{"id":349687,"date":"2025-12-18T15:23:33","date_gmt":"2025-12-18T15:23:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/peraltafinancing.com\/aerospace\/from-a-remote-observatory-hes-defending-our-planet-get-a-glimpse-inside-the-life-of-a-doomsday-asteroid-hunter\/"},"modified":"2025-12-18T15:23:33","modified_gmt":"2025-12-18T15:23:33","slug":"from-a-remote-observatory-hes-defending-our-planet-get-a-glimpse-inside-the-life-of-a-doomsday-asteroid-hunter","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/fivemor.com\/?p=349687","title":{"rendered":"From a Remote Observatory, He’s Defending Our Planet. Get a Glimpse Inside the Life of a Doomsday Asteroid Hunter"},"content":{"rendered":"


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David Rankin of the Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona spends nights scanning the solar system for potentially catastrophic space rocks. Here\u2019s what he has to say about that \u201chigh consequence\u201d work, an interstellar comet and living with uncertainty<\/h2>\n
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Supercluster Editorial Team<\/a><\/p>\n

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Photographs by Levi Christiansen<\/p>\n

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David Rankin, operations manager at the Catalina Sky Survey, keeps tabs on space rocks in search of new and potentially hazardous asteroids.
\n Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span>
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This article was originally published on <\/em>Supercluster<\/em><\/a>, a website dedicated to telling humanity\u2019s greatest outer space stories.<\/em><\/p>\n

David Rankin<\/a> is the closest thing Earth has to a space superhero.<\/p>\n

As an observer and operations engineer at the Catalina Sky Survey<\/a>, a NASA-funded planetary defense program that utilizes the telescopes atop the Santa Catalina Mountains in Arizona, he spends hours looking for dangerous rocks that could cause catastrophic damage to Earth. Telescope operator, asteroid hunter, photographer, storm chaser and programmer are just some of his credentials\u2014Rankin even has an ancient marine reptile named after him, a plesiosaur<\/a> that he discovered<\/a> at age 14.<\/p>\n

At the mountain range\u2019s highest point, Mt. Lemmon, we found the mild-mannered skywatcher nonchalantly protecting humans from extinction by space rock. Since 2019, Rankin has been trekking to the peak to look for solar system objects that might collide with our planet. The Catalina Sky Survey, based at the University of Arizona\u2019s Lunar and Planetary Lab in Tucson, aims to catalog more than 90 percent<\/a> of near-Earth objects larger than 140 meters across. According to Rankin, they\u2019re about halfway there.<\/p>\n

Supercluster dispatched photographer Levi Christiansen in July to capture this jack-of-all-trades at work and to peek inside the daily life of a planetary defender<\/a>. After the photoshoot, Supercluster\u2019s editorial team called Rankin, whose years of experience have coalesced into fascinating perspectives on doomsday, extraterrestrial life and the headline-grabbing interstellar object, 3I\/ATLAS.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the conversation conducted in October, edited for clarity and brevity.<\/p>\n

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A road in the Santa Catalina Mountains<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster:<\/strong> So, what is it like, on a human level, hunting asteroids up there on Mt. Lemmon? Are you typically alone while working overnight shifts?<\/p>\n

David Rankin:<\/strong> Yeah, we work alone, and that was nice during the pandemic, because it didn\u2019t really impact our safety. But, you know, it really is just you. You\u2019ve got to be really passionate about this work. I\u2019ve seen people come and go. It\u2019s not easy being on a night shift schedule, responsible for 12 shifts between two full moons, sometimes with shifts of 12-plus hours, sundown to sunup.<\/p>\n

But there\u2019s a thrill with the job. We\u2019re discovering minor planets that are in orbit around the sun that nobody\u2019s ever seen before\u2014on a nightly basis. I picked up two last night that are brand new. On a busy night, I\u2019ve gotten 40.<\/p>\n

And we find comets. There\u2019s a lot of really neat stuff that you\u2019re able to do while you\u2019re sitting up in that telescope. And that\u2019s a driving factor for me. I love that thrill of discovery.<\/p>\n

On any given night, we could be working up there and pick up an asteroid that\u2019s coming in past Mars, has never been seen before, and it\u2019s gonna hit us. We could also pick up an asteroid that\u2019s gonna hit us in 20 years.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s a high consequence job; it\u2019s a high reward job. But yeah, the schedule is rough. You have to really live the lifestyle. Most of us stay on a night schedule, 24\/7.<\/p>\n

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The observatory Rankin works from is on the top of Mt. Lemmon, the highest peak in the Santa Catalina Mountains.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>How many asteroids have you spotted on your watch?<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>I quit counting\u2014probably in the thousands at this point.<\/p>\n

A lot of people don\u2019t realize we live in a shooting gallery. On any given night, there are multiple, usually smaller, asteroids that are passing between us and the moon. And every now and then, a large one squeaks in and passes between us and the moon. Something in the 20-plus-meter class range.<\/p>\n

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Did you know? How many near-Earth asteroids are there?<\/h4>\n

Astronomers have discovered<\/a> 40,155 near-Earth asteroids, according to NASA\u2019s Planetary Defense Coordination Office<\/a>. In the year prior to December 1, 2025, there were 191 asteroids that passed closer to Earth than Earth\u2019s distance from the moon.<\/p>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/div>\n

We\u2019re funded through Congress and NASA to find things that are 140 meters across. We\u2019re not even digging down in the weeds on these 50-meter objects, and these are still very large. We\u2019re just trying to focus on closing the catalog on those 140-meter class asteroids that come really close to the Earth. I think I found almost 30 of those so far. But there\u2019s too many of the smaller ones.<\/p>\n

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The summit of Mt. Lemmon has an elevation of 9,171 feet.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, for context, the giant hole<\/a> outside Flagstaff in Arizona was made by a meteor that hit 50,000 years ago. That was a 30- to 60-meter-wide asteroid.\u00a0<\/p>\n

There was one that hit in 2013<\/a> [and exploded over Chelyabinsk in Russia]. Everybody saw the videos online. Just stunning, terrifying. That was, like, a 20-meter rock. And we consider that pretty small in this business.<\/p>\n

[The Chelyabinsk meteor] was made out of a stony material, so a lot of energy was discharged in the atmosphere. You get a solid nickel iron meteorite\u2014it\u2019s going to punch through the atmosphere like it\u2019s not even there. And that\u2019s kind of what happened outside Flagstaff. You had a rock that was made out of metal, [and] it blasted a mile-wide hole in the ground.<\/p>\n

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A sign advises drivers to turn headlights off.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>What is the largest object that you\u2019ve discovered?<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>I\u2019ve discovered two that were over a kilometer wide. Those are very rare these days, and that\u2019s a good thing.<\/p>\n

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Rankin often works 12-hour shifts, entirely alone.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This all was kicked off when [the comet] Shoemaker-Levy 9<\/a> impacted Jupiter. There were some small teams seriously looking for near-Earth asteroids back then. But when [Carolyn and Gene] Shoemaker and David Levy found Shoemaker-Levy 9 in the early \u201990s, it had just passed Jupiter. It came so close to Jupiter that Jupiter\u2019s gravity broke it apart in multiple fragments, like a string of pearls.<\/p>\n

And then they realized it was gonna hit Jupiter the next year. It swung back around, because [the planet\u2019s gravity] captured it, and it hit the southern hemisphere of Jupiter in multiple locations. The impact scars on the upper atmosphere of Jupiter were the size of our planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s what kicked off this planetary defense paradigm that we\u2019re under right now. And the good news is this: We found you can\u2019t hide a ten-kilometer-wide rock\u2014the size of [the asteroid<\/a>] that wiped out the dinosaurs\u2014between us and Jupiter. It\u2019s not easy. Those are big. You don\u2019t need a big telescope to see those.<\/p>\n

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Supercluster\u2019s photographer met Rankin in July to capture a day in his life.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

So, we found all of those. And down to one kilometer, we found over 99 percent of the hazardous ones, which is pretty impressive. That catalog was wrapping up completion around 2004.<\/p>\n

It\u2019s very rare to find a one-kilometer near-Earth object these days. I\u2019ve only found two. There\u2019s just very few of them left.<\/p>\n

Now, we\u2019re kind of pushing down into that half kilometer, down to 200 meters, down to 150-meter, 140-meter range, and we\u2019ve still got about 50 percent of the 140-meter class rocks to find. And those are big rocks.<\/p>\n

That\u2019s regional devastation. Not the end of humanity, but the end of Arizona.<\/p>\n

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Rankin stands inside the observatory, looking at telescope equipment.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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A slit opens in the observatory roof to give the telescope a view of the sky.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>Tell me a little bit about your surroundings. What is this facility like? What\u2019s the scientific infrastructure? Are your instruments up to date?<\/p>\n

Rankin:<\/strong> A lot of what happened with the folks that founded<\/a> Catalina Sky Survey happened on limited funds. A couple of students [at the University of Arizona] back in the \u201990s realized that we had some telescopes sitting up on Mt. Lemmon that were put up during the Apollo era that could be repurposed for the search for hazardous asteroids. They put in their grants for NASA to repurpose these telescopes. And that\u2019s where it all started.<\/p>\n

Our telescopes are pretty old, but we keep them upgraded with the parts that matter. We reworked the optical systems on them to make them really fast and [have a] wide field of view. And then we have very high-end cameras that are 10K resolution. We develop a whole bunch of software in-house that kind of facilitates the hunt, like the tracking stuff.<\/p>\n

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Rankin with telescope equipment<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Views of some of the items and old technology at the observatory<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster:<\/strong> Does the software automatically snap an image, or do you have to do it manually?\u00a0<\/p>\n

Rankin:<\/strong> So, this is high-tech stuff. The telescopes look old, but don\u2019t let that fool you. We have very talented software developers.<\/p>\n

The whole thing is pretty much automated. So, I get up there, I tell it, \u2018Hey, I want to look at this whole band of the night sky,\u2019 and it will just run all night. I don\u2019t even have to think about it. It will keep focused. It\u2019ll take images. It does all that stuff and feeds those images into our data-reduction pipeline, and then it goes through that whole set of rings until it\u2019s just ready to feed out to the person sitting in the chair who\u2019s the observer.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Rankin works in front of a large computer screen.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

And, basically, it\u2019s saying, \u2018Hey, look, I removed all the non-moving sources from these four images, and then I identified all the known asteroids. So, here\u2019s what I think are the new asteroids.\u2019<\/p>\n

And of course, 99 percent of those are just noise, because we\u2019re digging really deep in these images. But every now and then, the software has identified a real asteroid, and it\u2019s our job to weed that out and send that data off to the planetary defense community as quickly as possible.<\/p>\n

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Notes advise against unplugging or turning off equipment.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster:<\/strong> What\u2019s your take on the recent interstellar object<\/a> 3I\/ATLAS that has been dominating the news cycle and fueling conspiracy theories that the object is an alien spaceship<\/a>?<\/p>\n

Rankin:<\/strong> Extraordinary claims require extraordinary evidence, and there\u2019s no evidence that this thing is anything other than a comet.<\/p>\n

Everyone wants to find aliens. I have worked in this business for a long time. I know a lot of scientists. Nobody is saying: \u2018Oh, I don\u2019t want to find an alien.\u2019 That would be the biggest discovery in the history of humanity. Everyone wants that. The idea that there\u2019s some big astronomy community pushing back against that is ridiculous.<\/p>\n

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Some computer software displays the weather at the Mt. Lemmon SkyCenter.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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The computer software identifies data blips that might be undiscovered asteroids\u2014or statistical noise.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

This is the third one of these [interstellar] objects. That\u2019s why it\u2019s called 3I\/ATLAS. These objects were theorized for a very long time before the first one popped up in 2017, which was \u2018Oumuamua<\/a>. And basically, what it comes down to, is solar system formation is a very violent process. And as these planets and these large gas giants are migrating in and out of orbits, interacting with each other, forming, massive collisions are happening. It\u2019s just not a very peaceful thing.<\/p>\n

And they estimate that millions and millions of these objects get flung out of a solar system as it\u2019s forming. So, you have to think about the billions of stars in our galaxy.<\/p>\n

Even before we found the first one, the astronomers were telling us, \u2018Hey, these things are between the stars. They have to be out there. There\u2019s no way they\u2019re not out there.\u2019 Even today, we\u2019ll watch Jupiter catch a comet that\u2019s coming in and shoot it out of the solar system permanently\u2014and that\u2019s an interstellar comet. It just came from us. So why wouldn\u2019t there be any that came from others?<\/p>\n

Supercluster:<\/strong> That\u2019s such a great point, because no one ever talks about ones that we would eject out of our solar system.<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>Now, if 3I\/ATLAS, as it was approaching the sun, if it started to slow down dramatically \u2026 that would raise eyebrows.<\/p>\n

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Rankin in the observatory room<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

If this thing takes a 90-degree turn, it\u2019s definitely artificial, right? But nothing has ever even come close to breaching that benchmark. It\u2019s a beautiful object. It\u2019s an amazing discovery, but it\u2019s not aliens.<\/p>\n

And that\u2019s the problem with calling these things aliens\u2014we don\u2019t appreciate the actual astounding science that we\u2019re seeing with the actual object and its actual classification.<\/p>\n

I hope one day we have the technology to intercept these objects and study them more closely.<\/p>\n

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Rankin stands in the kitchen at the observatory.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

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Some of the amenities for employees at the sky survey<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>When you\u2019re up there by yourself staring at the night sky, do you find yourself thinking about your place in the world? Do you think about your work on a philosophical level?<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>I\u2019m a fifth-generation Mormon, but I haven\u2019t been associated with the church in many, many years. Science is not a religion. But if it were, it\u2019s my religion.<\/p>\n

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A box for depositing paper copies of report forms<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

I went from a point in my life where I had 100 percent certainty\u2014because that\u2019s what you get, usually, when you\u2019re in these different Christian or other denominations\u2014like, \u2018You\u2019ll die. You\u2019ll go here. This will happen.\u2019<\/p>\n

What I\u2019ve gained through my journey in life is a deep, deep, deep appreciation for uncertainty. I am perfectly fine not having all the answers. And I think that it would be boring to have them all. That\u2019s how I feel about it.\u00a0<\/p>\n

The wonderment that comes from staring out into the universe and making awesome discoveries is just fascinating, and it keeps me very happy. That\u2019s where my joy comes from now, is being perfectly content with not having all the answers. I think it\u2019s a 180 from the way I was raised.<\/p>\n

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Some of the equipment inside the observatory<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>You must have had this thought at some point: What if one day you\u2019re sitting there and you look at the blip on the screen, and there\u2019s a moment when you realize: \u2018I\u2019m the only person on Earth who knows that we\u2019re doomed.\u2019<\/p>\n

What do you do at that moment?<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>Luckily, the odds of that happening are very low. That moment would be unlikely to happen by itself, because it\u2019s a team effort. When we find these objects, we usually don\u2019t know where they\u2019re going with high certainty. And that includes the orbits of these asteroids when they\u2019re first found.<\/p>\n

So, I might not have that realization at the moment that I find the object, but it could come hours or a day later\u2014and how I would react to that, I don\u2019t know. I don\u2019t know that anybody in this business knows how they would react to it.<\/p>\n

It would be terrifying. It would be exhilarating. The exhilaration comes from the fact that we\u2019re not doomed.<\/p>\n

If there\u2019s enough lead time, there are things we can do about this, like the DART mission<\/a> showed [when NASA smashed a spacecraft into an asteroid to alter its trajectory<\/a> in 2022]. And at the very least, if we find a 50- or 100-meter-wide object that\u2019s coming in, and it looks like it\u2019s going to hit a populated area, we could have a week, maybe two weeks\u2014that would be a very unlucky scenario. [But] that\u2019s still plenty of time to get people out of harm\u2019s way, to evacuate.\u00a0<\/p>\n

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Rankin says astronomers have detected about half of the 140-meter class objects they\u2019re looking for.<\/p>\n

Levi Christiansen for Supercluster<\/span><\/p>\n<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Supercluster: <\/strong>So, you aren\u2019t looking for doom, you\u2019re looking for safety.<\/p>\n

Rankin: <\/strong>Yeah, we\u2019re funded for safety. What we\u2019re doing here is we\u2019re putting an investment into one of the only natural disasters we can actually do something about. You\u2019re not going to stop a volcano eruption. You\u2019re not going to stop a tsunami. You\u2019re not going to stop a magnitude 9.2 earthquake. This is something we can stop. So that\u2019s what we\u2019re doing.\u00a0<\/p>\n

We\u2019re trying to find the asteroid that\u2019s 500 meters wide that\u2019s going to hit us in 100 years. So then our grandkids can go, \u2018Hey, you know, we were able to deflect it. We\u2019re good.\u2019<\/p>\n

And again, we\u2019ve ruled out a dinosaur scenario. But there could easily be a half-kilometer-wide object that poses a threat in the future.<\/p>\n

So, it\u2019s an investment, it really is. And honestly, I hope that I\u2019m not sitting at the telescope when we find a rock with short notice coming in. I hope that doesn\u2019t happen. I hope that we find it a century early.<\/p>\n

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Get the latest Science<\/strong> stories in your inbox.<\/h3>\n<\/p><\/div>\n<\/p><\/div>\n
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