On a mission: Meet Ed Reynolds and the project he’s part of to save Earth from asteroids

Could an asteroid strike destroy humankind? Not if Ed Reynolds can help it.

Reynolds, of Ellicott City, led a NASA team that built a spacecraft which, in 2022, targeted a benign asteroid, hurtled 7 million miles through the cosmos and struck the big rock, nudging it off its orbit. The mission, dubbed DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test), was a success and a first for NASA in its bid to create a planetary defense against near-Earth objects.

For his efforts, Reynolds, 61, a program manager at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, was named one of Time Magazine’s 100 Most Influential People of 2023. (Others included Beyoncé, Elon Musk and Joe Biden.). The Baltimore Sun reached out to Reynolds to talk space, asteroids and beyond.

If DART had struck the asteroid before it hit Earth 66 million years ago, would it have saved the dinosaurs?

Possibly. The dinosaurs were hit by a very, very big asteroid, tens of kilometers in diameter, while the thing we hit, Dimorphos, was the size of a pyramid. If we had punched [the big one], the change in its velocity would be so microscopic that we’d have to wait thousands of years for it to have made enough of an effect to not strike Earth.

Has any rock in the cosmos drawn a bead on our planet?

There are four near-Earth asteroids, each the size of the dinosaur-killer, on trajectories that could cross Earth’s path sometime in the future. We know where they are, and that there’s no danger of them actually hitting Earth.

The not-so-good news is that there are dozens of smaller, near-Earth asteroids out there, roughly the size of the one we hit with the DART spacecraft, and we only know where half of them are. But there’s a space mission going up in a couple of years to provide a really good mapping of those smaller ones — and that will take away a lot of the worry.

Did the award by Time Magazine surprise you?

I got an email from Time, offering congratulations, but saying that the [winners’ names] were embargoed for a month. So I was busting at the seams to tell someone, but couldn’t.

At the Time reception at Jazz at Lincoln Center, we walked a red-carpet entrance before about a hundred photographers. I don’t thrive on attention, so I was thinking, “What is my mouth doing? Am I awkward?” At one point, I was standing there, with [celebrities] all around, and I realized that if I extended my 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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

During that journey, was there still work to be done?

We were constantly fine-tuning the thrusters and sensors on DART. And we kept our fingers crossed. That 7 million mile distance is so far that you can’t joystick it. But DART behaved perfectly. It was a regular spacecraft, made mostly of aluminum. It wasn’t shaped like a silver bullet or anything, and there were no explosives on board. It ran into the asteroid really hard, at 14,000 miles an hour. It just used its mass to do its stuff.

Was the day of the “big bang” an emotional one?

At the moment of impact, 7:15 p.m., the whole mission control room at APL was in controlled chaos. I’m not a guy to jump up and down but, watching the collision on the 72-inch monitor, my eyes were weepy. I was, like, “Wow, nothing went wrong.” I felt joy and relief. Then we shook hands with about 20 VIPs who’d been invited to watch it [at APL], like Bill Nye, the Science Guy, [Maryland] Congressman John Sarbanes and Cal Ripken. Then I went home and popped champagne.

Any regrets about losing the spacecraft?

Someone asked, “Do you feel sad because the thing you spent five years building just died?” No. DART did exactly what it was supposed to do. In the end, it destroyed itself, but we achieved success. I wasn’t sentimental, I was grateful.

What’s your next project?

We’re going to Jupiter next year to study the evolution of volcanoes on Io, one of its moons. Io is peppered with volcanoes, and we need to know how they work.

What is left on your wish list?

Backpacking with a goal. I’d like to walk the Appalachian Trail. But there are a lot of big rocks out there, so I’m going to have to map them all.