{"id":17666,"date":"2020-06-30T21:28:58","date_gmt":"2020-06-30T13:28:58","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/wp-productionenv-bjg9h2g2bgg5b8aa.southeastasia-01.azurewebsites.net\/news\/happy-asteroid-day-why-were-going-out-to-space-rocks-before-they-come-for-us\/"},"modified":"2020-06-30T21:28:58","modified_gmt":"2020-06-30T13:28:58","slug":"happy-asteroid-day-why-were-going-out-to-space-rocks-before-they-come-for-us","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/starpath.global\/news\/happy-asteroid-day-why-were-going-out-to-space-rocks-before-they-come-for-us\/","title":{"rendered":"Happy Asteroid Day! Why we\u2019re going out to space rocks before they come for us"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"DART
An artist\u2019s conception shows the spacecraft for NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test approaching its target. (NASA \/ JHUAPL Illustration)<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Today\u2019s 112th anniversary of a close brush with a cosmic catastrophe serves as a teachable moment about the perils and prospects posed by near-Earth asteroids.<\/p>\n

Asteroid Day is timed to commemorate a blast from space that occurred over a Siberian forest back on June 30, 1908. The explosion, thought to have been caused by the breakup of an asteroid or comet, wiped out millions of acres of trees \u2014 but because the area was so remote, the death toll was minimal.<\/p>\n

Because of the Tunguska blast and more recent close calls, such as the 2013 Chelyabinsk meteor blast, the threat from above is being taken more seriously. And although a Seattle-area asteroid mining venture called Planetary Resources fizzled, experts say the idea of extracting resources from near-Earth asteroids is worth taking seriously as well.<\/p>\n

Two space missions \u2014 Japan\u2019s Hayabusa 2 and NASA\u2019s OSIRIS-REx \u2014 are in the midst of gathering samples from asteroids and returning them to Earth for analysis. Two future missions \u2014 NASA\u2019s Double Asteroid Redirection Test, or DART, and the European Space Agency\u2019s Hera probe \u2014 will send a projectile into a small asteroid to see what it would take to divert threatening space rocks.<\/p>\n

When it comes to asteroid science, not every frontier is in space: A new telescope facility known as the Vera C. Rubin Observatory (formerly known as the Large Synoptic Survey Telescope) is taking shape in Chile, and it\u2019s expected to identify a torrent of near-Earth asteroids after beginning science operations in 2022.<\/p>\n

The University of Washington\u2019s DIRAC Institute will provide some of the analytical firepower to deal with the terabytes of data due to be collected every night. And that\u2019s not the only Seattle connection: More than a decade ago, Microsoft co-founder Bill Gates and software billionaire Charles Simonyi provided $30 million to rev up the federally funded project.<\/p>\n

In recognition of Simonyi\u2019s contribution, the Rubin Observatory\u2019s 8.4-meter wide-field telescope has been dubbed the Simonyi Survey Telescope.<\/p>\n

You can learn all about those missions, and get the big picture for Asteroid Day, by bingeing on this year\u2019s Asteroid Day presentations via YouTube. (You may even see yours truly pop up occasionally as a panel moderator.)<\/p>\n