The Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) is a
planetary defense organization established in January 2016 within
NASA's Planetary Science Division of the Science Mission Directorate.[3]
Its mission is to look for and catalogue
near-Earth objects such as
comets,
asteroids, and
potentially hazardous objects that could impact Earth, as well as help the U.S. government prepare for a potential
impact event (and coordinate efforts to mitigate and deflect potential threats if one is detected).[4]
In January 2016, NASA officially announced the establishment of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), appointing Lindley Johnson to lead it as Planetary Defense Officer.[4][2][9] The PDCO was given the job of cataloging and tracking potentially hazardous
near-Earth objects (NEO), such as
asteroids and
comets, larger than 30–50 meters in diameter (compare to the 20-meter
Chelyabinsk meteor that exploded over Russia in 2013) and coordinating an effective threat response and mitigation effort.[10][11]
Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a joint project between NASA and the
Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, is the first planetary defense mission of NASA.[14] In November 2021, the DART spacecraft was launched with the goal of seeing if it could "alter an
asteroid's path, a technique that may be used to defend the planet in the future".[5] The attempt was successful.
In popular culture
The 2021 movie Don't Look Up is about a "planet killer"
comet, in which the Planetary Defense Officer is played by
Rob Morgan.[15] The PDCO chief Lindley Johnson vetted an early draft of the
screenplay over two years before the film's 2021 release.[16]
^Tyler Austin Harper (December 22, 2021).
"Silicon Valley Won't Save Us". Slate.
Archived from the original on December 25, 2021. Retrieved December 25, 2021.