Related papers: PI -- Multimodal Planetary Defense
Directed energy for planetary defense is now a viable option and is superior in many ways to other proposed technologies, being able to defend the Earth against all known threats. This paper presents basic ideas behind a directed energy…
Shock-physics numerical codes are essential tools for describing the short but extreme fragmentation stage of the hypervelocity impact process on asteroids. However, accurately representing complex interior structures, surfaces, and contact…
Asteroidal impact threats to the Earth will be predicted a century or more in advance. Changing an asteroid's albedo changes the force of Solar radiation on it, and hence its orbit. Albedo may be changed by applying a thin ($\sim 0.1\,\mu$)…
Earth is bombarded by meteors, occasionally by one large enough to cause a significant explosion and possible loss of life. Although the odds of a deadly asteroid strike in the next century are low, the most likely impact is by a relatively…
Context: Potentially hazardous asteroids (PHA) in Earth-crossing orbits pose a constant threat to life on Earth. Several mitigation methods have been proposed, and the most feasible technique appears to be the disintegration of the impactor…
Asteroid Impacts pose a major threat to all life on the Earth. Deflecting the asteroid from the impact trajectory is an important way to mitigate the threat. A kinetic impactor remains to be the most feasible method to deflect the asteroid.…
Asteroid impacts pose a major threat to all life on Earth. The age of the dinosaurs was abruptly ended by a 10-km-diameter asteroid. Currently, a nuclear device is the only means of deflecting large Potentially Hazardous Asteroids (PHAs)…
The question of whether to attempt deflections during planetary defence emergencies has been subject to considerable decision-making analysis (Schmidt 2018; SMPAG Ad-Hoc Working Group on Legal Issues 2020). Hypothetical situations usually…
International and U.S. strategies and protocols have identified the need to develop rapid-response spacecraft reconnaissance capabilities as a priority to advance planetary defense readiness. A space-based reconnaissance response is…
To deflect impact-trajectory of massive km^3 and spinning asteroid by a few terrestrial radius one need a large momentum exchange. The dragging of huge spinning bodies in space by external engine seems difficult or impossible. Our solution…
While almost all potentially hazardous asteroids (PHAs) with a size larger than one kilometre have been discovered, it is well-known that the vast majority of the smaller ones are in fact yet to be found. There is therefore an excellent…
This paper presents an analysis of optimal impact strategies to deflect potentially dangerous asteroids. To compute the increase in the minimum orbit intersection distance of the asteroid due to an impact with a spacecraft, simple…
Cometary impacts pose a long-term hazard to life on Earth. Impact mitigation techniques have been studied extensively, but they tend to focus on asteroid diversion. Typical asteroid interdiction schemes involve spacecraft physically…
The computation of the Minimum Orbital Intersection Distance (MOID) is an old, but increasingly relevant problem. Fast and precise methods for MOID computation are needed to select potentially hazardous asteroids from a large catalogue. The…
We investigate various short-warning mitigation scenarios via fragmentation for a hypothetical impact of asteroid 2023 NT1, a Near-Earth Object (NEO) that was discovered on July 15, 2023, two days after its closest approach to Earth on July…
A new method for the line-of-sight velocity estimation of a high-speed near-Earth object (asteroid, meteorite) is suggested. The method is based on use of fractional, one-half order derivative of a Doppler signal. The algorithm suggested is…
We describe systematic ranging, an orbit determination technique especially suitable to assess the near-term Earth impact hazard posed by newly discovered asteroids. For these late warning cases, the time interval covered by the…
The interest in the problem of small asteroids observed shortly before a deep close approach or an impact with the Earth has grown a lot in recent years. Since the observational dataset of such objects is very limited, they deserve…
When an asteroid has a few observations over a short time span the information contained in the observational arc could be so little that a full orbit determination may be not possible. One of the methods developed in recent years to…
This study evaluates a technique for determining the mass of a potentially hazardous asteroid from a high-speed flyby in the context of a rapid reconnaissance planetary defense scenario. We consider a host spacecraft that dispenses a small…