Career recommendation - asteroid disposal mission planners

At the Space Congress in Hyderabad, the manager of a space systems manufacturer from the USA suggested to young people to think about a career as a space engineer in planning missions to divert asteroids that threaten the Earth * By the end of next year, NASA will map 90 percent of the near-Earth asteroids with a diameter of more than a kilometer

A special lecture was held at the Astronautics Congress in Hyderabad by Dr. William Ailor, director of the center for orbital and reentry debris studies at the aerospace corporation, from the USA.

The growing awareness of the threat facing the Earth from even small asteroids and comet crashes is growing. Dealing with this threat can be a potential career path for civil engineers. Aylor, an engineer by profession, said that the possibility of another event, of a similar magnitude to the one that occurred at Tuganguska in 1908 when an explosion occurred high in the atmosphere, with a power of 10-15 megatons, would occur is one in 10 in any given century. If it had taken place in Manhattan and not in the isolated and sparsely populated area of ​​the Tunguska River, there would have been a disaster on a massive scale.

The chance of an asteroid impact that will wipe out human civilization or damage it severely, with a diameter of a kilometer or more, is one in a thousand over the course of a hundred years, while an asteroid that will cause the mass destruction of most species on Earth, such as the one that wiped out the era of the dinosaurs, is one in a million over the course of a hundred years. According to him, NASA's goal is to identify about 90 percent of near-Earth objects with a diameter of one kilometer or more by the end of next year.

Tracking the objects after they have been discovered with greater precision, so that if it is discovered that such an asteroid could hit the Earth, it will be possible for humanity to organize for an international multi-billion mission to repel it, but so far it is a rather insidious mission and the methods for carrying it out still have a large element of uncertainty at best.

"If you are a young man and you want to enter the field of space, it is not improbable that you will be involved in serious plans for such a dip mission" says Ilor. "This is not something planned for a few more generations. This is something we must prepare for.

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