Tackling the risks from outer space

Space is a risky place. Our planet faces a number of potential threats from asteroids and comets to the impact of space weather on vital technologies. A new book, Frontiers of Space Risk: Natural Cosmic Hazards & Societal Challenges , edited by Dr Richard Wilman, Durham University, and Professor Christopher Newman, Northumbria University, explores these dangers and the appropriate engineering, financial, legal, and policy solutions needed to guard against them. Here Dr Wilman, in Durham's Department of Physics, explains what the risks are from space and what is being done to limit them. Q: What are the risks to Earth from outer space? The main focus is on natural cosmic hazards originating within the Solar System, such as the asteroid and cometary impact hazard. The Solar System contains a large population of rocky and icy debris, ranging from dust-grain sized particles (meteors or shooting stars) to bodies many kilometres in size capable of triggering a mass extinction if they hit the Earth, the best example being the impact that wiped out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. Global catastrophes are extremely rare, but impacts from more modest-sized objects are not.