A global response roadmap to the asteroid impact threat: The NEOShield perspective

Besides being of great scientific interest, near-Earth objects represent a well-founded threat to life on our planet. Nonetheless, up to now there has been no concerted international plan on how to deal with the impact threat, and how to prepare and implement mitigation measures. The NEOShield project is funded by the European Commission to address such issues, to investigate the feasibility of techniques to prevent a potentially catastrophic impact on Earth by an asteroid or a comet, and to develop detailed designs of appropriate space missions to test deflection techniques. In this work we present and discuss the scientific and strategic aspects of the asteroid impact threat, highlighting the necessary steps so as to be ready to react to future hazardous objects.

[1]  F. Spoto,et al.  Nongravitational perturbations and virtual impactors: the case of asteroid (410777) 2009 FD , 2014, 1408.0736.

[2]  Mark B. Boslough,et al.  Low-altitude airbursts and the impact threat. , 2007 .

[3]  Kirk R. Johnson,et al.  Plants and the K-T Boundary , 2008 .

[4]  R. Bowden,et al.  The Provenances of Asteroids, and Their Contributions to the Volatile Inventories of the Terrestrial Planets , 2012, Science.

[5]  P. Michel,et al.  Hypervelocity impacts on asteroids and momentum transfer I. Numerical simulations using porous targets , 2014 .

[6]  J. Borovička,et al.  A 500-kiloton airburst over Chelyabinsk and an enhanced hazard from small impactors , 2013, Nature.

[7]  D. Farnocchia,et al.  Efficiency of a wide-area survey in achieving short- and long-term warning for small impactors , 2011, 1110.3964.

[8]  Christopher D. K. Herd,et al.  Soluble organic compounds in the Tagish Lake meteorite , 2014 .

[9]  A. Harris,et al.  The population of near-Earth asteroids , 2000 .

[10]  Christopher D. K. Herd,et al.  Unusual nonterrestrial l‐proteinogenic amino acid excesses in the Tagish Lake meteorite , 2012 .

[11]  John L. Tonry,et al.  An Early Warning System for Asteroid Impact , 2010, 1011.1028.

[12]  Simon F. Green,et al.  The European Union funded NEOShield project: a global approach to near-Earth object impact threat mitigation , 2013 .

[13]  Amanda Kathryn Mainzer,et al.  NEOCam: The Near-Earth Object Camera , 2006 .

[14]  Line Drube,et al.  Asteroid impacts and modern civilization: Can we prevent a catastrophe? , 2015 .

[15]  E. Neefs,et al.  67P/Churyumov-Gerasimenko, a Jupiter family comet with a high D/H ratio , 2015, Science.

[16]  Bernard Marty.  The origins and concentrations of water, carbon, nitrogen and noble gases on Earth , 2012 .

[17]  Line Drube,et al.  HOW TO FIND METAL-RICH ASTEROIDS , 2014, 1403.6346.

[18]  Scott Hubbard,et al.  The B612 Foundation Sentinel Space Telescope , 2013 .

[19]  E. L. Wright,et al.  NEOWISE OBSERVATIONS OF NEAR-EARTH OBJECTS: PRELIMINARY RESULTS , 2011, 1109.6400.

[20]  Laurent Nahon,et al.  NON-RACEMIC AMINO ACID PRODUCTION BY ULTRAVIOLET IRRADIATION OF ACHIRAL INTERSTELLAR ICE ANALOGS WITH CIRCULARLY POLARIZED LIGHT , 2011 .

[21]  M. Fulchignoni,et al.  Rosetta begins its Comet Tale , 2015, Science.

[22]  M. Fulchignoni,et al.  The near-Earth objects and their potential threat to our planet , 2013 .