💥 Axios Space: Bang goes the asteroid

Plus: Juno meets Europa | Tuesday, September 27, 2022

Open in app View in browser     Axios Space By Miriam Kramer · Sep 27, 2022 Thanks for reading Axios Space. At 1,159 words, this newsletter is about a 4½-minute read. Please send your tips, questions and Rosh Hashanah well wishes to miriam.kramer@axios.com, or if you received this as an email, just hit reply. Before we get going... here's some theme music for this week's newsletter.     1 big thing: The asteroid threat gets real Illustration: Allie Carl/Axios   Scientists say it's time to take the threats posed by asteroids seriously and prepare for the possibility that one could be found on a collision course with Earth. Why it matters: Asteroid strikes are rare, but the danger posed by even a relatively small one impacting Earth over a populated area could be serious, and it might be harder to spot these hazardous space rocks in the future. Scientists are keeping tabs on thousands of asteroids with orbits known to bring them close to Earth's path around the Sun, but they still don't have the tools they need to find all of the possibly dangerous asteroids nearby. "An asteroid impact is very similar in structure to a pandemic," Casey Dreier of the Planetary Society tells Axios. With both events, it costs more to respond to them if a society isn't prepared. Driving the news: NASA slammed a spacecraft into an asteroid on Monday in a bid to change its orbit and test the technology needed to one day redirect an asteroid found on a collision course with Earth. It's not yet clear whether the impact changed the course of the moonlet asteroid circling a larger asteroid, but follow-up observations over the coming weeks will reveal how successful the test was. If a large asteroid is one day found to threaten our planet, NASA says the data gathered by this mission — called the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) — should help them to scale up the tech to throw that space rock off course. "We also have to understand the nature of these objects, what their sizes and compositions are and their orbital path to determine when in the future they might pose a hazard," NASA planetary defense officer Lindley Johnson said during a press conference last week. How it works: Scientists use a variety of telescopes to discover asteroids and other near-Earth objects (NEOs) and then track their orbits around the Sun. Ground-based telescopes like Pan-STARRS take wide images of the sky to pick out the faint signals of asteroids as they move through space. But "less than half of the estimated 25,000 NEOs that are 140 meters and larger in size have been found to date," according to NASA. The intrigue: In 2021, NASA formally moved ahead with the NEO Surveyor telescope — which is specifically designed to search for difficult-to-find asteroids from space using infrared light — and the telescope won bipartisan political support, with a plan to launch by 2026. But this year, the proposed budget for the program was cut by $130 million, delaying the launch by two years. Even though Congress is pushing to restore some of the funding, the budget cut has already caused layoffs on the mission team and is forcing them to replan the development of the telescope. Between the lines: NASA has not given a public explanation for why NEO Surveyor's budget was cut. According to Johnson, a delay of two years likely won't mean scientists miss a dangerous asteroid on its way to Earth, but launching NEO Surveyor is "something that we need to get done so that we know what's out there and know what's coming and have adequate time to prepare for it." "We can't really do anything about a potentially dangerous object heading our way unless we know it's there," Amy Mainzer, the head of the NEO Surveyor mission, tells Axios. What to watch: NEO Surveyor may be even more essential in the coming years as constellations of satellites continue to clutter Earth's orbit. Scientists are concerned that as companies like SpaceX and OneWeb continue to send hundreds of satellites to orbit, the light from satellites at dusk could make it harder to find certain dangerous asteroids near our planet.     2. The SLS rolls on back Astronauts and astronaut candidates check out the SLS earlier this month. Photo: NASA/Steven Seipel   NASA's Space Launch System Moon rocket is back in its hangar as Hurricane Ian heads toward Florida. Why it matters: It's the most recent setback in a series of issues for the Artemis I mission, which has been delayed for the better part of a month due to technical problems. Catch up quick: NASA originally was working toward launching the SLS today, but the hurricane forced the space agency to reevaluate those plans and send the SLS back to its hangar. The decision to move the SLS back off the launch pad was timed, in part, so that NASA employees could prepare themselves and their families for the storm, according to NASA. "After the storm has passed, teams will conduct inspections to determine impacts at the center and establish a forward plan for the next launch attempt," NASA wrote in a blog post. NASA likely won't be able to attempt another launch until November. The big picture: The SLS is billions of dollars over budget and years behind schedule, but it is essential to NASA's plans to one day send people back to the surface of the Moon. The agency plans to land its first crew on the Moon in 2025. NASA is also relying on SpaceX to build a lunar lander for Artemis and on other private companies to develop new spacesuits astronauts can use on the lunar surface.     3. Juno meets Europa Europa seen by Juno. Photo: NASA/JPL-Caltech/SwRI/MSSS. Image processing: Andrea Luck CC BY   NASA's Juno spacecraft is set to make a relatively close flyby of Europa on Thursday and take images of Jupiter's icy moon as it passes. Why it matters: Europa is often considered one of the places in the solar system most likely to host life, so gathering new data about the moon could help scientists learn more about its somewhat mysterious nature. What's happening: On Thursday, Juno will fly within about 222 miles of Europa, gathering high-resolution photos of the world's surface as it goes. The Jupiter-exploring spacecraft will also learn more about Europa's interior — which scientists think is defined by a large subsurface ocean — and how the moon interacts with Jupiter's magnetosphere, among other observations. This data will help scientists working on NASA's Europa Clipper mission — expected to gather data about whether the moon could host life — which is currently scheduled to launch in 2024. The big picture: This isn't the first time Juno has taken a closer look at one of Jupiter's moons. The spacecraft checked out Ganymede last year and is expected to fly close to Io in 2023 and 2024, according to NASA.     A message from Axios Subscribe to Axios Codebook     Decode key cybersecurity news and insights. Dive into breaking news and long-term trends in the field, from ransomware and phishing to privacy and data protection to national security and disinformation. Subscribe for free     4. Out of this world reading list Triton (green) and Neptune with its rings shine against a backdrop of galaxies. Photo: NASA/ESA/CSA/STScI   🇨🇳 China conducts trio of orbital launches across two days (Andrew Jones, SpaceNews) ✖️ Physicists rewrite a quantum rule that clashes with our universe (Charlie Wood, Quanta) ☄️ NASA successfully crashes satellite into asteroid (Jacob Knutson, Axios) 🔭 Neptune's rings and moons shine in new JWST photos (Axios)     5. Weekly dose of awe: DART hits a bullseye Photo: NASA/Johns Hopkins APL   This is the final complete photo taken by NASA's DART spacecraft just before it slammed into its asteroid moonlet target Dimorphos circling the larger asteroid Didymos. The sharp image of boulders is what DART saw as it flew just 7 miles from the asteroid's surface about 2 seconds before impact. DART was expected to be traveling about 14,000 mph as it slammed into the asteroid.     A message from Axios Subscribe to Axios Codebook     Decode key cybersecurity news and insights. Dive into breaking news and long-term trends in the field, from ransomware and phishing to privacy and data protection to national security and disinformation. Subscribe for free   Big thanks to Alison Snyder for editing and Sheryl Miller for copy editing this week's edition and to Allie Carl for the great illustration. If this newsletter was forwarded to you, subscribe. 🍯 🍎 Are you a fan of this email format? It's called Smart Brevity®. Over 300 orgs use it — in a tool called Axios HQ — to drive productivity with clearer workplace communications.   Axios thanks our partners for supporting our newsletters. If you're interested in advertising, learn more here. Sponsorship has no influence on editorial content. 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