Asteroid

• Most Americans (69%) believe it is essential that the United States continue to be a world leader in space.
• But only a subsection of that group believes NASA should prioritize sending people to the Moon, according to a new report released by the Pew Research Center.
• The study surveyed over 10,000 U.S. adults on their attitudes toward NASA and their expectations for the space industry over the next few decades.

US dominance in space

• But the specific priorities of the U.S. space program have often been at odds with public opinion.
• Although somewhat at odds with the national space agenda, this valuation is not new.
• Between 1989 and 1995, polling revealed that the public thought the U.S. space program should focus on robotic spacecraft as opposed to crewed missions.
• This position began to change in the mid-1990s with docking of the space shuttle with the Russian space station and several blockbuster space-themed films.
• Despite moderate public support, human spaceflight consistently receives the majority share of U.S. civilian space funding, suggesting that public opinion and the national space agenda stand apart.

Planetary defense

• It found 60% of people believed NASA’s top priority should be monitoring asteroids that could hit the Earth.
• NASA does have national responsibility for this job – referred to as planetary defense – but the office receives less than 1% of NASA’s budget, or US$138 million out of $25.4 billion in 2023.
• This included the Double Asteroid Redirect Test – the world’s first planetary defense experiment.

Private enterprise in space

• Private activity in space goes back to the 1960s, with the creation of commercial communication satellite companies and growth of large defense contractors.
• Many Americans view private activity in space positively, but a large portion have not yet formed an opinion.
• Similarly, 47% of Americans said private companies are making important contributions to space exploration, but another 40% were unsure.

Militarization of space

• They believe the U.S. will definitely or probably fight against other nations in space sometime in the next 50 years.
• However, no nation has ever physically attacked another nation’s satellite in space.
• In addition, the United Nations’ open-ended working group on reducing space threats has been meeting since 2022 to help avoid conflict in space.

Space debris

• Americans are also concerned about space debris – 69% think there will definitely or probably be a major problem with debris in space by 2073.
• Space debris can include defunct satellites, discarded rocket bodies, or pieces of satellites resulting from accidental collisions or anti-satellite tests.
• The number of objects in space has grown rapidly, from just over 1,000 in 2013 to 6,718 satellites today.
• Mariel Borowitz receives funding from the National Air and Space Administration (NASA), the Department of Defense (DoD), and the National Science Foundation.

• Earlier this week, Asteroid Institute scientists found a collection of previously unattributed images of the newly discovered Potentially Hazardous Asteroid (PHA) 2022 SF289 as found by the team at Vera C. Rubin Observatory.
• ADAM::Precovery was also used by the Institute to refine the orbits of 28 PHAs tracked on the NASA and ESA Risk Lists.
• Finally, the commercial company Karman+ has been working with Asteroid Institute to use precovery in finding observations of Near Earth Asteroids that could be potential targets for space missions.
• Within minutes of being notified of its discovery in ATLAS survey data by the Rubin Observatory team, Asteroid Institute engineers recovered additional observations of newly identified potentially hazardous asteroid 2022 SF289 using ADAM's precovery tool.

• The prize acknowledges the significance of embracing our collective responsibility for safeguarding humanity's transition into the broader cosmos.
• "Through the Association of Space Explorers (ASE), we worked on the issue of planetary defense from asteroid impacts.
• Rusty Schweickart took a leadership role with the ASE to enable others to bring this global issue to the United Nations.
• The prize will be awarded annually to exceptional individuals, specifically undergraduate and graduate students and early career professionals actively involved in planetary defense.

• It includes some 6,000 species who live in the oceans as well as on land.
• My team’s study used a new method to investigate this question and our findings may help settle this debate.

Estimating origins

• The first is reading the fossil record - the oldest fossil in a group determines the date when it first evolved.
• For placental mammals, there are a couple of fossils from around 65 million years ago, just after the mass extinction of dinosaurs.
• Another way of estimating when groups first evolved is through molecular clock dating studies.
• Two species that are similar in their genetic makeup probably have family trees that split from each other fairly recently.

Rocks or clocks?

• For young lineages that evolved only a few hundred thousand years ago, this sampling rate may be quite high, because we have more fossils from younger rocks.
• Younger rocks are more intact, and often closer to the surface.
• But for older groups, the sampling rate may be quite low because geological processes degrade and destroy rocks and fossils over time.

The origins of placental mammals

• The BBB model estimated the age of placental mammals to be within the Cretaceous period, around 70-80 million years ago – possibly up to 20 million years before the asteroid impact.
• From an origin at the feet of dinosaurs, placental mammals have soared to become the most dominant animals on Earth.