Eyes on the skies

MARY REICHARD, HOST: Today is Tuesday, February 11th.

Thank you for turning to WORLD Radio to help start your day.

Good morning. I’m Mary Reichard.

NICK EICHER, HOST: And I’m Nick Eicher.

Coming next on The World and Everything in It: Hunting asteroids.

Last month, NASA announced it found an asteroid with the potential to hit Earth in 2032 and do some damage. It’s just a one percent chance, but between the size and the likelihood of impact, the asteroid is at the top of NASA’s watch list.

REICHARD: The space agency spotted it using the Very Large Telescope in Chile, yes, that is its technical name, and they’ll track it as it moves away from Earth and around the sun.

WORLD’s Mary Muncy talked to an astronomer who’s trying to find these asteroids and head off disaster.

She’s out sick today, so Kristen Flavin has the story.

KRISTEN FLAVIN: In 2004, Franck Marchis had just started a job as a researcher, observing the stars in California. But on Christmas Eve morning, Marchis and his wife were at home, painting their kitchen. Marchis was also scrolling through an email chain with amateur astronomers.

MARCHIS: and some type some some subject line was a threat asteroid, potentially impacting our planet, blah, blah, blah. So I say, Okay, this is something serious. Let's have a look.

The asteroid was big. Big enough to destroy a city and leave the rest of the world with repercussions.

He explained it to his wife, but told her not to worry, that it probably wouldn’t happen.

MARCHIS: It is a very weird feeling that when you are one of the few 100 people on this planet that have the idea that warning that something that big could happen.

But he couldn’t do anything about it. So they kept painting their kitchen.

MARCHIS: It was good I waited because two hours later there was no more impact.

Earth was safe, for now. But it got Marchis thinking.

MARCHIS: I used to make fun of people who were looking for asteroids to be, to be very honest with you, and saying, ‘Oh, this will very unlikely to happen.’

But it’s not that unlikely.

Our planet and the moon show signs of impact from large asteroids and NASA estimates a football-field-sized asteroid hits Earth about every 2,000 years.

So, Marchis wanted to know about the system for detecting them.

It turns out, NASA and other space research organizations have telescopes pointing at the sky from all over the world.

But they’re hard to access.

MARCHIS: I mean, you cannot go in on the top of a mountain and say, ‘hey, there is an asteroid going to impact our planet, observe it.’ This is not going to happen.

You need a proposal, a research organization, and a structure. And you only get a few nights of observation a year.

MARCHIS: So it's not enough, so I started using smaller telescopes.

And then, in 2013…

ABC: A blinding flash of light streaking across the sky. And then… [explosions sounds]

An asteroid hit Chelyabinsk, Russia… a city with a population of about a million.

PBS: More than a thousand people were injured.

MARCHIS: Imagine the same would have happened above cities like New York, Washington, DC, Paris and so on.

They needed an early warning system.

He went through a couple different strategies before landing on one in 2017—put telescopes in the hands of amateur astronomers and then link their data with an algorithm that can hunt for asteroids.

Sifting through other people’s findings is most of what he does these days.

MARCHIS: The network has 15,000 telescopes available now. We have 3000-3000 citizen astronomers actively doing observations.

There are just a few dark spots left in their network…

The system is paying off. Last year, they detected an asteroid that would enter the atmosphere near Berlin.

Marchis messaged a friend who lives there.

MARCHIS: It was midnight, and I told him, Hey, look up toward the west at 1:32am tonight, you will see a meteor.

Sure enough…

AUDIO: Whoa…

The video shows a fireball in the atmosphere

That asteroid was small and burned up before it hit the ground. But what happens if they detect one that could do major damage?

First astronomers calculate the trajectory.

MARCHIS: If we extrapolate this and it will happen in 10, 20, 30 years, we have time to think about it.

And possibly do something about it.

AUDIO: [Sound from right before impact]

In 2022, NASA tested whether it’s possible to change the trajectory of an asteroid by shooting something at it.

AUDIO: [Cheering]

It worked! But not every astronomer thinks nudging an asteroid is a good idea.

DANNY FAULKER: You better do it early, rather than late.

Danny Faulkner is an astronomer with Answers in Genesis.

He says tracking asteroids is difficult and knowing the asteroid’s trajectory far enough in advance to change it may not be possible.

FAULKNER: It may turn out you might nudge it to collide with us. So it's a real problem either way

Depending on how far we know about an asteroid in advance, it might be possible to evacuate the area where it’s going to hit or at least tell people to go into their basements or a storm shelter to avoid the shockwave.

FAULKNER: It comes back to God's providence. If God doesn't want us to be wiped out by an asteroid, it's not going to happen. If he does, it's going to happen. Either way, we don't have much say.

But Faulkner says it’s honoring to observe and try to understand creation.

FAULKNER: We have direct revelation coming from the Lord about what we need to know, but you know, that doesn't tell us. The Bible doesn't tell us everything that we may want to know. You know, the Bible doesn't tell us what shape the earth is. And so how can we find that out? Well, we can find it out by studying the creation around us.

Marchis isn’t religious, but his network is about more than planetary defense.

MARCHIS: Having people going outside, chatting with their friends, sharing a moment around a telescope, looking at the sky, talking about the questions like, Are we alone? Why are we here? It's way more valuable.

His work has changed from a one-man job, to a thousand-man job, everyone working toward a goal together.

MARCHIS: We can have great challenges, and can overcome those challenges. And you, each of us at our level, by taking our telescope outside to observe an event from a tiny island in the middle of the Indian Ocean. We can contribute to this. We can contribute to that.

Reporting for WORLD, I’m Kristen Flavin.S

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