Illustration of asteroid approaching Earth.
University of Arizona planetary scientists are among those featured in a new NASA documentary on asteroid hunters.
The space agency’s “Planetary Defenders” made its online debut yesterday. Catalina Sky Survey’s David Rankin talked about the responsibility of tracking and monitoring potentially dangerous asteroids crossing the Earth’s orbit.
“It transcends basically everything except what makes us human, and what it means to help discover and protect the planet from a hazardous asteroid that might be oncoming.," he said.
The Catalina Sky Survey and the UA’s Spacewatch program puts scientists to work discovering near Earth objects and delivering their findings to asteroid trackers around the globe.
Spacewatch researcher Cassandra Lejoly described the excitement of discovering and tracking a never-before-seen asteroid.
“It’s really cool when you’re looking at an image from the sky and you see a moving dot," she explained. "Every time I see that moving asteroid, I’m excited by it, because you found it. You found a thing in space.”
“Planetary Defenders” is available on NASA-Plus and other platforms including NASA’s Live YouTube channel.
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