Day of Action Deep Prep: Planetary Defense

The protection of Earth from hazardous asteroids and comets—planetary defense—is one of the three core enterprises of The Planetary Society. Working through this deep prep session will increase the participant's expertise on the major issues, recent history, and politics driving planetary defense policy in the United States.

Assignments

• Take the Planetary Defense 101 online class
  This is a short (less than an hour) online class that covers the basics of planetary defense and asteroid detection and deflection.

• Read: NASA to Build New Asteroid-Hunting Space Telescope and The Planetary Society Praises NASA's New Commitment to Planetary Defense
  This covers the basic information (and the official Planetary Society response) about NASA's big announcement that it will build a dedicated space telescope to search for dangerous NEOs.

• Read: How NASA's Planetary Defense Budget Grew By More Than 4000% in 10 years
  The background politics for the recent growth in planetary defense funding.

• Watch: The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART): Hitting an Asteroid Head On
  This is NASA's current mission to demonstrate asteroid deflection techniques, slated for launch in 2021.

Goals

• Be able to clearly explain the concept of planetary defense and NASA's role in it

• Understand the threat that near-Earth objects pose to Earth, and what can be done to prevent a potential impact in the future

• To list the current planetary defense missions underway at NASA