3 Questions: Fortifying our planetary defenses

MIT astronomers are redefining planetary defense by shifting focus from rare civilization-ending asteroid impacts to smaller, decameter-scale asteroids that strike Earth every few decades and pose real risks to space-based infrastructure like GPS and satellite systems. The team has developed a new asteroid-detection method and demonstrated that the James Webb Space Telescope can detect and characterize these small asteroids out to the main belt. They also observed asteroid 2024 YR4, ruling out a lunar collision. Looking ahead, the upcoming Vera Rubin Observatory in Chile is expected to increase detection of small space objects tenfold, creating a gap between detection and characterization that MIT researchers aim to bridge using in-house observatories. MIT is building an end-to-end pipeline from detection to risk assessment to mitigation, and is training the next generation of astronomers through student observing programs.