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Loading contentAn asteroid impact is the one natural disaster we could, in principle, prevent. This is the system that would do it — the surveys that find the near-Earth objects, the networks that track and assess them, and the missions, like DART, that have shown an asteroid can be moved.
From discovery to deflection — how a hazardous asteroid is found, tracked, characterised, assessed, and, if necessary, deflected.
8 entriesHow impact risk is communicated — the Torino and Palermo scales.
2 entriesHow an asteroid's orbit could be changed — from the demonstrated kinetic impactor to theoretical nuclear concepts.
4 entriesDedicated survey telescopes scan the sky night after night for moving points of light — the near-Earth asteroids and comets. Catalina, Pan-STARRS, and ATLAS lead the search from the ground, and the Rubin Observatory will transform it.
A newly-found object's observations are reported to the Minor Planet Center, which links them into a single orbit. The more observations over a longer arc, the more precisely the future path is known.
Determining what an object is — its size, shape, spin, and composition — from light curves, radar, spectra, and, for a few, spacecraft visits. Hera is en route to survey the asteroid DART struck, to learn how a deflection actually worked.
Automatic systems at CNEOS and ESA continuously propagate every known orbit forward for a century or more, flagging any that could approach Earth. Apophis was tracked this way until observations ruled out an impact for the next century.
Judging how serious a possible impact is — its probability, the object's size and energy, and the time until the encounter — and expressing it on the Torino and Palermo scales so the risk can be understood and compared.
Explaining a risk to decision-makers and the public accurately and without alarm — including retracting a warning when better data clears an object, as happened with Apophis. Clear communication is itself part of planetary defence.
If an object were found on a collision course with enough warning, agencies and governments would decide on a response — and plan the reconnaissance and deflection mission it would require. NEO Surveyor is being built to give that warning decades ahead.
The last stage — actually changing an asteroid's orbit so it misses the Earth. DART showed a kinetic impactor works; a gravity tractor, ion beam, or, as a last resort, a nuclear device are other options, chosen by how much warning time is available.
Each pipeline stage, risk scale, and deflection method is a first-class knowledge-graph entity resolved through the Scientific Data Engine, reusing the survey telescopes, the Minor Planet Center and CNEOS, the DART and Hera missions, and the near-Earth objects already in the graph. Curated from NASA, ESA, and the Minor Planet Center. Deflection-method maturity is stated honestly — from the DART-demonstrated kinetic impactor to purely theoretical nuclear concepts. See source quality.