JUNE 30 IS ASTEROID DAY
Hey Space Placers!
June 30, 2015 was the first “Asteroid Day” wtop.com/science/2015/06/marking-the-first-asteroid-day/ and is a “global awareness movement where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids and what we can do to protect our planet” from asteroid and comet impacts. This year’s Asteroid Day has planned events https://asteroidday.org held worldwide and online. Even www.google.com is recognizing the event which you will see how when you Google search “Asteroid Day”. When you do this, make sure you visit the listed websites to learn more.
June 30th is a significant date in the history of Earth impacts. On that date in 1908, the “Tunguska Event” https://earthsky.org/space/what-is-the-tunguska-explosion/?mc_cid=c5d9e14a48&mc_eid=9aeb2a4318 , a stony (not icy) body, between 164 and 262 feet in diameter, entered the atmosphere at around 33,500 miles per hour, depositing a 4 megaton explosion, equivalent to the blast energy 250 times more powerful than the atom bomb dropped on Hiroshima, at 3 to 6 miles altitude occurred over Tunguska, Russia.
The Tunguska Event https://www.nasa.gov/history/115-years-ago-the-tunguska-asteroid-impact-event/ devastated 830 square miles and 80 MILLION trees were flattened. This is the largest such event to occur in modern times and is why Asteroid Day is held every year on June 30th as a reminder to the world that planetary defense against asteroids and comets matters.
We had the Chelyabinsk impact event in 2013 wtop.com/news/2013/12/best-space-story-for-2013-russias-asteroid-event/ which was historic due to the number of injuries and damage to buildings it caused - the most ever recorded due to an asteroid/meteorite event. The Chelyabinsk Event was the most documented asteroid explosion and meteorite fall ever due to the number of videos, sound recordings, photographs, witness interviews and the precise recovery process of associated meteorites.
Chelyabinsk also improved our knowledge regarding the threat posed by asteroids www.nature.com/nature/journal/v503/n7475/full/nature12741.html that are smaller than a kilometer. The smaller asteroids like Chelyabinsk pose a greater hazard for damage than previously thought. In December 2018 an event with 40 per cent of the energy release of Chelyabinsk took place over the Bering Sea https://www.bbc.com/news/science-environment-47607696 reaffirming that such events happen more often than we would like.
Efforts by the United Nations https://www.unoosa.org/oosa/en/ourwork/topics/neos/index.html , NASA https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense , ESA https://www.esa.int/kids/en/learn/Our_Universe/Comets_and_meteors/Celebrate_Asteroid_Day_on_30_June and the B612 Foundation https://b612foundation.org/ are working to develop a defensive capability as well as improved detection of the millions of asteroids.
The following are recent important highlights in planetary defense that have significantly improved our planet’s (and humanity’s) protection from an incoming asteroid through detection and deflection.
The now operational Vera Rubin Observatory (VRO) is capable of discovering millions of new asteroids. VRO discovered 2,104 new asteroids during its inaugural “First Look” https://wtop.com/the-space-place/2025/06/stunning-images-from-the-largest-digital-camera-ever-built/ and has been finding more https://www.space.com/astronomy/asteroids/the-powerful-new-rubin-observatory-just-found-11-000-new-asteroids-and-measured-tens-of-thousands-more .
James Webb Space Telescope has made discoveries about our asteroid belt https://www.nasa.gov/solar-system/asteroids/nasas-webb-reveals-smallest-asteroids-yet-found-in-main-asteroid-belt/ and those around other stars https://www.smithsonianmag.com/smart-news/james-webb-telescope-reveals-asteroid-belts-around-nearby-young-star-180982148/ .
Using data from the Hubble Space Telescope citizen scientists recently discovered 1,000 asteroids https://www.space.com/citizen-scientists-discover-one-thousand-asteroids-hubble-telescope-photos.
NASA has established a Planetary Defense Coordination Office https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/overview.
Interagency exercises such as the “fifth biennial Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise” https://www.nasa.gov/news-release/nasa-partners-conduct-fifth-asteroid-impact-exercise-release-summary/ held in Maryland are regularly conducted to test real world scenarios and responses.
In 2021 we finally got a space based telescope mission approved, NEO Surveyor https://science.nasa.gov/mission/neo-surveyor/ , that is designed specifically for finding space rocks large and small - like Chelyabinsk. This mission will greatly improve our ability to detect space rocks, especially those that lurk near the Sun (like Chelyabinsk) and as a result cannot be readily seen by Earth-based telescopes. In an email NEO Surveyor Principal Investigator, Dr. Amy Mainzer, stated that,”We’re excited to ramp up work on the spacecraft bus starting this fall in preparation for launch in September 2027.”
NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission https://www.nasa.gov/planetarydefense/dart/dart-news impacted and changed the orbit of an asteroid in September 2022.
ESA’s Hera mission https://www.esa.int/Space_Safety/Hera will arrive November 2026 at the two asteroids involved with the DART mission and greatly increase our knowledge necessary for planetary defense as explained by ESA: “As part of the world’s first test of asteroid deflection, Hera will perform a detailed post-impact survey of the target asteroid, Dimorphos – the orbiting moonlet of a binary asteroid system known as Didymos. Now that NASA’s DART mission has impacted the moonlet, Hera will turn the grand-scale experiment into a well-understood and repeatable planetary defence technique.”
A world-wide community of citizen astronomers in conjunction with the SETI Institute https://www.seti.org/projects/unistellar-network/ are actively participating in planetary defense by making real time observations using telescopes made by Unistellar https://unistellaroptics.com/citizen-science/planetary-defense/ . I bought one of their telescopes in order to participate in their citizen science projects https://unistellaroptics.com/citizen-science/ . Anyone with a telescope can participate as well.
A last point for you to consider. “The dinosaurs are dead because they didn’t have telescopes or a space program.” I use this phrase of mine to highlight for my audiences what we need to do to avoid going the way of the dinosaurs who were killed off by an impact in the Yucatan Penisula 66 million years ago https://news.harvard.edu/gazette/story/2021/02/new-theory-behind-asteroid-that-killed-the-dinosaurs/ .
The cosmic clock is ticking………
If we need a reminder, we got it just last weekend when a large asteroid whizzed by our planet https://wtop.com/national/2026/06/a-large-harmless-asteroid-will-zip-past-earth-this-weekend/ .
Asteroid Day - become part of the movement.
Sky Guy in Virginia - Home of the planet's 6th largest impact crater CBIC
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