ADAM::Impact Probability Results


Please credit Asteroid Institute, ADAM::Impact Probability b612.ai when using results from Impact Probability and any additional ADAM services.

Frequently Asked Questions

What am I looking at?

You're seeing the results of an impact probability calculation. This analysis shows the likelihood of the selected asteroid impacting Earth or Moon based on the orbital uncertainty. The visualizations show both the risk corridor on Earth's surface as well as a 3D simulation of possible trajectories.

What is a "cluster" in the results?

A cluster represents a group of potential impacts that occur close together in time, corresponding with an individual approach. Asteroid orbits can have multiple potential impact opportunities over time, and these are grouped into clusters.

What does the impact probability mean?

The impact probability represents the statistical likelihood of an impact occurring, based on the number of simulated trajectories that resulted in a collision divided by the total number of simulated trajectories. For example, a probability of 0.01 means that 1% of the simulated trajectories resulted in an impact.

How accurate are these calculations?

The accuracy depends on several factors, including the quality of the original orbital data, the number of Monte Carlo simulations performed, and the time span of the prediction. Longer time spans generally have greater uncertainty. This demo is limited to 10,000 samples, but production-scale calculations may use millions of samples for higher precision.

What is a risk corridor?

A risk corridor is the path on Earth's surface where an asteroid could potentially impact. Due to uncertainties in the asteroid's exact trajectory, the potential impact can happen anywhere along this corridor. The visualization shows these potential impact locations.

What is this?

ADAM::Impact Probability is a tool used to calculate and visualize impact risks from real or simulated asteroids with the Earth and Moon. This is a demo of the tool which puts some limitations on the inputs such as which orbital state vectors can be selected, the time range that can be simulated, and the number of monte carlo draws (max of 10,000).

How does it work?

This tool is built on top of the open-source adam_core library . It takes as an input an orbital state vector which represents uncertainty in the orbit's position and velocity as a covariance matrix. Samples are drawn from the covariance matrix and used as particles in a simulation. Those particles are propagated forward through time using the ASSIST propagator which functions as a highly accurate solar system n-body integrator. Collisions are detected at each integrator step and accumulated. Afterwards, the results are summarized and visualized.