10-26-2023 Howard - Flipbook - Page 58
Ed Reynolds, a program manager in the Space
Exploration Sector at the Johns Hopkins Applied
Physics Laboratory stands in Mission Operations
Center at APL on the day of impact, Sept. 26, 2022.
PHOTO BY ED WHITMAN/ JHUAPL
right arm 45 degrees, I could touch [director]
Steven Spielberg, and if I extended my left
arm straight out, there was [actress] Drew
Barrymore. They weren’t talking to me, but
I thought, “This is unreal; I’ll never have this
moment again.”
Hollywood has made nearly 20
doomsday movies about asteroids
targeting Earth, from “Armageddon” to
“Deep Impact.”What’s your favorite?
I like “Don’t Look Up,” [2021] with
Leonardo DiCaprio and Jonah Hill. It
captures a lot of how the world would react
to an asteroid coming, and how people are
motivated differently. In the film, there are
naysayers, but when the rockets to strike the
asteroid are finally launched, a billionaire
realizes there are priceless minerals in the
asteroid and blows up the rockets. Then the
Earth is destroyed.
As a kid, were you fixed on outer space?
I wanted to design airplanes; I thought
they were cool. I made planes out of balsa
wood and glue and then put them on the
shelf. I never tried to fly them. If I had,
people would probably have seen what a poor
designer I was.
You began work on spacecrafts at the
Johns Hopkins APL right out of college,
after earning a degree in electrical
engineering from Virginia Tech. Were
you a stellar student?
I was a late bloomer. I started out pretty
mediocre, getting B-minuses as a freshman.
But my twin brother, David, who was also at
Virginia Tech, was very studious and I tried
to catch up to him. As a senior, I was close to
an A-plus.
Right: This high-resolution view of the asteroid
Dimorphos was created by combining the final 10
full-frame images obtained by DART’s Didymos
Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical
navigation (DRACO) and layering several images
together. NASA/JOHNS HOPKINS APL
The asteroid that DART punched,
Dimorphos, is 525 feet in length. How
much damage would one that size do if
it hit Earth?
It would be catastrophic to a region about
the size of Maryland.
Did COVID-19 slow work on the
spacecraft?
A lot of stuff was done on computers at
home, but some on our team had to go to
APL to touch the craft. We created “bubbles”
of people wearing masks, and kept those
small groups apart. Objects in the solar
system don’t take time off because of a
pandemic.
Should a rogue asteroid stalk Earth, how
much time would we need to deflect it?
From napkin to launch, it took over five
years to build DART. To rebuild it from
scratch would take about two years. But
NASA is looking at ways to shorten that prep
time.
It took 10 months for DART to reach the
asteroid. How did you cope with the
pressure?
I ran a lot. I’ve run about 25 marathons,
including Boston in 2013, the year of the
bombing. I’ve figured out how to manage
stress.
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