NASA has published its new Planetary Defense Strategy and Action Plan. The document was put together as a way to help bring improvements to preparedness to deal with possible impacts from near-Earth objects over the next decade, should any of them be discovered on a dangerous trajectory for our planet.
To do this, the space agency has spent decades studying Near-Earth Objects (or “NEOs”, for its acronym in English), the name given to comets and asteroids that orbit the Sun and that are less than 48 million kilometers from Earth’s orbit. . Some of them are even close enough to Earth’s orbit to be considered potential risk objects.
Thus, NASA created the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, responsible for monitoring, characterizing and seeking ways to avoid impacts of any NEO, if necessary. Earlier this month, the Office of Science and Technology Policy at the White House published an action plan for planetary defense against these objects.
The document was created to improve US preparedness in case any dangerous NEO is identified in the next 10 years. At the same time, NASA’s strategy was designed with a focus on planetary defense activities, as a way to ensure that it is working to meet the objectives of the national level plan.
NASA’s proposal includes all the objectives of the national plan, and also brings two specific ones, determined according to the needs of the space agency. Among them are improvements in the detection of NEOs, as well as their characterization and creation of a catalog of all NEOs capable of offering impact risks.
NASA also wants to develop and demonstrate NEO mitigation technologies that are similar to those used on the DART mission. Still, another objective highlights the international collaboration for the monitoring of NEOs and greater coordination between the space agency and other government institutions, as a way to improve the preparation and planning of responses in case of need for action.
Source: NASA
