Reconnaissance missions are a crucial next step when a celestial body threat to our planet has been identified and confirmed to be significant. This helps in studying the body in detail by determining precise orbital characteristics and mapping the physical specifications, thus enabling the all the stakeholders to determine the best possible course of action along with the timelines. Multiple...
The hypothetical asteroid threat exercise for the 2025 planetary defense conference includes an intriguing trajectory design challenge for possible deflection missions. The long (17 years) time span between the impact threat announcement and the possible impact date allows one to exploit multiple gravity assist (MGA) trajectories involving the inner solar system planets to allow an otherwise...
This study examines whether the Kinetic Impactor, Nuclear Explosion or Laser Ablation could mitigate the impact threat of asteroid 2024 PDC25, a hypothetical asteroid with 17 years warning created for the 2025 IAA Planetary Defense Conference exercise. The potential impact date of asteroid 2024 PDC25 is April 24, 2041. Its absolute magnitude is estimated to be H = 21.9 ± 0.3 and the size...
Recent events and research have uncovered an additional potential contributor to global risk estimates from airburst and impact events, the Lamb-wave driven global tsunamis. The 2022 explosion of Hunga Tonga–Hunga Haʻapai (HTHH) generated a global Lamb wave that created tsunami waves in the oceans around the world where the water depth provided the conditions needed to create a Proudman...
A nuclear electric propulsion (NEP) vehicle concept and mission were developed for the 2025 Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) asteroid target. The work builds upon recent work by Brophy, et. al. using solar electric propulsion for planetary defense. The results with NEP are different given that the NEP vehicle’s power is not affected by distance from the sun. A relatively near-term NEP...
To raise awareness of the potential threat that Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) might pose to life on Earth, the 2025 Planetary Defense Conference proposes a hypothetical asteroid impact scenario with the discovery of the “2024 PDC25” asteroid. To address this exercise, this work investigates different mission scenarios to conduct a spacecraft toward the asteroid and simulate an impact. Different...
The destructive power of an NEO impact is closely tied to its mass. Especially in the period prior to or in the absence of a reconnaissance mission, an impactor mass must be determined using an estimated size, and it is this estimated size that is reported in official IAWN notifications and used by the international community to plan subsequent actions.
Currently, asteroid size estimates...