“Asteroid Autumn”? Asteroid_S_ ALWAYS

Lori Glaze, head of NASA’s Planetary Division, has dubbed late ’23 as “Asteroid Autumn“. Well, thanks for the publicity, but I’m afraid I have to nitpick: ‘asteroids, alpha and omega’ would be more descriptive.

We, the sons of Piazzi (and increasingly, daughters) are well aware, even if others aren’t: Small bodies (the former ‘asteroids’ and ‘comets’) are the past and future. We are made of asteroids; we drink glasses of asteroid, and eat organics that came from asteroids. One day (though possibly millenia away) ‘we’ may be unmade, by an asteroid impact. On a more positive note, one nearer day (years to generations away) we will mine and colonize the favorable asteroids. A very near day- today- we are studying the bounty from prior small-body studies and space missions, and bounteous it is. Each day- just like yesterday, and the day before- small-body samples rain on all of us, in the form of interplanetary dust, micrometeorites, and, a few times per year, macroscopic objects: bulk meteorites.

Thank you, Dottore. We, though, still in the trenches of research and not organizational management (or even mission management) will confer among ourselves, and help in the outreach and education for the lay public (it’s an uphill struggle). Exhibit A: this blog. ‘Follow’ this virtual page, and follow this line of inquiry, of human endeavour.