Asteroid Day takes place annually on June 30. It is a global awareness campaign where people from around the world come together to learn about asteroids, the impact hazard they may pose, and what we can do to protect our planet, families, communities, and future generations from future asteroid impacts. Asteroid Day is held each year on the anniversary of the largest impact in recent history, the 1908 Tunguska event in Siberia. A relatively small asteroid, about 40 meters across or the size of a modest office building, devastated an unpopulated area about the size of a major metropolitan city. Regionally organised large and small events are held on Asteroid Day, and range from lectures and other educational programmes to live concerts and broader community events, to raise public awareness of the need for increased detection and tracking of asteroids.
The 100x Asteroid Declaration*, calling for this action, has been signed by hundreds of astronauts, scientists, artists and leaders in business and technology as well as thousands of private citizens. Employing existing and new technology to detect and track asteroids and demonstrating deflection capabilities to prevent future asteroid impacts could be humanity’s greatest achievement. Asteroid Day could one day help save ALL the species on this planet by highlighting the work that is currently being done locally and globally in this field. Asteroid Day highlights men and women who dedicate their lives to the science and technology that will enable planetary defense. You can help by organising a local event and by signing the 100X Declaration. We’re continuing to learn about the evolution of the solar system and the role of asteroids in space and Earth’s history. Small impacts occur regularly and NASA shows that world-wide efforts to date have found about 95% of the asteroids that could end life on Earth as we know it, were one to impact. Based on what’s known about the NEO population and Earth’s impact history, scientists predict that Earth will experience another large-scale impact someday in the future – they just don’t know exactly when. Our goal is to raise public awareness about asteroid science and plans for planetary defense.