Saving Earth: Asteroid Emergency Tabletop Exercise at the 2013 PDC

Episode Summary

Executive Summary: This Planetary Radio episode covers the Planetary Defense Conference’s asteroid-impact tabletop exercise, highlighting how scientists, engineers, astronauts, and agencies would respond to a real near-Earth object threat. It stresses the need for early detection, coordinated international action, effective risk communication, and sustained policy planning, while also featuring a lighter segment on the naming of OSIRIS-REx’s target asteroid, Bennu.

Main Topics: Planetary Defense Conference tabletop asteroid exercise: A realistic simulation of a devastating near-Earth asteroid threat tests how experts, agencies, and the public would respond as the scenario escalates from discovery to an unavoidable impact. Need for asteroid detection and tracking: Ed Lu and others argue that the crucial first step is finding hazardous asteroids early enough to act, not just planning deflection missions after discovery. International coordination and policy planning: Speakers emphasize that asteroid defense is a global issue requiring cooperation across NASA, FEMA, the UN, other space agencies, and political leaders. Risk communication and public engagement: Participants discuss how to communicate evolving scientific risk clearly to governments, media, and the public during a fast-moving crisis. B612 Foundation and Sentinel mission: Ed Lu and Rusty Schweickart describe B612’s efforts to launch Sentinel, an infrared telescope intended to find and track near-Earth objects. OSIRIS-REx asteroid naming contest and space facts: The show closes with Bruce Betts and a nine-year-old contest winner who named asteroid Bennu, plus a random space fact and trivia contest update.

Key Arguments: Realistic tabletop exercises are essential because they expose gaps in procedures, communications, and interagency coordination before a real asteroid threat emerges. The most urgent planetary defense priority is detection and tracking of hazardous asteroids; deflection planning depends on knowing what exists and where it is. Planetary defense cannot be handled by one nation alone because impact risks cross borders and require global decision-making and shared responsibility. Public understanding matters: agencies must communicate complex scientific information quickly and clearly to decision-makers and citizens. The current ecosystem still overemphasizes future mitigation concepts and underemphasizes near-term search efforts for threatening asteroids. Sentinel is presented as a crucial step toward inventorying the asteroid hazard and making humanity more prepared for the long term. The exercise demonstrated that emotional, political, and logistical factors matter as much as physics when dealing with a planetary-scale threat.

Data Points: Conference attendees: about 200 participants in the tabletop exercise - Used to describe the scale of the asteroid emergency response simulation Public event attendance: 900 members of the public - Audience for the conference’s special show Asteroid scenario timeline: 2016 to 2022 - Exercise advanced the scenario through future time jumps Impact probability: 100% - By 2022, the exercise briefing states the asteroid will definitely hit Earth Risk corridor length: a few thousand kilometers - Described for the projected impact zone Location of likely impact: over Europe - Risk corridor shifted to Europe in the scenario Deflection mission status: failed - A launch mission intended to deflect the asteroid is reported as unsuccessful B612 milestone progress: second of eight milestones - Status update on the Sentinel project Sentinel launch date: July 20, 2018 - Projected launch date given during the interview Sentinel operational period: 6.5 years - Expected duration of the mission after launch Asteroid inventory coverage: 90% of 140-meter objects - Projected discovery completeness after Sentinel’s mission Additional coverage: 40% to 50% of Tunguska-size objects - Estimated tracking of larger impactor-class bodies after Sentinel’s survey Contest entries: over 8,000 entries - Entries submitted to name the OSIRIS-REx asteroid target Mission target name: Bennu - Winning name chosen by nine-year-old Mike Puzzio Neutron star gravity: about 100 billion times Earth’s surface gravity - Bruce Betts’s random space fact OSIRIS-REx mission launch: 2016 - Referenced in the discussion of the Bennu naming contest and sample-return mission Hayabusa anniversary: 10 years ago - Space history note about the Japanese asteroid sample-return mission Bill Nye quote reference to science funding: $1.5 billion a year - Mentioned in the context of planetary science advocacy and the Decadal Survey

Pivotal Quotes: "we save the Earth or die trying" — Matt Kaplan: Opening line framing the episode’s planetary defense theme "the crucial first step. And I think we're the only group doing that in a serious manner right now." — Ed Lu: On why B612 focuses on detecting and tracking asteroids before deflection efforts "what I would hate is somebody like me, a risk manager, in say 20-30 years' time, walking the same path that I have walked." — Debbie Lewis: On building a lasting, iterative planetary-defense planning process

Implications: The episode argues that planetary defense is no longer theoretical: detection, international coordination, and communication infrastructure should be built now so humanity is not improvising under crisis later.