Brazilian identifies rare asteroid in project coordinated by NASA

A Brazilian woman was awarded for identifying 25 asteroids in a project coordinated by NASA, the American space agency. One of these celestial bodies, which is rare and falls into the category of those that can normally collide with the Earth, has become the subject of new research in the United States.

The person responsible for the discovery is Verena Paccola, 22, a medical student at the University of São Paulo’s Ribeirão Preto School of Medicine (FMRP).

Officially called Iasc (International Astronomical Search Collaboration), the project to hunt for asteroids caught the young woman’s attention when she was studying to take the entrance exam in Brazil.

“Studying high school stuff was pretty boring,” she says.

The young woman then saw the chance to participate in the international project, which is coordinated by NASA and has the participation of other organizations around the world —in Brazil, the MCTI (Ministry of Science, Technology and Innovation) carries out campaigns for the local community to engage in the initiative.

“When I saw this opportunity, I was super interested because it was a chance to do something more scientific.”

Paccola joined the project in June 2020 and, to participate, she underwent training with NASA and the ministry in order to learn how to use a computer program that consists of comparing images that are captured from a telescope.

She explains that she received several packages with four of these images in sequence and then needed to find out, through the program, whether or not it could be an asteroid. “The software flashed these images to me […] and I had to analyze more visually if I saw something moving, because, for example, the stars were statistical, but the asteroids, as they follow an orbit, moved”.

If she had any suspicions in the analysis when looking at the images in sequence, she would then examine a series of numbers that indicated the pattern of what an asteroid could be.

From there, the student sent a report to Harvard University pointing out which image packages were or were not suspected of being an asteroid so that there could be further analysis.

The young woman was active in the project for three months — from June to July 2020 and then in September of last year. In this period, 25 of her guesses were confirmed to be asteroids and others are still being investigated. Of these, one is of great importance because it falls into the category of a weak asteroid.

“Usually the ones that collide here on Earth are weak asteroids, so they require greater attention,” he says.

With the discoveries, Paccola was invited by the MCTI to participate in the National Science and Technology Week, which took place in December 2021, as the ministry would award prizes to Brazilians who had discovered any of the celestial bodies.

It was only during the ceremony that the student discovered that one of the asteroids she identified was categorized as weak. “To my surprise, when I thought I was done with all the awards and medal giving, they called me on stage again to give me a trophy. That’s when I found out I had discovered this rare asteroid.”

Currently, scientists are studying to more accurately identify the asteroid’s orbit as it is different from those that are normally identified.

The young woman explains that, although there is a chance of an impact of the celestial body on our planet, she believes that this is unlikely to occur.

“The probability is very small of causing damage. Normally, the asteroids that fall here on Earth fall into the sea or turn to stone, because to enter the atmosphere they catch fire and decrease a lot in size. I can’t tell you what will happen, but the odds [de ser algo sério] I think they are small,” he says.

At the moment, the student plans to train, through her Instagram account, young people who are interested in participating in the asteroid hunting project.

About the future, the young woman says she wants to continue in medicine and specialize in neurosurgery, but with all the repercussions of the asteroids, she already has doubts about the path she will take. One way out would be space medicine.

“If I’m not mistaken, [a medicina espacial] has a big field of work, because you can be a doctor who goes to space, doing experiments there, or you can be a [profissional] that will help the astronauts”, he says.

If she follows this path, the young woman prefers the idea of ​​conducting scientific experiments in space. Still, she points out that neurosurgery is still what she plans to do — at least for now.

life imitates art

The story of Paccola’s discovery has certain similarities with the movie “Don’t Look Up”, released late last year on Netflix.

In the work, scientist Kate Dibiasky, played by Jennifer Lawrence, discovers an asteroid that must crash into Earth. She and her teacher Randall Mindy, played by Leonardo DiCaprio, try to warn the authorities about the risk that the celestial body poses to humanity – and find it difficult to be taken seriously.

For the medical student, the film shows what it means to do science today, as well as portraying the obstacles that denialism creates for the dissemination of scientific knowledge. “[A obra retrata] how society thinks science allows for opinions, given that [não é permitido]”, he says.

Paccola also says that he saw himself in the character played by Lawrence because of the fact that she is a woman and the difficulties she faces in the scientific environment.

“She tries to say things and people don’t listen, they don’t take it seriously, especially when talking about science. I’ve often felt unheard in this scientific field, so I identified a lot with the character in that aspect”, she says. .