Evaluating the risk of impacts and the efficiency of risk reduction

Abstract

The space missions of the past decades have shown that impacts represent an ubiquitous phenomenon in the Solar System, and occur at all scales, from dust particles up to planetary bodies. In fact, a clue to the importance of this phenomenon also for our planet has always been available on the heavily cratered surface of the Moon, that testifies to the present and past fluxes of bodies on Earth crossing orbits. © 2007 Springer-Verlag Berlin Heidelberg.