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Every day, the planet Earth is beaten by thousands of pieces of rock from outer space. These rock pieces fall freely into the Earth, sometimes creating beautiful cosmic fireworks like the annual Perseid meteor shower, but sometimes, a large piece of asteroids can penetrate our atmosphere. For example the 2013 meteor that dramatically exploded over the Russian city of Chelyabinsk, or the 1908 Tunguska event that obliterated 1,287 square kilometers of Siberian forest.

Even though these kinds of events are very rare especially as large-scale collisions as they allegedly kill dinosaurs, NASA wants to make sure that we are all ready when astronomers find a deadly asteroid on Earth.

Meet Lindley Johnson, a former member of the Air Force space surveillance team, and for several years, a sole member of NASA's Near Earth Object Observation program, responsible for tracking and cataloging large asteroids in our solar system.

As NASA's Planetary Defense Officer Johnson is responsible for the fate of human civilization, at least from the threat of asteroids. But Johnson claimed this responsibility did not necessarily make him unable to sleep soundly at night.

"Fortunately, the big bang is a very rare event, and it may happen every few hundred to 1,000 years," Johnson explained. "So I'm not so stressed out."

Johnson joined NASA in 2003 after 23 years in the Air Force, working in aerospace surveillance and control systems. He has a degree in planetary astronomy, and is tasked with overseeing the Near Earth Observation program.

In 2014, the audit results of NASA's Office of Inspector General found that NASA's planetary defense operations lack staff, funds, and are not well-developed. The audit recommends an increase in budget and staff, and finally in 2015.

Suddenly Johnson saw his budget increase to 10-fold from $ 5 million to $ 50 million annually, and his staff grew to 8. In 2016, the Near Earth Object Observation program changed to the Planetary Defense Coordination Office, led by Johnson.
Johnson is clearly pleased with NASA's improved material support, but says there is still much room for improvement. "I think we should spend more money on the detection and tracking of these objects," Johnson explained, adding that there are still thousands of large asteroids in our solar system whose location has not been found. "This is a realm that needs attention, but definitely not NASA's highest priority."

Tracking deadly asteroids may not be NASA's highest priority, but the result of NASA's investment in planetary defense under Johnson's leadership is indisputable. Until now, the observatory team under the Planetary Defense Coordination Office has cataloged more than 17,000 asteroids, and nearly 8,000 of them are more than 100 meters in diameter-an asteroid type that could destroy a continent.

As a Planetary Defense Officer, Johnson's responsibilities cover three main categories: detection, deflection, and emergency preparation.

Johnson said the detection of asteroids is clearly the most important part of his work. Anyway, we want to protect the Earth from a deadly asteroid if we do not even know where they are. For this purpose Johnson co-ordinates data from three observatories (Catalina Sky Survey, Pan-STARRS, and NEO-WISE) that are actively tracking and cataloging asteroids in our solar system.

Although these observators found nearly 2,000 asteroids by 2017, Johnson said that a space-based telescope that could be used to hunt asteroids in the infrared spectrum would accelerate planet defense efforts. Due to Earth's atmosphere, ground-based observatories will not be able to track asteroids in infrared, which is the easiest way to track asteroids as they move in our solar system. Johnson estimates that an extraterrestrial telescope used to track asteroids will indeed eliminate the results of ground-based observatory studies over several decades.

Even though Johnson says he has a proposal for this type of telescope-a project known as NEOCam-seeking funding for such an orbital telescope proves difficult.

Johnson is also responsible for overseeing deflection or deflection efforts. When an asteroid is found on a planet Earth, NASA has several ways to define it, from the use of aerospace lasers to nuclear missiles. According to Johnson, most of the technologies are far from ready for use. Our best solution right now, he explained, is to use a kinetic collision-essentially crashing a spaceship into an asteroid to change its course.

In 2020, NASA will launch the Asteroid Impact and Deflection Assessment (AIDA), which will strike a spacecraft into a binary asteroid system named 65803 Didymos. This will be the first test of the launch of the first planetary defense device in space. The AIDA mission is included as a joint project with the European Space Agency, which intends to launch a second aircraft to study the impact of NASA aircraft on asteroids. However, earlier this year, ESA decided not to fund half of their mission, but Johnson said NASA's mission would go ahead.

Even with the best planetary defense system, it all remains a gamble. Reflecting an asteroid will take months, if not years since the beginning to launch a successful defense mission. In many cases, the observatori was not even aware of the asteroid being heading Earth until a few days earlier. For this reason, Lindsey also oversees emergency preparedness operations so that when an asteroid is found to be heading to a populated area, disaster management agencies can respond effectively.

At the end of 106, NASA and FEMA collaborated in a simulation involving a massive asteroid impact to the coast of Los Angeles. Evacuating a city of 4 million people in a matter of days is not an easy thing, but Lindsey says that the exercise went smoothly. He plans to run more simulations in the future to convince government departments are ready to cooperate if collisions happen.

"As we raise awareness of these dangers and inform leaders that this is an area where our organizations need to be more involved, and improve capabilities, we will continue to get support for our efforts," Johnson explained. "It seems we will continue to see this trend in the next few years."