The March Acta Astronautica (vol. 240) brings us:
Szabó, N. O. Sárneczky, K. Kiss, L. L. et al. NEO and imminent impactor discoveries from Hungary: Recent results and lessons learnt Pg 1 .2025.11.055
Coates, A. Wheeler, L. Dotson, J. Risk knowledge improvement from additional information for the PDC25 hypothetical impact scenario Pg 782 .2025.11.064
Okada, T. Tanaka, S. Sakatani, N. et al. Thermal infrared imager TIRI onboard Hera and RAMSES missions Pg 888 .2025.12.039
Müller, T. G. Conversi, L. Licandro, J. et al. Possibilities and limitations of thermal infrared detections of the Chelyabinsk progenitor and 2024 YR4 before Earth encounters Pg 917 .2025.11.052
Let there be no jokes about Eastern Europeans and their astronomical bona fides. Here, Szabó et al. publish new results from the Piszkésteto” Mountain Station of the Konkoly Observatory.
Should a newly-discovered asteroid turn out to be an impact risk, humanity’s telescopes would swing into action. But what action, and how? The day of an emergency is too late to form an emergency plan. At the biennial Planetary Defense Conferences (PDCs), representatives from the spacefaring/astronomical nations try an exercise, with a hypothetical asteroid. From the last meeting (2025), we get lessons learned. Coates et al. publish some of those lessons; will we learn?
One answer to an asteroid threat is an inspector spacecraft. That spacecraft would likely carry some form of infrared instrument. The Hera spacecraft will follow up the DART spacecraft, to Dimorphos. Here we can read of its infrared instrument, TIRI. A copy of TIRI will fly to Apophis on RAMSES.
Speaking of infrared, we’d likely use some form of infrared to look towards the Sun, for asteroids coming at us from that direction. The Sun is dimmer in infrared; we’d also get less interference from our atmosphere. How much better would it be? Müller et al, like Coates et al., use placeholder asteroids as tests. The Chelyabinsk and 2024 YR4 objects are salient placeholders.