Project Fox: Assessing Risks Posed By Asteroids

In order to make decisions on how to invest limited research dollars on asteroid surveillance and mitigation options, an analytic understanding of the risks posed by impacts is necessary. Qualitative and quantitative studies have been performed to assess such risks, and some reasonable point estimates have been proposed. However, since consequential asteroid impacts tend to be rare events, point estimates and expected annual death rates do not adequately convey the heavy tail of the distribution, potentially leading to misguided resource allocations. We propose and develop a framework for new risk measures, including a distribution over the number of fatalities from asteroid impacts and the probability of a globally consequential impact. We implement a simulation of asteroid impacts using probabilistic inputs for impactor characteristics, and a Poisson process for asteroid arrivals over the next 100 years. Simulation results indicate that a significant portion of the risk to humans comes from asteroids in the 300-1000 meter diameter range; this is because asteroid impacts in this range can produce global effects, and are more frequent than those from asteroids greater than 1km in diameter. The relative importance of this size regime in overall asteroid impact risk is robust in simulation results, and we find the magnitude of risks is still sensitive to factors that contribute global effects from an asteroid impact. Initial results are provided on the sensitivity of impact risks to various mitigation measures, including 'civil defense' methods. These results underscore the need for next-generation survey missions, and can help provide the basis for setting future space telescope observation requirements.