WORLD ASTEROID DAY

History Of Asteroid Day

It was in December 2016, when the United Nations General Assembly adopted a resolution named A/RES/71/90. The resolution talked about spreading awareness about the impact of NEO and what measures need to be taken. It was decided that the World Asteroid Day will be observed every year on the 30 June to acknowledge the Tunguska event that took place in Siberia and Russia Federation on 30 June 1908.

Those who don't know asteroids are small bodies made up of rocks that usually circle around Mars and Jupiter. They circle around Mars and Jupiter on Asteroid Belt which is basically a path. These asteroids were formed from the leftovers of our own solar system.

SIGNIFICANCE

·         The day also aims to spread knowledge about the necessary actions taken across the world in the case of Near-Earth Objects (NEO). The NEO will comprise of asteroids, meteoroids, comets, etc.

·         The first-ever asteroid Ceres was discovered in the year 1801 by Giuseppe Piazzi.

·         The word asteroids means 'star-like' which was first coined by astronomer William Herschel in the year 1802.

·         However, according to the current theory, asteroids are planetesimals which means the building block of a planet that could never incorporate themselves as one of the eight planets.

·         To date, there are over 600,000 known planets in our solar system.

According to some theories, asteroids first impacted the earth over 65 million years ago and this led to the extinction of dinosaurs.

 

ASTEROID DAY DECLARATION

The workgroup of Asteroid Day created a declaration called "100X Declaration", which appeals to all scientists and technologists who are supporting the idea of saving the earth from asteroids, but not only specialists are asked to sign, everyone can sign this declaration. Today, the 100X Declaration has been signed by more than 22,000 private citizens.

Radar images and a computer model of an asteroid

More than 1M asteroids have the potential to impact Earth and through all the available telescopes worldwide, we have discovered only about one percent. The 100X Declaration calls for increasing the asteroid discovery rate to 100,000 (or 100x) per year within the next 10 years. “The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it became that the human race has been living on borrowed time,” remarked Brian May. “Asteroid Day and the 100X Declaration are ways for the public to contribute to an awareness of the Earth’s vulnerability and the realization that Asteroids hit Earth all the time.” Asteroid Day would the vehicle to garner public support to increase our knowledge of when asteroids might strike and how we can protect ourselves.”^[7]

The main three goals are:

1.   Employ available technology to detect and track Near-Earth Asteroids that threaten human populations via governments and private and philanthropic organisations.

2.   A rapid hundred-fold acceleration of the discovery and tracking of Near-Earth Asteroids to 100,000 per year within the next ten years.

3.   Global adoption of Asteroid Day, heightening awareness of the asteroid hazard and our efforts to prevent impacts, on June 30 - With the United Nations recognition, this action item has been achieved.

According to the AsteroidDay.org website, over 2000 events participated in global activities on June 30 in its first five years across 78 countries.^[15] 41 astronauts and cosmonauts participated in activities on the day.^[16] The general goal was to raise awareness about the threat posed by asteroid impacts. Institutions such as Institut de Ciències de l'Espai,^[17] the Natural History Museum in Vienna,^[18] the American Natural History Museum,^[19] the California Academy of Sciences,^[20] the Science Museum in London,^[21] the SETI institute,^[22] the European Space Agency,^[23] the UK Space Agency,^[24] among others participated in educational activities. The first Asteroid Day was held on June 30, 2015.