interview conducted August 31, 2024
Courtney Goodrum
*edited for clarity
On Saturday of Dragon Con I got the privilege to sit down along with the Cigar Nerds podcast on the ESO Network with Kelly Fast. Kelly is the acting Planetary Defense Officer in the Planetary Defense Coordination Office at NASA Headquarters. The Planetary Defense Coordination Office manages planetary defense related activities. Along with international organizations, the office studies and plans a response to asteroid impact hazards. Kelly Fast also manages the Near-Earth Object Observations Project tasked with “finding them before they find us” and more.
Can you explain what working in planetary defense is, and why it doesn’t involve aliens?
“Well, aliens are, that’s the squishy stuff. We deal with the hard stuff. But yeah, that’s a good point. We’re dealing with the natural objects and not the living objects. Planetary defense is looking for asteroids before they find us, essentially. Asteroids and comets that, whose orbits bring them into Earth’s neighborhood and trying to get them catalogued and figure out where they’re going to be in the future. Try to determine if there is a future impact threat that Earth might face. And then also handling other things that would be related to that, like working with other government agencies, with our international collaborators. Looking at possibilities for mitigation, like NASA’s double asteroid redirection test, DART mission doing a test of asteroid deflection. Looking at how to model impact effects in order to be able to pass that along to relevant agencies like FEMA or to international collaborators at the State Department. So, kind of that whole range there. But fortunately an asteroid impact is something that’s very unlikely in our lifetimes. And so that that’s what planetary defense is about. We assume there has already been one like, you know, billions of years ago. That’s what we think got rid of the dinosaurs. So it’s like, it’s not out of the realm of possibility.”
What was your inspiration growing up that got you into the STEM field?
“Okay, that’s interesting. So we were talking, it’s wonderful being here at Dragon Con, because some of that is represented here. Star Trek, of course, for me, and I wasn’t, I’m not quite old enough to have seen it when it was first aired, but very soon after. And that was a very big influence on me that and then also another show, Space 1999, that we were talking about and a lot more obscure. But even here at Dragon Con, I saw somebody in costume and I, on the escalator, and I haven’t, I haven’t been able to meet them yet. But the, the visuals and the music and the spaceships and everything in these series, were just, I guess, just so inspirational for me. Somehow I got it in my head that I want to be an astronomer. And I didn’t know what that meant. For those shows to have inspired me, maybe I should have been an aerospace engineer or something, but I wanted to be an astronomer. And, and that’s what I loved doing as a kid. I would take my telescope out. I grew up in Hollywood, California, so we had light pollution. But you could see the planets. And I ended up in my career path doing planetary astronomy. And then now working in planetary defense, which relies heavily on astronomy to be able to find out what we need need to know. So, it does go back to some of those shows that inspire so many of us, whether or not we go into the STEM fields, Star Trek, and then also for me, Space in 1999.”
In Hollywood big blockbuster productions of a disaster movie standpoint, do you have a favorite that maybe gets things right and one that is completely over the top where the science doesn’t add up?
“Oh, yeah. And I guess everybody points to Armageddon, where it’s like, yeah, we sent miners out there to go blow it up. And, and that’s often what happens. You gotta blow up the asteroid. But as we saw with the DART mission, what we really want to do, if we can, is just like deflect the asteroid. And I, and I guess we haven’t seen that so much in the movies. But like in terms of favorites, an old one, I liked Meteor from, from the 70s. And I, I did enjoy that. The, the one thing about the movies, though, it, it always seems like it’s, you know, just one person or a few people trying to convince everybody what’s happening. And really the data’s very public and there’s a lot of people working on it, so different in that sense. I guess one thing that does come to mind, although it wasn’t a very family friendly movie, but toward the, later on, don’t look up. Cuz in the beginning, one of our colleagues, Dr. Amy Meinzer, served as a consultant on the movie. And so she tried to get in there some accurate things about what, what might happen. That yes, you have to get multiple observations of an object to be able to turn it into an orbit. Then you look at an impact probability. The, when the comet was first discovered in the movie, the background, it was a Neowise image from the spacecraft Neowise. And so it was an actual image on the sky. And even little things. She jokes about how that astronomers, they needed their snacks at night. And like, yeah, I’ve done astronomy late at night and you need the snacks. And so, but trying to get some of that right about, about how that plays out. And even like, I remember the concept of peer review. They were dropping that in the movie. But yeah, has that been peer reviewed? You know, not just somebody coming up with an idea, but making sure that, you know, other experts are looking and getting feedback. And so I guess all of these movies, they all go off in their strange directions, but they probably all have little kernels of truth in them. Yeah. And sometimes you don’t have to sensationalize because the truth is pretty cool itself and fascinating.”
Besides working in science, what other genres or subjects are you interested in?
“I guess for me personally, I’m a mom and I’ve raised kids and so, I just, I’m so proud of my kids. And so, that was a big inspiration. Other areas for me, music. I love music and I’m a musician. And I think that happens a lot, I guess, in science and engineering and doing music, too. Crazy crossover. You’ve got people like Brian May and scientists and, like, rock stars. Yeah. I know something about whatever is going on in the brain. And I love computer programming, too, which I find there’s a creative aspect to that, also. And I don’t get to do it so much n my current job. Because when I was really working as a research astronomer, I’d be programming up the tools that I need. And now I’m more of a bureaucrat at NASA headquarters. But lately, I did start working on a tool I needed just to be able to handle some of the program management work that I do. And so, in a way, that was like a creative outlet. And then there are other things. I’m a ham radio operator, too. Although, life has gotten so busy that I haven’t been on the air lately. I would love to get back to that and really get to enjoy that again. “
What advice do you have for anyone wanting to get involved in a career path in the sciences?
“I guess if you have an interest in something like the STEM career, to pursue it in school, but also watch for other opportunities, like NASA has internships, for instance. There’s intern.nasa.gov, [that] shows internship possibilities. Those tend to be more at the college level, but I guess watching for such opportunities and also just pursuing in school, but being flexible. I know for my career path, I went down a road and it ended up meandering, which disturbed me when it was happening. But later on, looking back, I saw how that really kind of helped me in the long run. It gave me more of a breadth of knowledge and experience and essentially ~ I didn’t go right through all the way to the PhD. I ended up stopping for a while, and I was working at NASA, and I was having babies, and then eventually they kicked me back into grad school. But by then, I approached it with kind of more of a vision for what I wanted to do. And then, I never thought I would always be doing research. I then found myself at NASA headquarters running programs, which I would say, you know, no kid ever says, I’m gonna work at NASA headquarters when I grow up. But, again, it’s a situation where I wouldn’t have planned it like this, but I see things that have happened through my career that have contributed to the knowledge that I need now to do the job I’m doing now. And so I guess all that is to say, start down a road if you’re interested in an area, but don’t get too fixated, because opportunities might pop up and, \you know, listen to [them]. You know, here’s another thing: find a mentor and listen, and get lots of input from people. You might find that path that you think you would [like] or other opportunities open up, or it might meander in a way that you weren’t happy with at the time, but then, there’s always a brighter side to it. And so I guess just being open and flexible.”
What is the next big thing or something exciting you are working on?
“Well, I mean, as always, just the day to day of planetary defense, I think is very cool. It’s not smashing a spacecraft into an asteroid, but it’s sometimes even more important than finding them. But there is another mission in the queue, NASA’s Near-Earth Object Surveyor and Neo-Surveyor, which is a space telescope that is being designed to find near-Earth asteroids. It will be in space and survey the sky in such a way to find the asteroids that are of greatest threat to Earth, the ones that are actually coming close to Earth’s orbit and could be at the same place at the same time as Earth sometime in the future.”
Where can people find you and follow along with your work?
“You can follow us on X at Asteroid Watch. That’s the NASA Asteroid Watch account. You can follow us there and then you can go to nasa.gov/planetarydefense to find out more about what happens in the Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the different activities and the Near-Earth Object Observations Program and other things that we do.”
