Marking the Tunguska event, the world is celebrating the International Asteroid day. This year’s celebration will be the 6th anniversary for the event. On this day in the year 1908, our earth suffered one of the most destructive asteroid impact over the Podkamennaya Tunguska River in Siberia, Russia, killing local plants and animals.
The motive to celebrate the event is to spread the awareness among the general public about the asteroids and its consequences if it strikes the earth’s surface. In December 2016, a resolution A/RES/71/90 was passed by the United Nations General Assembly to designate the 30th June as the International Asteroid Day.
Marc Scheper, Head of Space Transportation, Robotic missions and Exploration in an official press release said, “Asteroid Day rightly demands that asteroids must be discovered since they pose a risk to our planet from time to time. The combination of NASA’s deflection mission DART and ESA’s mission HERA allows us to find out how asteroid deflection works and, at the same time, learn more about these celestial bodies. I am proud that OHB is the designated industrial prime for the HERA mission”.
This year amid the spread of COVID-19 all the celebrations regarding the International Asteroid Day will be conducted virtually. During this year’s event the focus areas of discussions will be the rate of new discoveries related to the asteroids, the need to accelerate them, the samples collected from asteroid Ryugu and Bennu, US- Europe preparations regarding asteroid Didymos and several other key topics.