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- Asteroid strikes are likely and cause extinction
- At least 10% are undetected
- 2ac – tech discussions key
- We have deflection capabilities, but detection is key
- Asteroids are real threats – psychoanalysis does not disprove our factual claims
NSA UPDATESAffTech Leadership Advantage1ac – asteroids impactCloud computing is also critical to space situational awareness – solves asteroids and debris Johnston et al 9 [Steven, PhD in computer engineering and MEng degree in software engineering, specializes in cloud-based architecture, Kenji Takeda, Solutions Architect and Technical Manager for the Microsoft Research Connections EMEA team, has extensive experience in Cloud Computing, Hugh Lewis, professor at University of Southampton, specialist in space situational awareness, Simon Cox, professor of Computational Methods and Director of the Microsoft Institute for High Performance Computing at University of Southampton, Graham Swinerd, professor at University of Southampton, specializes in space situational awareness, “Cloud Computing for Planetary Defense”, http://eprints.soton.ac.uk/71883/1/John_09.pdf, October 2009, 3/31/15] Abstract¶ In this paper we demonstrate how a cloud-based computing architecture can be used for planetary defense and space situational awareness (SSA). We show how utility compute can facilitate both a financially economical and highly scalable solution for space debris and near-earth object impact analysis. As we improve our ability to track smaller space objects, and satellite collisions occur, the volume of objects being tracked vastly increases, increasing computational demands. Propagating trajectories and calculating conjunctions becomes increasingly time critical, thus requiring an architecture which can scale with demand. The extension of this to tackle the problem of a future near-earth object impact is discussed, and how cloud computing can play a key role in this civilisation-threatening scenario.¶ Introduction¶ Space situational awareness includes scientific and operational aspects of space weather, near-earth objects and space debris. This project is part of an international effort to provide a global response strategy to the threat of a Near Earth Object (NEO) impacting the earth, led by the United Nations Committee for the Peaceful Use of Space (UN-COPUOS). The impact of a NEO – an asteroid or comet – is a severe natural hazard but is unique in that technology exists to predict and to prevent it, given sufficient warning. As such, the International Spaceguard survey has identified nearly 1,000 potentially hazardous asteroids >1km in size although NEOs smaller than one kilometre remain predominantly undetected, exist in far greater numbers and impact the Earth more frequently1. Impacts by objects larger than 100 m (twice the size of the asteroid that caused the Barringer crater in Arizona) could occur with little or no warning, with the energy of hundreds of nuclear weapons, and are “devastating at potentially unimaginable levels”2 (Figure 1). The tracking and prediction of potential NEO impacts is of international importance, particularly with regard to disaster management. Space debris poses a serious risk to satellites and space missions. Currently Space Track3 publishes the locations of about 10,000 objects that are publicly available. These include satellites, operational and defunct, space debris from missions and space junk. It is believed that there are about 19,000 objects with a diameter over 10cm. Even the smallest space junk travelling at about 17,000 miles per hour can cause serious damage; the Space Shuttle has undergone 92 window changes due to debris impact, resulting in concerns that a more serious accident is imminent4, and the International Space Station has to execute evasion manoeuvres to avoid debris. There are over 300,000 objects over 1cm in diameter and there is a desire to track most , if not all of these. By improving ground sensors and introducing sensors on satellites the Space Track database will increase in size. By tracking and predicting space debris behaviour in more detail we can reduce collisions as the orbital environment becomes ever more crowded.¶ Cloud computing provides the ability to trade computation time against costs. It also favours an architecture which inherently scales, providing burst capability. By treating compute as a utility, compute cycles are only paid for when they are used. Here we present a cloud application framework to tackle space debris tracking and analysis, that is being extended for NEO impact analysis. Notably, in this application propagation and conjunction analysis results in peak compute loads for only 20% of the day, with burst capability required in the event of a collision when the number of objects increases dramatically; the Iridium-33 Cosmos-2251 collision in 2009 resulted in an additional 1,131 trackable objects (Figure 2). Utility computation can quickly adapt to these situations consuming more compute, incurring a monetary cost but keeping computation wall clock time to a constant . In the event of a conjunction event being predicted, satellite operators would have to be quickly alerted so they could decide what mitigating action to take.¶ In this work we have migrated a series of discrete manual computing processes to the Azure cloud platform to improve capability and scalability. It is the initial prototype for a broader space situational awareness platform. The workflow involves the following steps: obtain satellite position data, validate data, run propagation simulation, store results, perform conjunction analysis, query satellite object, and visualise.¶ Satellite locations are published twice a day by Space Track, resulting in bi-daily high workloads. Every time the locations are published, all previous propagation calculations are halted, and the propagator starts recalculating the expected future orbits. Every orbit can be different, albeit only slightly from a previous estimate, but this means that all conjunction analysis has to be recomputed. The quicker this workflow is completed the quicker possible conjunction alerts can be triggered, providing more time for mitigation.¶ The concept project uses Windows Azure as a cloud provider and is architected as a data-driven workflow consuming satellite locations and resulting in conjunction alerts, as shown in Figure 3. Satellite locations are published in a standard format know as a Two-Line Element (TLE) that fully describes a spacecraft and its orbit. Any TLE publisher can be consumed, in this case the Space Track website, but also ground observation station data. The list of TLEs are first separated into individual TLE Objects, validated and inserted into a queue. TLE queue objects are consumed by comparator workers which check to see if the TLE exists; new TLEs are added to an Azure Table and an update notification added to the Update Queue.¶ TLEs in the update notification queue are new and each requires propagation; this is an embarrassingly parallel computation that scales well across the cloud. Any propagator can be used. We currently support NORAD SGP4 propagator and a custom Southampton simulation (C++) code. Each propagated object has to be compared with all other propagations to see if there is a conjunction (predicted close approach). Any conjunction source or code can be used, currently only SGP4 is implemented; plans are to incorporate more complicated filtering and conjunction analysis routines as they become available. Conjunctions result in alerts which are visible in the Azure Satellite tracker client. The client uses Virtual Earth to display the orbits. Ongoing work includes expanding the Virtual Earth client as well as adding support for custom clients by exposing the data through a REST interface. This pluggable architecture ensures that additional propagators and conjunction codes can be incorporated, and as part of ongoing work we intend to expand the available analysis codes.¶ The framework demonstrated here is being extended as a generic space situational service bus to include NEO impact predictions. This will exploit the pluggable simulation code architecture and the cloud’s burst computing capability in order to allow refinement of predictions for disaster management simulations and potential emergency scenarios anywhere on the globe.¶ Summary¶ We have shown how a new architecture can be applied to space situational awareness to provide a scalable robust data-driven architecture which can enhance the ability of existing disparate analysis codes by integrating them together in a common framework. By automating the ability to alert satellite owners to potential conjunction scenarios we reduce the potential of conjunction oversight and decrease the response time, thus making space safer. This framework is being extended to NEO trajectory and impact analysis to help improve planetary defencs capability for all. Asteroid strikes are likely and cause extinctionCasey, 6/30/15 – environmental, scientific, and technological reporter for CBS News (Michael, “On Asteroid Day, raising awareness that Earth could get hit again”, CBS News, http://www.cbsnews.com/news/asteroid-day-raising-awareness-earth-could-be-hit-by-asteroids/, //11) "Asteroids are the only natural disaster we know how to prevent and protecting our planet, families and communities is the goal of Asteroid Day," said Grigorij Richters, producer of the asteroid-themed movie "51 Degrees North" and co-founder of Asteroid Day. "Asteroids teach us about the origins of life, but they also can impact the future of our species and life on Earth." Most of what people know about asteroids comes from movies like "Deep Impact" or "Armageddon," or because they've heard that an asteroid triggered global disasters that led to the extinction of the dinosaurs 65 million years ago.
NASA seems to concur that the threat has to be taken seriously. Earlier this month, NASA signed a deal with the National Nuclear Security Administration to look into the nuclear option should they discover that an asteroid was on a collision course with Earth. The space agency currently only tracks about 10 percent of the 1 million asteroids in our solar system with the potential to strike Earth, according to Asteroid Day.org. The European Space Agency, meanwhile, convened a meeting Tuesday with emergency response officers from Switzerland, Germany, Luxembourg, Romania, Sweden and the United Kingdom to discuss how to respond to the asteroid threat. "Planets can't hit us, while comet debris doesn't survive to strike our surface. But asteroids -- chunks of stone or metal -- arrive by the thousands every day, and are responsible for nearly all of the 50,000 catalogued meteorites," Slooh astronomer Bob Berman said. "The largest asteroids are fascinating to observe, while the hazardous ones need to be watched while defenses are being conceived." In December, astrophysicist Dr. Brian May (who was also a founding member and lead guitarist of the rock band Queen) joined Lord Martin Rees, UK Astronomer Royal; Bill Nye, the Science Guy; and astronauts Rusty Schweickart, Ed Lu and Tom Jones to launch Asteroid Day. In their mission statement, they said their goal was nothing short of ensuring the survival of future generations. As part of that, they also announced the 100X Declaration, which calls for a 100-fold increase in detection and monitoring of asteroids. "The more we learn about asteroid impacts, the clearer it becomes that the human race has been living on borrowed time," May said. "Asteroid Day and the 100X Declaration are ways for the public to contribute to bring about an awareness that we can get hit anytime. A city could be wiped out any time because we just don't know enough about what's out there." 2ac – detection neededAt least 10% are undetectedRobson, 7/3/15 – reporter for National Post (John, National Post, “Fear the asteroid, humanity’s greatest threat!”, http://news.nationalpost.com/full-comment/john-robson-fear-the-asteroid-humanitys-greatest-threat, //11) How big is the danger? NBC’s story on Asteroid Day noted with curious complacency that “based on a statistical analysis, NASA says it’s found more than 90 percent of the estimated 981 asteroids” a kilometre or more wide capable of annihilating civilization. So that missing nearly 10 per cent leaves, um, almost 100 lurking undetected, right guys? Plus NASA hasn’t found 90 per cent of those over 140 meters wide, let alone the “hundreds of thousands” of smaller ones still capable of smashing a city. I’d grade this “incomplete” at best. If you’re not worried yet, consider that the goal of Asteroid Day is to increase the number of near-Earth objects found from 1,000 to 100,000 a year. A year? Man, they’ll have to queue up to dive onto us. 2ac – tech discussions keyTechnical discussions about asteroids are crucial to educating the publicMorrison et al 2 – Morrison: NASA Astrobiology Institute; Harris: NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory; Sommer: RAND Corporation; Chapman: Southwest Research Institute, Boulder; Carusi: IAS, Roma (David Morrison, Alan W. Harris, Geoff Sommer, Clark R. Chapman, Andrea Carusi, “Dealing with the Impact Hazard”, 6/8/02, http://www.disastersrus.org/emtools/spacewx/NEO_Chapter_1.pdf, //11) While NEO research embodies classic scientific objectives, studies of impact hazards form an applied science that may be judged by different criteria. In determining an NEO hazard mitigation strategy, we must consider the reaction of society. Such considerations are familiar to specialists in other fields of natural hazard, such as meteorology (with respect to storm forecasts) and seismology. NEO hazard specialists have the added difficulty of explaining a science that is arcane (orbital dynamics) and beyond personal experience (no impact disaster within recorded history). As the NEO community has begun to realize, it has a social responsibility to ensure that its message is not just heard but comprehended by society at large. The adoption of the Torino Impact Scale (Binzel, 1997, 2000) was a notable first step toward public communication, although the unique aspects of NEO detection and warning (particularly the evolution of uncertainty) continue to cause communications difficulties (Chapman, 2000). 2ac – at: no deflectionWe have deflection capabilities, but detection is keyWall, 13 – senior writer at space.com (Mike, Space.com, “How Humanity Could Deflect a Giant Killer Asteroid”, 11/22/13, http://www.space.com/23530-killer-asteroid-deflection-saving-humanity.html, //11) Humanity has the skills and know-how to deflect a killer asteroid of virtually any size, as long as the incoming space rock is spotted with enough lead time, experts say. Our species could even nudge off course a 6-mile-wide (10 kilometers) behemoth like the one that dispatched the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. We'd likely have to slam multiple spacecraft into a gigantic asteroid over a period of several decades to do the job, but the high stakes would motivate such a strong and sustained response, researchers say. "If you can hit it with a kinetic impactor, you can hit it with 10 or 100 of them," former NASA astronaut Ed Lu, chairman and CEO of the nonprofit B612 Foundation, which is devoted to protecting Earth against asteroid strikes, said during a news conference last month. "And I would submit to you that if we were finding an asteroid that's going to wipe out all life on Earth, or the majority of life on Earth, that funding is not an issue for launching 100 of them," Lu added. Undiscovered asteroids Lu and four other spaceflyers spoke Oct. 25 at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. A primary purpose of the event was to draw attention to the danger asteroids pose to human civilization and life on Earth, and to discuss ways to mitigate the threat.
The Russian meteor came out of nowhere, evading detection by the various instruments that are scanning the heavens for potentially hazardous objects. And there are many more such space rocks out there, gliding through deep space unknown and unnamed. To date, scientists have discovered about 10,000 near-Earth objects, or NEOs — just 1 percent of the 1 million or so asteroids thought to come uncomfortably close to our planet at some point in their orbits. So the top priority of any asteroid-defense effort should be a stepped-up detection campaign, Lu said. "Our challenge is to find these asteroids first, before they find us," he said. "You cannot deflect an asteroid you haven't yet found." 2ac – at: psychoAsteroids are real threats – psychoanalysis does not disprove our factual claimsYudkowsky, 8 – Research Fellow and Director of the Singularity Institute for Artificial Intelligence, principal contributor to the Oxford-sponsored Overcoming Biases (Eliezer, Machine Intelligence Research Institute, “Cognitive Biases Potentially Affecting Judgment of Global Risks”, https://intelligence.org/files/CognitiveBiases.pdf, //11) Robert Pirsig said: “The world’s biggest fool can say the sun is shining, but that doesn’t make it dark out.” If you believe someone is guilty of a psychological error, then demonstrate your competence by first demolishing their consequential factual errors. If there are no factual errors, then what matters the psychology? The temptation of psychology is that, knowing a little psychology, we can meddle in arguments where we have no technical expertise—instead sagely analyzing the psychology of the disputants. If someone wrote a novel about an asteroid strike destroying modern civilization, then someone might criticize that novel as extreme, dystopian, apocalyptic; symptomatic of the author’s naive inability to deal with a complex technological society. We should recognize this as a literary criticism, not a scientific one; it is about good or bad novels, not good or bad hypotheses. To quantify the annual probability of an asteroid strike in real life, one must study astronomy and the historical record: no amount of literary criticism can put a number on it. Garreau (2005) seems to hold that a scenario of a mind slowly increasing in capability, is more mature and sophisticated than a scenario of extremely rapid intelligence increase. But that’s a technical question, not a matter of taste; no amount of psychologizing can tell you the exact slope of that curve. It’s harder to abuse heuristics and biases than psychoanalysis. Accusing someone of conjunction fallacy leads naturally into listing the specific details that you think are burdensome and drive down the joint probability. Even so, do not lose track of the real-world facts of primary interest; do not let the argument become about psychology. Despite all dangers and temptations, it is better to know about psychological biases than to not know. Otherwise we will walk directly into the whirling helicopter blades of life. But be very careful not to have too much fun accusing others of biases. That is the road that leads to becoming a sophisticated arguer—someone who, faced with any discomforting argument, finds at once a bias in it. The one whom you must watch above all is yourself. Jerry Cleaver said: “What does you in is not failure to apply some high-level, intricate, complicated technique. It’s overlooking the basics. Not keeping your eye on the ball.” Analyses should finally center on testable real-world assertions. Do not take your eye off the ball. Directory: file -> view view -> Western Europe after wwii view -> Author study: paul fleischman view -> Qpa1 7ela study Guide view -> Arctic Oil/Gas Neg view -> November 1970 Approximately 150,000-500,000 deaths Bhola Cyclone Bangladesh view -> Grade Level: 6 Unit of Study: Caribbean glce view -> Citation: Duffield, Katy view -> Table of Contents Lesson # view -> Chinese Wind Energy Disad Download 335 Kb. Share with your friends:
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