Keeping Watch Over the Earth
It’s not every day you meet a Bruin whose job it is to protect the planet. But that’s what happened when I met Lorraine Fesq, M.S. ʼ90, Ph.D. ʼ93, whose job at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is to monitor and mitigate large space objects hurtling towards or near Earth. It was then that I learned about Apophis, an asteroid the size of the U.S. Capitol, predicted to come less than 20,000 miles from the Earth’s surface in 2029, closer than many satellites in orbit. A direct impact would be catastrophic, but as Fesq repeatedly reassured me, “IT’S NOT GOING TO HIT US!”
My curiosity piqued, I had to learn more about what she knew about Apophis, as well as her Bruin journey.
“It all started when Neil Armstrong landed on the moon. That was very impactful for me. I said I want to be a part of this world, I want to be an astronaut. But I didn’t know how to make that happen because all the astronauts at that time were men and military pilots. I couldn’t see myself in that role,” recounted Fesq.
This strong desire never left her. In fact, it served as her North Star, guiding many of her decisions throughout life. She chose to study math over music at Rutgers University, with an emphasis on computer science. After graduating, she got a job at NASA Goddard Spacecraft Center as a command operator programming a robotic spacecraft monitoring the sun. She said that scientists from all over the world would come to Goddard wanting to conduct different observations of the sun so they asked Fesq to program the spacecraft to achieve their goals.
After a while, Fesq realized she needed to further her understanding of physics, so she took night classes at a nearby university. This began a pattern of pursuing the knowledge she lacked in order to excel in her craft. She said, “For the next 10 years, wherever I worked, I was always taking classes at the local university to explore things I didn’t know enough about and things that might interest me enough to go to graduate school.” Beyond physics, she took courses in thermodynamics and astronomy, and then after enrolling at UCLA Extension, she found her niche in Artificial Intelligence.
Fesq said, “I really want to make our spacecraft smarter. They’re so dumb. Command after command, they do exactly what we tell them to do. Very pedantic. I wanted to make them smarter so if something goes wrong on board, they can fix it.” It was the late ’80s when she discovered her passion for AI technology, which led her to pursue a Ph.D. at UCLA in computer science, earning a master’s degree along the way. She applied this knowledge directly to the engineering of a spacecraft so that problems that occur in space don’t have to rely on ground control to find solutions; the knowledge was built in to the machine to diagnose and resolve it.
Fesq explained that her career had taken a reverse trajectory, compared to most people in aerospace. “I started my career operating a spacecraft. I then moved to Ball Aerospace in testing spacecraft. At TRW, I was designing spacecraft. Now, [at JPL] I’m in formulation, which is coming up with the ideas for missions to build and launch,” she said. The value she gained from this circuitous route was understanding how to better design a spacecraft to make it easier to test and operate.
In 2001, Fesq was hired by JPL, where she now has two key roles: chief technologist of the Mission Systems and Operations Division and program area manager for Small Bodies and Planetary Defense. She explained that as chief technologist, the focus is on operations of the spacecraft and making sure the ground systems are ready for the mission at hand. In her role, she researches what technology is needed for upcoming missions and how to take new technology and apply it to expedite processes and maximize efficiency.
To demonstrate such technology, Fesq worked on the project ASTERIA, a small cube-shaped satellite a little bigger than a briefcase which was designed to detect an exoplanet transiting a star. Though not part of the original mission, she was later able to upload new software algorithms into it in order to get it to operate more autonomously. This was a significant step for NASA because they are often risk averse in using new technology, operating with the mindset of “if it hasn’t flown before, it’s not gonna fly.” This was due to the high cost to taxpayers and the bad publicity that follows should the technology fail. As a result, some of the hardware in their spacecraft were still from the ’80s. This new advanced AI navigation technology she added to ASTERIA allowed them to experiment and test it, so once deemed successful, it can be used for future missions.
In Fesq’s role under planetary defense, the primary focus is very different. “Every night, astronomers from around the world point their telescopes up in the sky and take images, sometimes spotting things they haven’t seen before. Whether it’s seen from one of the large observatories or a backyard telescope, they will submit their findings to the Minor Planet Center (MPC), which enters it into a huge database,” she said. The scientists will analyze these new sightings and calculate their orbits to determine the possibilities of colliding with Earth. It is through this process of using observatories, satellites and amateur astronomers that the MPC can then determine whether one of the celestial bodies observed is a Near Earth Object (NEO). NEOs can be asteroids or comets whose orbit brings it within 45 million kilometers of the Earth’s orbit. Congress wants NASA to identify and track any NEOs 140 meters or larger (1.5 football fields) because of their potential to cause widespread damage on the Earth.
Once NEOs are identified, the information is sent to JPL’s Center for NEO Studies for further examination. The CNEOS website answers key questions: Is it a potentially hazardous object and what is the probability that it could impact the Earth? This allows scientists to prepare in advance the technology needed to mitigate a scenario in which a very large asteroid might make a direct impact on the Earth.
Diverting an asteroid heading for Earth is a very complex and risky process. It’s not as simple as sending up a bunch of rockets to knock it off course. First, it has to be studied to understand its makeup, its orbital speed and its spin trajectory. The research usually takes years because the technology has to be developed and then launched to bring the spacecraft close enough to gather data from the object. Then, scientists have to design more technology needed to mitigate the problem. The advantage of discovering NEOs years in advance of their approach to Earth is it gives scientists, engineers and government agencies time to decide and develop possible solutions, because redirecting an asteroid when it's further away requires less force than impacting it when it's at a much closer proximity.
Fesq said, “The only mitigation technique that’s been successfully tested to date was the DART (Double Asteroid Redirect Test) Mission. In this experiment, NASA smacked a spacecraft head on into a moon that was orbiting an asteroid. We were able to change its orbital speed by 33 minutes.”
Fesq discussed other possible mitigation techniques currently in the experimental stage. Ion beam deflection would position a spacecraft near the asteroid and use an ion beam to very gradually nudge the object away from the Earth. Another technique involves sending a nuclear device to be exploded near the asteroid so the energy of the blast redirects its path. And the last technique she mentioned was a gravity tractor, which sends a spacecraft near the asteroid; one large enough so that its gravitational pull could deflect the asteroid from its course.
Thankfully, it isn’t necessary to use any of these techniques on the asteroid Apophis because as she has stated, “IT’S NOT GOING TO HIT US!” Yet, the intrigue of something the width of 11 football fields and the height of the Empire State Building coming this close to Earth may evoke some fears like the ones fictionalized by the movies “Don’t Look Up,” “Armageddon” and “Seeking a Friend for the End of the World.” When this NEO was discovered in 2004, it was labeled as a once-in-a-millennium event, to have something that big come this close. But according to JPL’s calculations, Apophis has no chance of impacting the Earth for the next 100 years.
Still, communicating this to the public is key. In today’s fractured media ecosystem, the narrative surrounding Apophis can easily be over sensationalized, generating multiple conspiracy theories, or worse, twisted by doomsday cults. Fesq lamented, “There’s a couple of aspects to it that make it even worse. One is it’s called Apophis, which is the god of chaos, and the other is it will make its closest approach to the Earth on April 13, 2029, which happens to be Friday the 13th. People are going to be grasping at that thinking this is the end of the world as we know it. But the most important thing to remember is IT’S NOT GOING TO HIT US!”
She remarked, “It’s going to be pretty cool if you’re in the right place when it makes its flyby because it will be visible to the naked eye.”
Working with their European counterparts, Fesq said they also debate with the question: who would be best to make such announcements? Is it NASA? The U.N.? They, like many agencies, have experienced trust issues with the public. To counter misinformation, the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) was established in 2013 to develop communication plans and protocols to assist governments in the analysis of asteroid impact consequences and planning of mitigation responses.
In addition to the issue of communication, Fesq said funding remains the most challenging part of her work. “NASA is strapped for money right now. They’re canceling programs even at the late stage of development.” On the bright side, NASA announced they’ll be able to take one of their spacecraft that’s already flying and re-vector it to go to Apophis. Unfortunately, it won’t reach Apophis until after it’s made its close approach to Earth, preventing us from fully knowing how the Earth’s gravity will affect the surface of Apophis during the close encounter.
Given NASA’s funding challenges, Fesq and her colleagues at JPL have taken a different approach. They are working with Caltech faculty who are excited about their mission, hoping to get it privately funded by donors. She said, “We’re working with Europeans on this really unique concept where we send a mother ship to Apophis before its close approach and take good images of the whole surface. Then two cube-shaped satellites will deploy and do what’s called bistatic radar, in which one will transmit radar signals that will go through the asteroid and be received by the other. We want to see the inside of it so we know what it’s made of.” This mission to essentially do a CAT scan of an asteroid would be a first, and an emerging technology in mitigating future NEOs.
Rest assured, Fesq said NASA conducts biannual exercises with FEMA, Space Force, the UN and their European Space partners on hypothetical scenarios, such as the discovery of a large asteroid that has a good chance of making an impact on Earth. She stressed the importance of proactivity in such cases so they can allot enough time to develop the right technology to characterize it, and then mitigate it, which takes years. She explained, “If you want to do something like try and hit it, then you have to start now to design the spacecraft, to go there and get the information, so we know how hard to hit it and how big of a spacecraft to send to it. You have to back up from the date of impact.” And in the worse-case scenario where there is no time to mitigate the asteroid, she said the only option would be to work with FEMA to evacuate the impacted region.
After working for over 40 years in aerospace, Fesq still loves what she does. Her childhood dream of becoming an astronaut never came to fruition, although she came close on a few occasions. After throwing her hat into the ring of the Human Space Flight program for a number of years, she was invited three times to go through the rigorous weeklong interview process, but she never advanced from there. Despite these setbacks, her passion for space never waned. And thanks to her dream that’s been a guiding force throughout her life, we can sleep peacefully at night knowing Lorraine Fesq and a team of scientists are keeping watch over the Earth.
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