The Earth has been impacted by asteroids in the past, and such events will certainly happen in the future: the question is whether a major impact will happen on a timescale relevant to humans. The most important first step in assessing any potential hazard from asteroids and comets is to see whether any imminent impacts exist. Significant advances in our understanding of the population of potentially Earth-impacting objects have been made over the past several decades with the advent of modern electronic detectors. As a byproduct, our knowledge of all types of asteroids and comets in our solar system has greatly improved, from understanding the ways in which objects collide and shatter to finding rare comets passing through from other solar systems outside our own.

At present, the majority of near-Earth asteroids large enough to cause global catastrophe have been discovered, but most asteroids large enough to cause severe regional damage remain undiscovered. Advanced surveys designed to search for and characterize these objects are being developed and may finally offer the opportunity to find the majority of potentially hazardous large asteroids before they find us.

About the Speaker:

Amy Mainzer is a Professor of Planetary Sciences at the University of Arizona in Tucson. Her research focuses on infrared astronomy and instrumentation, and applying these techniques to studying the small bodies in our solar system. She received her Bachelors in Physics at Stanford, her M.S. in astronomy from Caltech, and her Ph.D. in astronomy from UCLA in 2003. She was a Senior Research Scientist at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, where she worked as the Deputy Project Scientist on the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer mission, and later as the Principal Investigator of the extended mission known as NEOWISE. Prior to this, she built the fine guidance sensor for the Spitzer Space Telescope as an engineer at Lockheed Martin. In addition to her research in astronomy and planetary science, Prof. Mainzer maintains an active interest in scientific education and outreach. She is the on-camera host and science consultant for the PBS Kids television series Ready Jet Go!, a show about space and Earth science for children as young as 3-8 years old. She has participated in numerous documentaries and interviews on space.
                   
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