Description:

Planetary Defense is a multi-discipline international effort which requires finding and tracking near earth asteroids, studying their characteristics, developing and maturing mitigation strategies, and modeling the hazards that could result from an impact.   The Asteroid Threat Assessment Project (ATAP) supports NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination office by combining expertise in planetary science, entry systems, high-fidelity modeling and simulation, engineering risk assessment, and signal processing to develop and refine models of the hazards due to asteroid impact and utilize those models in risk assessments.  I will provide an overview of NASA's planetary defense ecosystem, discuss ATAP's models and recent results, and step through a planetary defense exercise.

Jessie Dotson, K2 Research Scientist, NASA, Ames Research Center

Host: Jason Wang