From dust to asteroids, astronaut Ed Lu '84 covers the universe in lecture

By David Brand

NASA astronaut Ed Lu '84 returned to his alma mater last week to proselytize on behalf of nudging asteroids. The United States, Lu believes, should use current technology to fund a program to attempt to shift an asteroid by a fraction of an inch from its orbital path.

NASA astronaut Ed Lu '84 shows images from his most recent space flight during his Olin lecture in Bartels Hall, June 11. Robert Barker/University Photography

Lu recalled witnessing, from his perch in space, flashes caused by grains of dust smashing into the atmosphere 1,000 miles away, making him acutely aware of the power of rocky bodies in the Earth's path. So, he said, it's critical to get practice in the business of asteroid-shifting well before such a maneuver becomes essential for the Earth's survival. "Let's try it. I think there is a decent chance we might do this 10 years from now," said Lu, presenting the 2004 Spencer T. and Ann W. Olin lecture at Newman Arena, Bartels Hall, on June 11.

Having logged 206 days in space since his first mission in 1997, including a six-month stay aboard the International Space Station (ISS) last year, Lu has had lots of time to think about the effects of fast-traveling space objects surviving the white-hot journey through the Earth's atmosphere and crashing into oceans or continents. Which is why he titled his talk to an auditorium crowded with enthusiastic alumni "Rocketships, Asteroids, Dinosaurs and Immortality."

The dinosaurs were, like 90 percent of the world's species, destroyed when an asteroid, the size of the Cornell campus, plunged to Earth in what is now southern Mexico 65 million years ago. The vast cloud of dust and rock that was sent into the atmosphere caused ground temperatures to soar into the hundreds of degrees, causing planetwide flash fires.

Although the chances of such a catastrophe recurring are 1-in-100,000 in our lifetime, said Lu, the fact remains that "we are going to get smacked again by another asteroid." Which is where the rocketships come in. With enough notice of an approaching asteroid, it should be possible to send a heavy enough space vehicle to move the asteroid slightly away from its Earth-bound path. With a decade's notice of its approach, an asteroid moving at about 70,000 miles an hour could be deflected away from the Earth by changing its speed by just .003 miles per hour, or 1 centimeter a second, he said.

However, chemical rocket propulsion is close to its limits and would be unable to send a spaceship large enough to nudge a football stadium-size asteroid. Instead, Lu pointed to NASA's year-old Project Prometheus, which aims to launch a nuclear reactor-powered rocket in a decade. Lu, together with other astronauts, scientists and engineers, is urging NASA to use this technology to actually try to move an asteroid before the critical need arises. "There is no crisis right now, but the first time you test out a technology should not be the test case," he said. "Until you actually try moving an asteroid, you don't know it's going to work."

Immortality -- the protection of civilization's treasures, its art and literature -- requires this attempt using the funded Prometheus program, said Lu. "Let's try landing on a small asteroid and try to move it and see if it works," he declared.

Lu might have seen flashes of distant dust from space, but, ironically, he had a difficult time seeing the Cornell campus, from which he graduated with a bachelor of science degree in electrical engineering.

Introducing Lu, President Jeffrey Lehman recalled his inauguration celebration at Barton Hall last October when Lu telephoned his congratulations from the ISS. "Ed delivered the best line of the entire inauguration day," said Lehman. "I asked him if he had had the opportunity to take any pictures of Cornell from the space station. He said, 'Well, Jeff, it's been about six months, and every time I go by and try to get a picture, there are clouds over Cornell.'"