Results for “Asteroids impact warning” — Page 3

NASA NTRS2003

The Impact Imperative: A Space Infrastructure Enabling a Multi-Tiered Earth Defense

Impacting at hypervelocity, an asteroid struck the Earth approximately 65 million years ago in the Yucatan Peninsula a m . This triggered the extinction of almost 70% of the species of life on Earth including the dinosaurs. Other impacts prior to this one have caused even greater extinctions. Preventing collisions with the Earth by hypervelocity asteroids, meteoroids, and comets is the most important immediate space challenge facing human civilization. This is the Impact Imperative. We now believe that while there are about 2000 earth orbit crossing rocks greater than 1 kilometer in diameter, there may be as many as 200,000 or more objects in the 100 m size range. Can anything be done about this fundamental existence question facing our civilization? The answer is a resounding yes! By using an intelligent combination of Earth and space based sensors coupled with an infrastructure of high-energy laser stations and other secondary mitigation options, we can deflect inbound asteroids, meteoroids, and comets and prevent them &om striking the Earth. This can be accomplished by irradiating the surface of an inbound rock with sufficiently intense pulses so that ablation occurs. This ablation acts as a small rocket incrementally changing the shape of the rock's orbit around the Sun. One-kilometer size rocks can be moved sufficiently in about a month while smaller rocks may be moved in a shorter time span. We recommend that space objectives be immediately reprioritized to start us moving quickly towards an infrastructure that will support a multiple option defense capability. Planning and development for a lunar laser facility should be initiated immediately in parallel with other options. All mitigation options are greatly enhanced by robust early warning, detection, and tracking resources to find objects sufficiently prior to Earth orbit passage in time to allow significant intervention. Infrastructure options should include ground, LEO, GEO, Lunar, and libration point laser and sensor stations for providing early warning, tracking, and deflection. Other options should include space interceptors that will carry both laser and nuclear ablators for close range work. Response options must be developed to deal with the consequences of an impact should we move too slowly.

Campbell, Jonathan W.↗

NASA NTRS2013

A System for Fault Management for NASA's Deep Space Habitat

NASA's exploration program envisions the utilization of a Deep Space Habitat (DSH) for human exploration of the space environment in the vicinity of Mars and/or asteroids. Communication latencies with ground control of as long as 20+ minutes make it imperative that DSH operations be highly autonomous, as any telemetry-based detection of a systems problem on Earth could well occur too late to assist the crew with the problem. A DSH-based development program has been initiated to develop and test the automation technologies necessary to support highly autonomous DSH operations. One such technology is a fault management tool to support performance monitoring of vehicle systems operations and to assist with real-time decision making in connection with operational anomalies and failures. Toward that end, we are developing Advanced Caution and Warning System (ACAWS), a tool that combines dynamic and interactive graphical representations of spacecraft systems, systems modeling, automated diagnostic analysis and root cause identification, system and mission impact assessment, and mitigation procedure identification to help spacecraft operators (both flight controllers and crew) understand and respond to anomalies more effectively. In this paper, we describe four major architecture elements of ACAWS: Anomaly Detection, Fault Isolation, System Effects Analysis, and Graphic User Interface (GUI), and how these elements work in concert with each other and with other tools to provide fault management support to both the controllers and crew. We then describe recent evaluations and tests of ACAWS on the DSH testbed. The results of these tests support the feasibility and strength of our approach to failure management automation and enhanced operational autonomy.

Fault management↗

NASA NTRS2013

A System for Fault Management and Fault Consequences Analysis for NASA's Deep Space Habitat

NASA's exploration program envisions the utilization of a Deep Space Habitat (DSH) for human exploration of the space environment in the vicinity of Mars and/or asteroids. Communication latencies with ground control of as long as 20+ minutes make it imperative that DSH operations be highly autonomous, as any telemetry-based detection of a systems problem on Earth could well occur too late to assist the crew with the problem. A DSH-based development program has been initiated to develop and test the automation technologies necessary to support highly autonomous DSH operations. One such technology is a fault management tool to support performance monitoring of vehicle systems operations and to assist with real-time decision making in connection with operational anomalies and failures. Toward that end, we are developing Advanced Caution and Warning System (ACAWS), a tool that combines dynamic and interactive graphical representations of spacecraft systems, systems modeling, automated diagnostic analysis and root cause identification, system and mission impact assessment, and mitigation procedure identification to help spacecraft operators (both flight controllers and crew) understand and respond to anomalies more effectively. In this paper, we describe four major architecture elements of ACAWS: Anomaly Detection, Fault Isolation, System Effects Analysis, and Graphic User Interface (GUI), and how these elements work in concert with each other and with other tools to provide fault management support to both the controllers and crew. We then describe recent evaluations and tests of ACAWS on the DSH testbed. The results of these tests support the feasibility and strength of our approach to failure management automation and enhanced operational autonomy

System Effects Analysis↗

DOE OSTI2021

Late-time small body disruptions for planetary defense

Here, diverting hazardous small bodies on impact trajectories with the Earth can in some circumstances be impossible without risking disrupting them. Disruption is a much more difficult planetary defense scenario to assess, being linked both to the response of the body to shock loading and the much more complicated gravitational dynamics of the fragments in the solar system relative to pure deflection scenarios. In this work we present a new simulation suite built on N-body gravitational methods that solves fragment orbits in the full gravitational system without recourse to more approximate methods. We assess the accuracy of our simulations and the simplifying assumptions we adopt to make the system tractable, and then discuss in more detail several specific, plausible planetary defense scenarios based on real close encounters. We find that disruption can be a very effective planetary defense strategy even for very late (sub-year) interventions, and should be considered an effective backup strategy should preferred methods, which require long warning times, fail.

42 ENGINEERING↗