›2015 IAA Planetary Defense Conference

Topic areas for papers include: 

Planetary Defense – Recent Progress & Plans  

•    Current national and international funded activities that support planetary defense

•    Program status and plans (e.g., NASA’s NEO program, ESA and EU NEO & SSA program) 

•    Current international agreements and coordination activities (UN and others)

 

NEO Discovery 

•    Overviews of current ground and space-based discovery statistics

•    Current discovery and follow-up capabilities, and advances in utilizing archival data

•    Orbital refinements including non-gravitational effects and keyholes

•    New surveys expected to be operational within the current decade    

 

NEO Physical Characterization that Informs Mitigation

•    Size distribution, albedos, composition, densities, rotation rates, etc.

•    Lessons learned from recent observing programs and plans for improvements

•    The smaller NEOs (≤ 300 m): assessing the physical properties of the more frequent impactors

Mitigation Techniques & Missions 

•    Space technologies for asteroid deflection/disruption (e.g., new concepts, kinetic impactor, GNC (e.g. high speed impact and low gravity operations), astrodynamics etc)

•    Flight validation/demonstration missions for planetary defense technologies

•    Robotic and human NEO exploration mission planning and design (e.g., OSIRIS-REx, Hayabusa 2, etc.)

 

Impact Effects that Inform Warning, Mitigation & Costs 

•    Information from the geological record and recent history (e.g., Chelyabinsk, Tunguska)

•    Consequences of ocean and land impacts

•    Economic costs of impacts

 

Consequence Management & Education 

•    Policy or legal analysis that will affect or inform future mitigation plans

•    Educating the public and the media on NEO detection, impact effects, mitigation missions, impact warnings

•    Strategies for developing disaster response plans across international borders 

•    Lessons learned from regional and international disasters (e.g.: Fukushima, Chernobyl, Hurricane Katrina) that provide insights for planetary defense