Asteroid Grazes Earth’s Upper-Atmosphere With Only Two-Day Warning

Just two days before its near-terminal graze of Earth’s upper atmosphere last week, astronomers discovered the presence and precarious trajectory of Asteroid 2016 RB1.

Its course brought it to within 24,000 miles of sea level on September 7—close enough to endanger communication satellites—as it whizzed by at more than 18,000 mph.

Astronomers first spotted the 13-46 foot wide asteroid with Mount Lemmon Survey’s 60-inch Cassegrin telescope at the University of Arizona. It was later reconfirmed by Gianluca Masi of the Virtual Telescope Project in Italy. Naturally, a space-faring body the size of a bus or trailer is too small to see with the naked eye from the ground, but thankfully Masi had the means on hand to create an animation of the asteroid’s motion.

After plotting its trajectory, we could only watch with pallid faces as the asteroid passed within 2,000 miles of the kind of satellites responsible for loading and reloading this very webpage, or awaiting the data stream from your next phone call. But don’t fret.

Asteroid 2016 RB1 came from a group of space rocks called the Atens. Essentially this is a group of Near Earth Objects (NEOs) travelling the inner solar system in orbits stochastic enough to sporadically collide with nearby planets—Mars, Earth, Venus and Mercury.

So we’ve seen this before. Last Sunday, an asteroid of even greater mass called 2016 QA2 zipped betwixt the Earth and Moon to less than 50,000 miles above sea level. Realistically, such encounters are little bumps on our collective proverbial extinction meters.

Because although scientists have assured the media that 2016 RB1 was not big enough to cause a major catastrophe, being one-thirtieth the mass of the one responsible for dinosaurs’ extinction, the hypothetical inconvenience of just two days’ warning pre-impact of great portent should convince us to endorse programs studying close encounters of the rocky kind, like NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO). Launched early this year, the new organization was founded to coordinate its multi-disciplinary efforts to catalogue NEOs capable of decimating life as we know it.

It’s a valid question to ask why NASA or ESA would want to carry out a massive program to catalogue all NEOs capable of seriously messing things up if the only pro is a little foreknowledge of total destruction. This is why NASA is testing out the theoretical basis of countermeasures with missions like OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security, REgolith Explorer), an asteroid-specific mission launched at 7:05 EDT last Thursday from Cape Canaveral.

The probe’s primary mission is to return a sample of the NEO asteroid called Bennu to Earth, so scientists can learn more about these things that threaten our pale blue dot.

Joined by the Canadian Space Agency, OSIRIS-REx will also study something called the Yarkovsky effect. When an asteroid approaches the sun, its surface heats enough to expel gas and other material, acting like a natural thruster.

Arriving in 2018 and departing in 2021, the probe will measure physical properties—like rotation—that determine how and when an asteroid’s orbit changes, turning a potentially hazardous NEO into another harmless miss, and vice-versa.

OSIRIS-REx is an early and small step for NASA’s PDCO program, one that most astronomers agree was a long-time coming. Common sense dictates that it may be natural for the beginning of an asteroid-cataloguing program to amass a great number of previously ignored NEOs. However, the cold reality remains that we’re likely to see a lot more close-calls than comforting reassurances as we open our eyes to the shooting range we’ve been living in all these millions of years.

from Asteroid Grazes Earth’s Upper-Atmosphere With Only Two-Day Warning

NASA's New Self-Learning AI Could Save First Responders

NASA scientists are engineering a form of artificial intelligence (AI) that they hope will help firefighters and other first responders escape dangerous situations. Set to launch next year, the system will help first responders through unpredictable fires and chemical leaks by giving them advice based on machine learning of past emergencies.

The new system—called AUDREY—the Assistant for Understanding Data through Reasoning, Extraction and sYnthesis—is designed to be distributed to individual firefighters so it can collect a precise network of data directly from the field, and learn from that data for next time. No emergency is the same, which means first responders have to rely on extensive training and experience to stay safe in dangerous conditions that can change rapidly. The AUDREY system hopes to use distributed data collection and machine learning to better inform first responders about the situation at hand.

The AI system is under joint development by the Department of Homeland Security, which funded the project, and NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. It can analyze data and respond to human queries on demand, said Mark James, a supervisor and scientist at the lab. And it will communicate with those assigned to other first responders on the scene, creating a mesh network of AIs comprised of the police, firefighters and EMT.

Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Image: NASA

While digital assistants like Siri or Alexa are programmed to respond to language inputs, James explained, AUDREY won’t be working with a fixed set of rules. “Just like a person, AUDREY needs education before she can solve a problem,” he said.

Each first responder trying AUDREY out will get a version that has been pre-educated for their specific vocation, and customized to his or her own preferences. At first, these “mini-AUDREYs” will be accessed through mobile phone and internet, and eventually first responders will be able to access the program through special headgear, with voice command and LED lights.

Since AUDREY is educated before heading to the field with first responders, she will amass data from before, during and after an incident. “She fuses all this information together, understands the roles and training for each person and their equipment, and synthesizes a solution to problems posted by the first responder,” James explained.

And during the time of response, the systems will communicate. “If firefighters, EMT and police are all present, those disparate AUDREYs will talk to each other,” said Edward Chow, a manager from the Department of Homeland Security.

An emergency team can work without the cloud for indefinite amounts of time since AUDREY can run on regular LTE, like a phone, and doesn’t need to be connected to a tower to operate.

AUDREY workflow. Image: Jet Propulsion Laboratory

“When a local AUDREY loses connection to the cloud, they will work together to request and pass on requisite information for each first responder’s role via those AUDREYs still in contact with the cloud,” to maintain localized situational awareness, he said.

And the system will be useful even when it isn’t connected to a human responder. The team is building models that can be left in the cleared room of a burning building. These will act as sensors to monitor concentrations of flammable gas and temperature could be dropped behind the teams, keeping firefighters in-the-know about rooms in imminent danger of igniting or collapsing.

“For example, as a responder moves through a burning building, he could drop black boxes along his way,” and with on-board sensors, the data streaming from these breadcrumbs would help AUDREY let its users know if the way in is no longer such a good way out, James explained.

And at the end of a job AUDREY enters “dreaming mode”, during which all the problems solved and dangers curtailed in a day’s work are sifted and consolidated. The data adds to the system’s bank of experience, to be used for guiding a first responder’s through his or her next job.

Maybe that's something we can learn to do next.

from NASA's New Self-Learning AI Could Save First Responders