Selected Images from the 1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference (27-30 April 2009, Granada, Spain)

Note: The following are the few images I took at the 1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference in Granada, Spain. I took a limited quantity of images. I may post other images as taken by another conference participant. All images are copyright 2009, A.C. Charania unless otherwise noted (permission to redistribute or republish is required).


Granada, Spain (site of the 1st IAA Planetary Defense Conference)


Spanish Astronaut Pedro Duque talks about the threat from PHOs (Day 1 - Monday, 27 April 2009).


Welcome reception at Hotel San Anton in Granada, Spain. Seen here: center left - Clark Chapman and center right - Dave Morrison (Day 1 - Monday, 27 April 2009).


Dr. Yoshikawa from JAXA/ISAS talks about his paper called: "Navigation and Guidance of Hayabusa around the Tiny Asteroid Itokawa." He is holding two models of Itokawa based upon data returned from the Hayabusa spacecraft, one is based upon more recent data and is thus a more realistic model (Day 2 - Tuesday, 28 April 2009).


Astronaut Rusty Schweikert gives a talk in place of Ed Lu (who could not be at the conference) called "Every Threatening Asteroid an Apophis." He is pointing to a graph that shows the width of various "keyholes" in the year 2029, when the asteroid Apophis passes by the Earth. If Apophis goes through any of the keyholes shown then it will come back during its approach on the year listed and impact the Earth. As can be seen the keyhole for the 2036 impact case is much larger than any other ones in the 2029 pass. The implication is that there are many more keyhole than just the next one and any deflection will have to a post-deflection observation (Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 April 2009).


Dr. Tancredi at the beginning of his talk ("The Carancas Event: a Recent Hypervelocity Impact Crater in the Altiplano") estimates the geographic origin of attendees to the conference (Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 April 2009).


Dr. Tancredi shows the location of the impact point for the Carancas meteorite, in a region bordering three countries (Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 April 2009).


Dr. Tancredi showing the evidence identified during on-scene investigation of the Carancas meteorite impact event. This evidence includes the damage on the roof of a house/shed, a man blown off a bicycle, an eyewitness, and a cow whose horn was bent (from falling down due to the shock from the impact event apparently) (Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 April 2009)


Dr. Gisler from the University of Oslo (Norway) talks about his paper ("Near-Field Effects of Asteroid Impacts in Deep Water") (Day 3 - Wednesday, 29 April 2009)