Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine January 2018 - 7

academic sessions, core lectures, elective workshops, departmental
activities, professional visits, and team projects that tackle critical
current and future issues and challenges in the space industry.
As planetary defense is one of the current problems facing the
space industry, the ISU chose a Planetary Defense Team Project as
one of main three projects during the 28th Space Studies Program in
2015 (SSP15) that was hosted by Ohio University in Athens, Ohio,
USA. The Planetary Defense team produced this project Roadmap
for EArth Defense Initiatives (READI ) as a product of the team
project. What makes READI project stand out from other projects on
this global challenge is that it focuses on mitigating cosmic threats
by implementing a planetary defense program against short-term
warning threats. A comet with two-years warning time detection
before impact with Earth has been selected as a scenario to narrow
the focus of the project. In general, comet threats are an underrepresented topic in the planetary defense literature, although comets'
trajectories are far less predictable and would enter our atmosphere
impacting the Earth at higher relative velocities than asteroids and
thus releasing more kinetic energy upon impact with Earth.
Recent media attention on cosmic hazards, from Near-Earth
Objects (NEOs) coming close to impacting Earth, have demonstrated a capacity by the general public to accept the reality of possible threats from space [13], [14], [16], [22]. While events such
as the Chelyabinsk incident [1] temporarily grab international attention, they have failed to effectively galvanize governments to
take effective action toward such threats. The lack of long-term
attention on hazards emanating from space translates into a lack
of monetary support for defending the planet from those cosmic
threats. Numerous potential solutions have already been proposed,
and some concepts are being tested, but many of these options are
very expensive, require very early hazard detection, or are politically unpalatable. That is just one element of the larger problem of
planetary defense. The general public is uneducated on the topic
of cosmic hazards, especially threats from asteroids and comets.
Many people likely get incorrect information regarding these
threats from movies such as Deep Impact or Armageddon.
Doing anything in space is expensive, risky, and technologically
and managerially hard. The quest for a realistic planetary defense proJANUARY 2018

gram requires a more holistic approach that looks at all areas that can
be improved, not just methods of deflection. The READI team developed concepts in multiple areas of focus, from politics and education
to engineering problems, by expanding ideas and analyzing the current state of planetary defense concepts to find solutions for near-term
threats, resulting in a proposed roadmap to planetary defense.

SYSTEMS ENGINEERING APPROACH
Initially, the topic was presented with a brief description and then
let the participants in the Planetary Defense Team Project decide its
mission statement, how to address the issue and the management of
the project. Information flow originated from both visiting lecturers
and references of current studies and research. To be able to organize
such a big team for a complex topic in a short period of time the
team used the IPPD approach to systems engineering. This method
has been proven to work in previous aerospace projects and was indeed helpful in managing this project. In Phase I, we used the IPPD
methodology as a baseline to handle the execution of the project and
subsequent work. We produced a Gantt chart to track our progress
and meet our milestones, and we also defined our team structure to
distribute better and execute our tasks. Phase II dealt more with the
systems engineering plan for verifying and validating our work by
assessing selected options to ensure the right decisions were made.
The next sections will further explain how the IPPD method was
used for different areas of the READI project, presenting alternative
concepts studied, and our recommendations. We hope these recommendations contribute to the noble task of defending our planet from
asteroids and comets with a short warning notice.

PHASE I: APPLICATION OF IPPD IN PLANETARY DEFENSE
The READI team used a matrix organization to manage the different discipline requirements of the ISU better and to work on the
technical aspects of planetary defense. This organization resulted
in a total of 17 subteams, the division of work is further explained
in the section of challenges, risks, and solutions. Once having a
team structure, and as part of the project management tasks, we

IEEE A&E SYSTEMS MAGAZINE

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Aerospace and Electronic Systems Magazine January 2018