NASA has just premiered Planetary Defenders, a fascinating documentary looking at the high-stakes work geared toward protecting Earth from large asteroids spotted coming our way.
The 75-minute production (above) features the astronomers and scientists who are working tirelessly to identify and monitor asteroids considered a potential threat — including, briefly, this one that made headlines earlier this year.
Planetary Defenders captures “the intricate and collaborative efforts of these unsung heroes, blending cutting-edge science with personal stories to reveal the human spirit behind this critical global endeavor,” NASA said, adding: “Witness the drama, the challenges, and the triumphs of those on the front lines of planetary defense.”
The documentary’s trailer should certainly be enough to whet your appetite. It’s full of contributors offering some pretty dramatic takes on the issue of incoming asteroids.
“Those objects are big enough to cause what we would call truly global devastation, meaning that they could cause global extinction events,” says one. “The good news is that we’ve found more than about 95% of them. When we get down to smaller objects, things that are larger than, let’s say, about 100 meters across or so, the picture is not so rosy.”
Another helpfully points out: “The dinosaurs went extinct because they didn’t have a space program. We do have one.”
But then someone else pipes up: “The day is coming when the Earth will get impacted.”
Another contributor adds: “There’s almost certainly a decent-sized astroid out there that is going to pose an impact threat to the planet. We’re just trying to find it right now.”
Rest assured, some smarts minds are tackling the issue not only of finding potentially hazardous objects, but also how we might prevent them from slamming into Earth and ruining our day.
An example of this impressive work was NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), which became the first mission to successfully demonstrate the ability to redirect an asteroid as a method of planetary defense.
Launched in 2021, DART targeted Dimorphos, a small moonlet orbiting the larger asteroid Didymos — neither of which posed a threat to Earth. The spacecraft, about the size of a small car, intentionally collided with Dimorphos in September 2022, with the impact altering Dimorphos’ orbit around Didymos, proving that it is possible to change the course of an asteroid.
DART’s success means that humanity now has a proven, scalable technology for asteroid deflection, and the technical foundation to develop more robust planetary defense systems in the future. Let’s just hope they can nail the technology before a biggie comes along.