Unexplainable - We booped an asteroid

Episode Date: February 1, 2023

Last fall, a NASA spacecraft slammed into an asteroid to test a way to avert a disaster on Earth. So are we safe now? For more, go to http://vox.com/unexplainable It’s a great place to view show transcripts and read more about the topics on our show. Also, email us! [e-mail] We read every email. Support Unexplainable by making a financial contribution to Vox! bit.ly/givepodcasts Learn more about your ad choices. Visit podcastchoices.com/adchoices

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Previously on Unexplanable, you never know what the future holds until it hits. Impacts are still happening in the solar system. The threat posed by Earth orbit crossing asteroids and comets has long been a concern of mine and of the committee.

NASA has confirmed a so-called city killer asteroid narrowly missed hitting Earth. The dedicated researchers who find and track asteroids across the solar system are members of an elite squad known as the Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Finding asteroids before they find us and then maybe getting them before they get us. But how does one get an asteroid? It's applied planetary science. Planetary defense set their sights on the little asteroid moonlit, dimorphous, with one mission in mind. Give a little boop, you know, like boop.

Humanity's first ever attempt to boop an asteroid. Can we reach into the cosmos and defend the planet? Boop. This is unexplainable. I'm Brian Resnick. And last year, I talked to Robin George Andrews. He's a science journalist, and he's been doing a lot of work on a book about asteroids and how maybe one could hit the Earth one day and what we should do to stop it. Most importantly, that part of what to do to stop it. And in that episode last year, Rabin and I talked about what we called the asteroid problem.

So the huge asteroids that could potentially destroy all life on Earth, we actually got them pretty much cataloged. Like, we know where they are. We know they're not a threat. But asteroids don't need to be enormous to cause problems. So in 2013, there was a meteor that exploded over a city in Russia. and it exploded with more power than a nuclear weapon. It's the biggest meteor in more than a century to hit the planet.

A thousand people were injured from shards of flying glass and debris. And that meter was ultimately pretty small. They're even bigger ones, which are sometimes called city killers, that while they're not big enough to destroy a whole planet, they're definitely big enough to destroy cities, countries, and just cause widespread mayhem. And scientists think we've only discovered, maybe half of these city killer asteroids in our solar system.

The big question is, is like, what if we look up and see one of these heading towards Earth? Could we maybe even just boop, knock it out of the way? So NASA decided it was time to do some target practice, to see if this is possible. The spacecraft is NASA's double asteroid redirection test spacecraft. That's a lot. Call it dart. The target?

an asteroid called dimorphus. This is an asteroid that actually poses no threat to Earth, so it's actually kind of innocent here. The goal was to hit dimorphus hard enough with a spacecraft to change its orbit. And the idea is, if this works, this technique could be used to deflect city killer asteroids in the future, maybe prevent a huge devastating disaster.

So Robin actually got special access to the mission control room when the big boop happened. And he saw what the spaceship's camera saw in near real time. And I just wanted to know. I wanted to ask him, like, how did it go? Are we safe from City Killer asteroids now? Can we defend our planet?

So, Robin George Andrews. Hello. Hello. That's your name, correct? I got it right. It is my name, yeah, that's the one. How are you? I'm doing great. I'm doing great. I feel like the Earth is a little safer than it was a year.

There we go. Yes, yes. I'm actually so excited to talk to you. You know, the last time we talked, we talked about this Dart mission, this kind of very Hollywood style. Let's see what happens when we smash something into an asteroid. And I'm so excited to talk to you now because there is like some new science, new data. And my caveman brain is like, ooh, something went smash, and I want to hear about it.

Yeah, but something that seems as straightforward as something smashed into something else in space, it's probably the most exciting and optimistic, genuinely feel-good story I'll ever work on. After a 10-month, 470 million mile journey, Dart is just minutes away from making history. Witness the big moment, live from space. I understand you were at the mission control when this was happening, right? Yeah, so on the day of the impact, I snuck off to the part of campus where all the scientists and engineers were because I really wanted to see what it was like when their spacecraft actually obliterated itself. Tell me about the scene. What was the atmosphere like? What were people like? What do you remember from that day? Oh, man, it was kind of breathtaking, really. I mean, normally, like, if you've seen footage of what it's like when, you know, NASA is landing a rover on Mars or something, there's always this tension, especially when.

It's like going through the atmosphere and they're hoping that it doesn't die. Whereas this mission, I've never seen 2,000 people more excited to see a spacecraft die. 30 seconds before impact, basically dimorphos, the target was like properly in view. You could see individual like boulders on its surface. Oh my goodness. Look at that. People were just so like genuinely in awe of seeing this. There was this like, this tension of just like, wait. for this like epic beat to drop or something like everyone knew it was coming oh my goodness you know

people started counting down three two one there was like a murmur of noise and then people started screaming and screeching and jumping up and down and fist pumping the air people are crying people high-five me someone like jumps on my back briefly like didn't care while i was there did you know that person nope Fantastic. It hit it like basically, if you could draw an X on dimorphus, like where they exactly wanted to hit, it basically went without a hitch. And in the future, this technique could be used to genuinely save millions of lives.

Now is when the science starts. What happened when it hit, like physically? Do we know this now? Oh man, it was, it was... Dart didn't just hit it. It had really hit it. Like, it had really wrung it. spell. I mean, people were stunned by just how much material had come off the asteroid. Did we destroy it? No, no, no. That was so, so there was some concern that they may have disrupted it or broken

too much off, because that's not the point of this technique. Is that a problem? That sounds good. Yeah, it would be a problem, because imagine if you have like an asteroid coming to Earth that's that size, right? And instead of deflecting it, you disrupt it, as it's called, and you break it into like five different pieces. So, yes, you may have. saved one part of her from having like a regional, like really serious impact, but then you've given five other parts of the planet still pretty terrible damage. It actually could cause more deaths than just one impact kind of thing. So you don't want to turn a cannonball into a shotgun

basically. So there was worried that they had accidentally disrupted it for about a day, but then observations kept coming in and people were like, oh, it's still there. Thank God. It's still there. So we just, so we just blew off a chunk of it. or something? Yeah, yeah, like millions and millions of kilograms of it, like quite a lot, actually. Wow. So, we didn't blast it to Smithereens, but, like, the real goal here was to nudge it, like, to change the orbit. And the last time we talked, you said the goal for success was to change the orbit of this little asteroid by, like, a little over a minute. So did we do that? Do we change the orbit? Yeah, and they change this orbit by 32 minutes. Wow. And they're like,

how old did we do that? And so the recent stuff that came out was a number called beta. And beta is just, how much punch did Dark give? Like, how much momentum did the spacecraft transfer to the asteroid? Like, how hard did our cue ball of a spacecraft hit the eight ball of the asteroid? Right. So, for some reason, when Dart punched this asteroid, it was almost like three and a half darts had punched it for some reason.

Wow. Because the impact was so successful, it carved off a lot of the asteroids' own material. And when that material was blasted off in the impact, it acted like a brief rocket booster to the asteroid. Oh. Yeah, it was like a rocket booster, basically. So it gave a lot more punch than it was designed to. Okay.

And the idea behind that is, if you over-eg that, you may actually eventually destroy an asteroid. Whoops. So that could be a problem. But it also means that if you have a bigger asteroid, you don't need quite as big a spacecraft to deflect it. Because if you knock off its material, that means that the asteroid is doing some of the work for you. That's good news. It is good. So, overall, it's good news.

You don't need quite as big suicidal spacecraft as you needed. Yeah. So what are the most concrete things we've learned from this? So takeaway number one is that you can deflect an asteroid by hitting it with a spacecraft. Nice. And a relatively small spacecraft, like dark as a size of a car, and it had basically one camera. That could be used to deflect an asteroid of the size that would cause city-to-country-sized devastation. And that's great news. I mean, that's... Yeah.

We basically have the technology right now to save millions of lives from a threat that people, even just a few decades ago, would be doomed, basically. Yeah, go us. Yeah, go us. Yeah, that's pretty good. That's takeaway number one. Takeaway number two is every time a spacecraft visits an asteroid or a comet, scientists are surprised by what they find.

So we also should be expected to be surprised by any asteroid that we'd want to deflect. You really need a recon mission beforehand. So you don't know what you're going to get when you get to the asteroid. I might not behave the way you think when you boop it. Right, yeah. Like space is just continuously, frustratingly surprising. So that's like one like good news and then one like, well, we got to stay on our toes. Yes, yes.

But the really big thing now is, okay, this works. Yeah. Are there any asteroids of that size that are going to hit us in the few? Coming up, are we safe now because of dart? What else do we have to do? It's all about you. And when you fly with Virgin Atlantic in their upper class cabin, they take the VIP treatment to the next level.

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Go to virginatlantic.com to learn more. We're back. And now that we know NASA can slam into an asteroid and deflect it, Robin says the next big step is to look for asteroids that could actually hit us. So the next big planetary defense effort where all the fun, the political cloud, everything is going, is Neo-Serveaer. Near-Earth object, surveyor. It's a telescope that's going to be deployed into space.

It's an infrared telescope, and it's going to be called to, like, near absolute zero, some really cool tech. And it's basically going to look for these city killer-sized asteroids, especially the ones that are like interior to Earth's orbit, which is where, you know, the sun is. Because when you're looking with an optical telescope... The sun's in the way. The sun is in the way.

It's way too bright. Yeah. So Neo-Servea, everyone is like, it will work. If it launches, in 10 years, it will find 90% of the asteroids that we're kind of missing, which is kind of an incredible thing. That's amazing, yeah. Yeah. So I get, we gotta find more of these, but are there any more plans to do some more smash-in?

Not yet, because at the moment, people were like, well, that worked. So now we need to find them to see if we need to do any more testing. Yeah. Like, everyone wants Dart 2 to be a thing, because who doesn't want to see more. things being smashed and out of space, and, you know, especially when you can say it's for saving the planet. Everyone's like, cool. What are the open questions still, you know, that we didn't learn from this or the questions that have been provoked because of it? So one of the big questions that's come up, and I think it's always been there, but it's kind of an

uncomfortable question is, what would happen in the event of an asteroid, a city killer-sign's asteroid, that's either we don't have enough warning time to deflect it, or it's too big and we just don't have, like you physically could not deflect it with like a dart-like mission. What would you do? Well, we have these rather powerful nuclear weapons that we don't really want to use on each other, hopefully, but could you put a very powerful nuclear device on a spacecraft, launch it into deep space, detonate it,

and cause lots of debris to fly off, which again acts as that like rocket booster kind of effect on the asteroid? Could you deflect or destroy an asteroid, that's small enough with nuclear weapon sort of thing. You know, everyone thinks it probably would work because the physics is quite straightforward. Yeah. So I think that's one of the big unanswered questions is,

if you couldn't use a kinetic impactor... Like Dart. What choices do you have? Would you go the nuke way? Why not go the nuke way? It's just a matter of international law, or could you really do something horrible? It's...

Imagine, like, a part of it broke off and we're still heading towards Earth, or it just didn't work. Or it fragmented it, it disrupted it into many, many pieces. Basically, you've turned a threat that's something that's going to hit Earth into a radioactive asteroid, so you're just smacking the Earth of, like, it would be even worse. Or would you do nothing and just take the hit? Would you just have to evacuate part of the planet to just take the hit?

Because that's also an option. Yeah, that's really uncomfortable. Like, even though we are progressing toward like a solution to the asteroid problem, blah. Like, that doesn't mean the choices will be easy. Right. Because it's, like you said, the asteroids can continue to confound us, you know, on a case-by-case basis.

And there might be some really uncomfortable questions of, like, do we take the risk with the nuke? Right. Or is it easier just to evacuate a place on Earth that's going to get hit, evacuate a city? Right. Which, I mean, to me, it feels like the nuke seems easier. but, you know, but maybe not. Yeah, it's just really complicated.

Like, what's the state of the world going to be when you need to do this? Which countries will be in power? I mean, often you don't even know exactly where... Like, until radar locks onto, like, an asteroid, which is often just a week before it hits, you actually don't know exactly where it's going to hit. So, like, the uncomfortable stuff comes from, like,

what would you do if you didn't have enough time, basically? And how would the world react to it? because the consequences of the world reacting to it may be worse and spar out of control more than the impact, which is crazy. Yeah. But no one knows. That's the ultimate unanswered question here

of less scientific and more and more political. Is that something that you've come to learn in reporting on this? Like, the science is easy, but this... The science, basically, the thing that... One of the key takeaways I'm coming from this is, the science is relatively straightforward when it comes to planetary defense. Like, it really is. It's like,

How'd you find them with these infrared things? Okay, right. How do you deal with them? If you have enough time, you deflect it. If it's too big, you'd have to use something else. But, like, we have the technology to do it. Pretty much. Like, if it's a gigantic comet, it's like, maybe we're just doomed.

But, like, it's a... But, like, yeah, the real hard thing is, like, the political stuff. Like, it's just who gets to decide who runs this? Like, if it's... If you're absolutely sure the asteroid's going to hit America, then, yeah, I'm sure it's NASA and FEMA. But, like, if an asteroid was going to hit a state in the US or somewhere in the US,

how do you convince an entire US state to evacuate? There will be so much misinformation. How would you say we're the trusted source? Can you imagine what it would go on, like on Twitter, if this was actually going to happen? So all that is just so unknown. And the problem is you can practice this as much as you want, can war game it out as much as you want.

Until this actually happens for real, no one knows what the state of the world's going to be like, no one knows what's going to happen. Some things are always going to be unknown until it actually happens, which is kind of scary, but, you know, what else do you do? Okay, so you took me from feeling good to feeling a little bad again. It is still a feel-good story because... Yeah.

Because we do have the technology to do something about it. We're building the technology that will close that observational gap to find these things. So within the next 20 years max, the whole world will know pretty much whether in the next century is anything going to hit Earth or not. Like, that's a really good position to be in. Like, you'll never be in a position

where we're like, okay, we know exactly when every earthquake is going to happen and where it's going to happen at that exact moment. We know exactly when every hurricane is going to happen, every eruption. That's never going to happen. No matter how far, like, you get ahead. There's too complex those systems. Yeah.

But an asteroid is just, the thing moving through space that may smack her thing. So if you see them all and you plot them out, it's a problem that actually has a complete solution. But you literally can stop this natural disaster. This episode was reported and produced by Brian Resnick and me, Meredith Hodnott. We had editing from Catherine Wells,

sound design and mixing from Christian Ayala, music from Noam Hassanfeld, fact-checking from Zoe Mullock, and the incredible voiceover talents of the one, the only, Afim Shapiro. Mani Nguyen is finding the punchline. Neil D'Nesha is finally emerging from a Bangalore traffic jam.

And Bert Pinkerton spun faster and faster until she let go of the penny. She flew backwards and the penny shot right into a slot in the opposite wall. Then she heard a hollow clink. If you have thoughts about this episode, or ideas for the show, please let us know.

Email us at Unexplainable at box.com. We'd also love it if you left us a review or a rating or wrote us a song or drew us a picture. We love hearing from you. Unexplainable is part of the Vox Media Podcast Network, and we will be back next week.