Supercomputing Asteroid Impacts for Planetary Defenses

In support of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, researchers are creating 3-D models and using one of NASA’s most powerful supercomputers to produce simulations of hypothetical asteroid impact scenarios. “Asteroid impacts are one of the only natural disasters we can actually predict and then take action to protect people,” said Michael Aftosmis, an aerospace engineer who leads the ATAP blast wave and ground damage modeling work at NAS.