Sears: [00:00:00] This is Radio Stockdale. Welcome to Radio Stockdale. I'm your host, Michael Sears at the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership. I'm in conversation with Commander Leviticus Lewis. United States Navy retired. Commander Lewis served for 20 years as a surface warfare officer in a variety of assignments including command. He spent the next 20 years working in the federal government. His latest assignment is FEMA Detailee assigned to the NASA Planetary Defense Coordination Office as a Planetary Defense Program Officer. Leviticus, welcome to Radio Stockdale.

Lewis: [00:00:50] Thank you, Michael. Thank you for inviting me.

Sears: [00:00:53] This is going to be a very interesting conversation, especially with what you did last month. We'll get to that in the second. Let me ask you this. What is meant by planetary defense?

Lewis: [00:01:05] Ok. Good question. Planetary defense is a term used to encompass all the capabilities that we need to detect and warn a possible asteroid or a comet impact with the Earth, and then either prevent them or mitigate their possible effects.

Sears: [00:01:19] Now that's a good definition. But tell me why NASA even has a planetary defense coordination office.

Lewis: [00:01:26] So, the office was actually officially established in 2016, but there's been legislation from Congress, and our report by the NASA's inspector general or a part of their portfolio before was tracking all near-Earth objects and figuring out where they are and their orbits and stuff. And basically, based on what's happening with this could be a real big emergency who Congress wanted to make sure that the protocols were established for warning and emergency response for this. And NASA, of course, took the lead from this. And after some internal reviews, it was decided to formally establish a Planetary Defense Coordination Office.

Sears: [00:02:09] So what do you mean by a near-Earth object?

Lewis: [00:02:13] So Near-Earth are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun like the planets, but their orbits can bring them into Earth's neighborhood, and astronomically that's within 30 million miles of Earth's orbit. NEOs are of great interest to the science community because it's basically applied planetary science, and we want to get, when these objects get within five million miles of the Earth orbit, asteroids have a particular size 30 to 50 meters can cause real damage on Earth.

Sears: [00:02:44] So last month, Leviticus, you were in California at Vandenberg Space Force Base. Tell me what happened.

Lewis: [00:02:52] So, Vandenberg was great on November 23rd. We launched the DART, the Double Asteroid Redirection Test, onboard a Falcon nine, and that's our first planetary defense mission where we're going to be examining one of the techniques that could be used to mitigate potential hazard for a near-Earth object. And we're going to impact a spacecraft into a binary asteroid system.

Sears: [00:03:22] So we're taking this out of science fiction into reality and actually spending money, time and intellect on it. Tell me, tell me what we're doing here, what the what the asteroids involved.

Lewis: [00:03:34] So basically, we're going to launch a spacecraft. It's about the size of a very small car, and we're going to launch it toward an asteroid called Didymos, which is a binary system. It has a small moon called Dimorphos orbiting it. This asteroid is considered a near-Earth object, but it's in a very well-defined object and is no threat to the Earth whatsoever. But the reason it's a good opportunity is that this small moon, Didymos, is orbiting this object, which is going to pass closer to Earth so that we could do ground observations of it as it gets as it passes by the Earth. So, the idea is to impact the Dart spacecraft at approximately fifteen thousand miles per hour and affect the orbit of Dimorphos, so we only want to change it by that impacts would cause a change in velocity, maybe a less than 10 seconds, but that will be enough to change the orbit. So what we want to do is measure that change and then that will prove out one of the mitigation methods, the kinetic impactor method, as a viable way of mitigating the threat from a near-Earth object.

Sears: [00:04:52] So we've seen the Hollywood blockbusters Armageddon and Deep Impact, which imagined flights carrying nuclear bombs to destroy those targets. How is DART different?

Lewis: [00:05:02] The DART is a very, very small spacecraft. It has no explosives on it. If you guys remember your physics, it's kinetic energy, right? Something going very fast. It's going to impact a lot of force. And the object is not to destroy the moon (Didymos), because if you think of it, that would defeat the purpose of what we're trying to do. Because instead of having now one target, if you destroy, you might have many targets. So that's not the objective and it's small on purpose. So, the idea is to see if this kinetic impactor idea, which is a theory, works at practicality.

Sears: [00:05:42] Let me ask the elephant in the room question, is there any possibility that this experiment will direct either of those asteroids into Earth orbit and into the Earth?

Lewis: [00:05:55] No, that question has been asked when this was first proposed. It's the reason it's picked. It's because of the distance it is away and because it is a binary system and we're not effecting the main object. the main object of course, is Didymos. We're only impacting the small moon that's orbiting it, and it's not enough force to make it crash into impact, the main object or anything like that. That is something that has been very, very carefully considered for this particular asteroid was chosen.

Sears: [00:06:30] When will we know whether or not this experiment actually worked?

Lewis: [00:06:35] Oh, DARTs on its way, we're doing the commissioning process for it right now. The spacecraft is healthy and on its way, and about nine to 10 months, it should be arriving. And also, the European, our European colleagues are also, the European Space Agency's flying mission called Hera, which will be lifting off in about two years. That will actually fly to the same asteroid and actually examine what the DART impact crater looks like and actually measure the dimensions of the orbit and any other kind of scientific data that we can gain other than the ground observations that we're going to do and be doing as Didymos flies pass us. So, this is pretty exciting, but I would say in and a couple of years, there's probably going to be more reports written out on what happened, we'd have some definitive information on whether the kinetic impactor method works, and then we'll have something in our toolbox to respond to if we have the time to work on mitigating the possible threat to the Earth from asteroids.

Sears: [00:07:43] So let's get into the ethics of this work, which is really the sum total of all of these podcasts. And I'll just call them nuclear bombs in space. For instance, do we allow countries to stockpile nuclear weapons in space for this or any of the reasons we're aware of?

Lewis: [00:07:59] Yeah, Michael, I don't know. I would choose not to describe this report work in a ethical context. The method that we've been tasked to investigate is to protect all of the Earth from the hazard of an asteroid, a comet impact. There are other experts who are more qualified to talk on the topic of weapons in space. And again, like I said before, we really don't want to blow it up. That would create a larger debris field, and that's not NASA's focus or the focus of this mission.

Sears: [00:08:27] So we're talking about some pretty interesting things here where one state actor, maybe a group of state actors, actually make the determination to deflect an object in space. Is there an international agency that is actually looking at the ethics of moving that let's say, you know, that object is deflected someplace else that might be on the planet Earth also. That could be problems. Who's in charge of that?

Lewis: [00:08:56] So I'm not going to say Michael is as far as that ethical decision, but I will say that this is an international effort. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office also coordinates what space agencies of other nations. As a member of a multinational group, there are two of them, the International Asteroid Warning Network and the Space Mission Planning Advisory Group. These are under the endorsement of the United Nations Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Outer Space. So, there's not just one person or one nation that's going to be in charge of everything regarding planetary defense.

Sears: [00:09:34] I know that you have been looking to the skies for quite some time. You were a former navy officer having commanded a ship in the U.S. Navy. How did your experience in a navy uniform tie into the work you're doing with NASA today, especially with planetary defense?

Lewis: [00:09:52] Well, that's an interesting question. I've got to think about that, but you know, I thank you for the opportunity to reflect on this after all of this time. So, 20 years in the Navy, as a Surface officer, mostly operations, but I think I tend to think of myself somewhat as an action junkie. I like being in the know and being part of the solution. So overall, I think the Navy prepared me to be ready for anything and not be afraid of doing new things. When I was at detailer, everybody knows what those are. I just ask, what did you have different? An assignment that was different or out of the box. So I ended up serving in the fleet training unit, went to the war college, did a tour as one of the first PCS Navy officers assigned to U.N. headquarters and the peacekeeping department. After retirement, you know, I was a defense contractor, was in the Pentagon on 911, ended up being in TSA and FEMA, even had a tour with the FBI and National Joint Terrorism Task Force. So, I've always been interested in space and science stuff. So, in my career at FEMA, I had an opportunity to work on planetary defense issues. Officially, it's part of my duties since 2010, so not a stranger to it. But like you said, my navy experience taught me not to be afraid of challenges and be prepared for anything. Learn all you can, but have fun too.

Sears: [00:11:21] Leviticus Lewis, former naval officer and FEMA representative to NASA. Thank you for joining us on Radio Stockdale.

Lewis: [00:11:31] Thanks, Michael. It's been a great pleasure.

Sears: [00:11:40] You've been listening to Radio Stockdale, a series of podcasts produced by the Stockdale Center for Ethical Leadership at the United States Naval Academy. You can hear more podcasts at Stockdalecenter.com/Podcasts.