Apophis planetary defense campaign

We describe results of a planetary defense exercise conducted during the close approach to Earth by the near-Earth asteroid (99942) Apophis during 2020 December–2021 March. The planetary defense community has been conducting observational campaigns since 2017 to test the operational readiness of the global planetary defense capabilities. These community-led global exercises were carried out with the support of NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office and the International Asteroid Warning Network. The Apophis campaign is the third in our series of planetary defense exercises. The goal of this campaign was to recover, track, and characterize Apophis as a potential impactor to exercise the planetary defense system including observations, hypothetical risk assessment and risk prediction, and hazard communication. Based on the campaign results, we present lessons learned about our ability to observe and model a potential impactor. Data products derived from astrometric observations were available for inclusion in our risk assessment model almost immediately, allowing real-time updates to the impact probability calculation and possible impact locations. An early NEOWISE diameter measurement provided a significant improvement in the uncertainty on the range of hypothetical impact outcomes. The availability of different characterization methods such as photometry, spectroscopy, and radar provided robustness to our ability to assess the potential impact risk

Report on the activities of the PKiM and PFN in period 2021–2022

The Polish Fireball Network (PFN), has been undergoing continuous development. Since then, several large grants have been obtained, which were at least partly used for modernization purposes. In recent years, two more grants have been obtained, which allowed for the expansion and modification of the existing PFN infrastructure. In 2021, the PFN76 Kozienice was modernized, but also the PFN14 Zielona Góra station was reactivated and the new PFN77 Suhora station was launched in 2022. Thanks to these improvements, the tracking of meteoroids entering the Earth Atmosphere above Poland became more accurate, which facilitates the search for meteorites and increases the chances of finding new fresh meteorites in Poland. On the night of May 10, 2021, PFN stations registered an exceptionally slow bolide. The phenomenon named PF100521 Wykrot appeared over central Poland in the Mazowieckie Voivodeship at 21:32 UT and calculations showed that some meteorites may have fallen. This phenomenon was used to conduct a series of analyzes to show how observational uncertainties affect the final results. Two variants of the results are presented in this work