Speaker
Description
How to detect and deflect asteroids and comets that threaten to impact Earth, and how to mitigate the consequences should an impact be unavoidable, is a vital but complex topic that touches on multiple disciplines, involves multiple stakeholders, and presents multiple options to decisionmakers. Related issues have been extensively researched for many years and a large number of papers, reports, and other references exist, but key findings, insights, and recommendations have so far not been pulled together into a single place in an easily-accessible format.
While many senior government officials in the U.S. and Europe have direct access to dedicated Planetary Defense subject matter experts who can answer their questions and inform their decisionmaking, especially in case of a short-notice Planetary Defense emergency, most leaders around the globe do not have that luxury, and neither do most industry executives, media (and social media) representatives, civil society leaders, and others who will have to “get smart” on the topic quickly in order to save lives and protect assets.
Decisionmakers both in the US and among our allies and partners will therefore benefit from having a compact yet comprehensive reference available, written in plain language, that helps them understand the key issues, discusses what can be done now, and outlines what the options are once a specific threat materializes. Such a document would directly support Goal 4.1 (“engage and inform foreign governments”) of the 2023 U.S. National Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan for Near-Earth Object Hazards and Planetary Defense, as well as Goal 5.3 (“develop and share informational material for different audiences”) and Goal 8.2 (“enhance leadership messaging of planetary defense”) of the 2023 NASA Planetary Defense Strategy and Action Plan.
One example for this kind of resource is the “Planetary Defense Decisionmaker Guide” and its associated “Planetary Defense Pocket Reference” that the author has developed over the course of the past several years, a draft of which was first distributed in support of the exercise at the Planetary Defense Conference 2023 in Vienna.
This presentation will discuss the goals, design approach, structure, and key content of this document, to encourage and inform similar efforts. It will also collect feedback from the audience in order to improve future editions.