up to practice for an asteroid striking Earth has come to its conclusion as published by Phys.org May 4th:

Killer asteroid flattens New York in simulation exercise
After devastating the French Riviera in 2013, destroying Dhaka in 2015 and saving Tokyo in 2017, an international asteroid impact simulation ended Friday with its latest disaster—New York in ruins.

Despite a simulated eight years of preparation, scientists and engineers tried but failed to deflect the killer asteroid.

The exercise has become a regular event among the international community of "planetary defense" experts.

The latest edition began Monday near Washington, with the following alert: an asteroid roughly 100 to 300 meters (330 to 1,000 feet) in diameter had been spotted and according to rough calculations had a one percent chance of hitting the Earth on April 29, 2027.

Each day during the conference, some 200 astronomers, engineers and emergency response specialists received new information, made decisions and awaited further updates from the organizers of the game, designed by a NASA aerospace engineer.

As fictional months ticked by in the simulation, the probability of the giant space rock crashing into Earth rose to 10 percent—and then to 100 percent.

NASA launched a probe in 2021 to examine the threat up close. In December that year, astronomers confirmed it was headed straight to the Denver area and that the western US city would be destroyed.

The major space powers of the United States, Europe, Russia, China and Japan decided to build six "kinetic impactors"—probes meant to hit the asteroid to change its trajectory.

It took time to build the impactors and wait for the right launch window. The impacts were set for August 2024.

Three impactors managed to hit the asteroid. The main body was deflected, but a smaller fragment broke off and continued on a deadly path, this time towards the eastern US.

Washington considered sending a nuclear bomb to deflect the 60-meter rock—repeating a successful strategy that saved Tokyo last year—but it was crippled by political disagreements.

All that remained was to prepare for impact.

With six months to go, experts could only predict that the asteroid was headed to the New York area. With two months to go, it is confirmed the city will be destroyed.

Evacuation!

The asteroid will enter the atmosphere at a blistering 69,000 kilometers per hour (43,000 miles per hour) and explode 15 kilometers (9.3 miles) above Central Park.

The energy of the blast will be 1,000 times that of the nuclear bomb dropped on Hiroshima.

It will destroy everything within a 15 kilometer "unsurvivable" radius, scientists said.

Manhattan will be completely razed. Windows as far as 45 kilometers away will shatter and damage will extend as far out as 68 kilometers from the epicenter.

The questions raised by the scenario were endless.

How do authorities evacuate ten million people? Moving people to safety from hurricanes has shown the task's difficulty.

"Two months may not be enough time to really evacuate, because you're evacuating people who are stuck, who have to rebuild their lives where they're going. You're going to have fleets of U-hauls," said Brandy Johnson, an "angry citizen" in the exercise, referring to the rental moving trucks.

Who will pay? Who will host those displaced? How will authorities protect everything from nuclear and chemical installations to works of art?

And how will citizens behave in the face of an end-of-the-world scenario?

"If you knew your home was going to be destroyed six months from now, and that you weren't going back again, would you keep paying your mortgage?" asked Victoria Andrews, NASA's deputy planetary defense officer.

Participants debated insurance and legal issues at length: the United States did save Denver, but accidentally destroyed New York.

"In this situation, under international law, the United States, regardless of fault, as the launching state, would absolutely be liable to pay compensation," said Alissa Haddaji, coordinator of a group of 15 international space lawyers created to study those very issues.

The fictional killer asteroid is, of course, "highly unlikely," Paul Chodas, the NASA engineer who is the game's designer, told AFP.

"But we wanted the issues to be exposed and discussed."

Astronomers at the conference took the opportunity to defend the NeoCam space telescope project, which would help scientists better identify asteroids and react earlier to threats.

The next simulation exercise will take place in 2021 in Vienna. Chodas left open the possibility that it will be Europe's turn in the line of fire.

Usual damage control. We don't know how to tackle it, more questions than answers but it's all right. We are working on it and it is basically not going to happen so we just take your tax money to entertain the idea and you carry on. Obey and consume.
 
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