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Defending Planet Earth Near-Earth-Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies (2010) / Chapter Skim
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1 Introduction
Pages 7-11

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From page 7...
... This capacity, and interest in exercising it, have developed and sharply increased in the space age, most likely sparked by the discovery in the late 1980s of the approximately 200-kilometer-diameter Chicxulub Crater formed by an impact 1"NEO" denotes near-Earth object, which has a precise technical meaning, but can be usefully thought of as an asteroid or comet whose orbit approaches Earth's orbit to within about one-third the average distance of Earth from the Sun. These objects are considered to be the only ones potentially capable of striking Earth, at least for the next century, except for comets that can enter the inner solar system from the outer system through the "slingshot" gravitational action of Jupiter.
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From page 8...
... These surveys, involving relatively small telescopes whose primary mirrors ranged in diameter from 0.6 to 1.2 meters, were seeking objects with diameters greater than 1 kilometer; also detected were many smaller objects that approached Earth closely enough to be seen.2 Congress requested that the National Research Council (NRC) undertake a study, sponsored by NASA, to address two tasks: Task 1: NEO Surveys What is the optimal approach to completing the NEO census called for in the George E
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From page 9...
... • What are the relative merits and costs of various deflection scenarios that have been proposed? In response to this assignment from Congress, the National Research Council created a steering committee -- the Committee to Review Near-Earth Object Surveys and Hazard Mitigation Strategies -- and two panels (one for each task: the Survey/Detection Panel and the Mitigation Panel)
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From page 10...
... The committee was asked to produce independent cost estimates of typical solutions that it considered for survey completion and mitigation. To this end, the NRC contracted with Science Applications International Corporation to use parametric models and other statistical techniques to produce estimates of these options.
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From page 11...
... Astronomy 22:12. NRC (National Research Council)
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Key Terms

  • hazard mitigation
  • cosmic objects
  • optimal approach
  • collision hazard
  • mitigation strategies

  • potentially hazardous
  • survey telescope
  • global devastation
  • cause global
  • somewhat arbitrarily

  • nearly infinite
  • nearly zero
  • hazardous neo
  • ocean impacts
  • hundred millennia

  • current esti
  • devastating january
  • gravitational action
  • carry fire
  • eters exceeding

  • human life
  • administration authorization
  • technically immature
  • space age
  • ones potentially

  • average impact
  • crude approximations
  • mitigation panel
  • mirrors ranged
  • applications international


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