Planetary Defence (PD) - the most complete effort to address a cosmic threat to date: a short review by MaxSJC

Plane­tary defence—the effort to de­tect, track and in­ter­cept as­ter­oids that might im­pact the Earth—is the most com­plete (and only?) effort to tackle a cos­mic threat (as­ter­oids/​comets, though way more as­ter­oids than comets) by far. Un­like most cos­mic threats which re­main a topic of spec­u­la­tion, plane­tary defence has:Policy sup­port: In con­trast to the fund­ing cuts in the FY2026 Pres­i­dent’s Bud­get Re­quest for NASA, PD fund­ing ac­tu­ally in­creases.A num­ber of PD-ded­i­c...