The year 2013 has been a very eventful time for asteroids and comets. We have recently experienced a near-Earth flyby of Asteroid 2012DA14. Unbelievably, on the very same day, an undiscovered asteroid 65 feet in diameter entered the Earth’s atmosphere over central Russia at a speed in excess of Mach 50 and exploded with a force equal to 40 Hiroshima nuclear bombs. Then, just a few weeks later, Comet Pan-STARRS made a spectacular pass around the Sun.

There are literally millions of asteroids and trillions of comets that inhabit our Solar System. You only need to look at the mile wide meteor crater in Arizona to understand the utter devastation even a relatively small asteroid impact can cause. And yet, there have been times in Earth’s history when asteroids the size of Mount Everest have collided with us causing Mass Extinction Events.

Are these things on a collision course with Earth? What are we doing to find them before they find us? Join the Warsaw Community Public Library for a fascinating look at asteroids, comets and the Near Earth Objects that inhabit our Solar System.

About the Speaker
Greg McCauley is the executive director of the Link Observatory and Space Science Center and is a member of the Indiana Astronomical Society. In the early 1970’s, McCauley worked as a NASA contractor at the Manned Spacecraft Center (now Johnson Space Center) in Houston, Texas, in the Mission Planning and Ana ivision for the lunar missions of Apollo 15 and 16, and was a member of the Lunar Launch Team for Apollo 17.

In addition to his duties as executive director of the Link Observatory, McCauley is a Solar System Ambassador for NASA/JPL. The Solar System Ambassadors Program is sponsored by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., an operating division of the California Institute of Technology (Caltech) and a lead research and development center for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration.

This is a free program offered at Warsaw Community Public Library 10:30 a.m. Saturday, July 20. Call 574-267-6011 to register or online: warsawlibrary.org.