Yucatán is Ground Zero for 2025 Asteroid Day Celebrations

Yucatán is at the center of a worldwide scientific Asteroid Day 2025 celebration on Sunday, June 29.

“Asteroid Day 2025: Yucatán, where the Earth changed forever” runs from 10 a.m. to 1 p.m. at the Biblioteca Vagabunda del Museo de la Luz. General admission is 25 pesos.

A Global Movement with Local Significance

Asteroid Day, officially observed every June 30, commemorates the anniversary of the Tunguska event in 1908 when a meteor air burst leveled about 2,150 square kilometers of forest in Siberia, Russia. The holiday was co-founded in 2014 by physicist Stephen Hawking, B612 Foundation president Danica Remy, Apollo 9 astronaut Rusty Schweickart, filmmaker Grigorij Richters, and Brian May (Queen guitarist and astrophysicist).

In 2016, the United Nations proclaimed Asteroid Day be observed globally on June 30 every year, with the aim to raise public awareness about the asteroid impact hazard and inform the public about crisis communication actions in case of a credible near-Earth object threat.

According to information on asteroidday.org, there were over 2,000 events in its first five years across 78 countries, with 41 astronauts and cosmonauts participating in activities. The 2025 celebration marks the 10th anniversary of Asteroid Day, with official events hosted in Luxembourg on June 26-28 and live-streamed globally.

Yucatán’s Unique Connection to Asteroid Day

Commemorating this event in Yucatán represents a unique opportunity for reflection on the role of asteroids in our past and their relevance for planetary defense and space exploration, as the region is the epicenter of the impact that occurred 66 million years ago and changed the course of life’s history on Earth with the formation of the Chicxulub crater.

The Chicxulub crater, buried underneath the Yucatán Peninsula, was formed slightly over 66 million years ago when an asteroid about ten kilometers in diameter struck Earth. The crater is estimated to be 200 kilometers in diameter and 30 kilometers in depth, making it one of the largest impact structures on Earth.

The enormous amount of energy generated by this impact, equivalent to 10 thousand times the world’s nuclear arsenal, ejected huge quantities of dust particles and gases into the atmosphere. This event triggered what scientists call the Cretaceous-Paleogene mass extinction, which eliminated approximately 75 percent of plant and animal species, including non-avian dinosaurs.

The crater was discovered by Antonio Camargo and Glen Penfield, geophysicists who had been looking for petroleum in the Yucatán Peninsula during the late 1970s. However, it wasn’t until the 1990s that scientists confirmed the connection between this buried geological structure and the global mass extinction event.

Educational Programming and Scientific Outreach

The Mérida program includes talks and workshops directed at the general public, with themes that bring planetary science closer to society. The event highlights a talk by Dr. Elia Escobar Sánchez from ENES Mérida, who will address findings about the Chicxulub crater and its scientific importance.

Interactive activities about asteroid exploration will be presented, including information about the Rosetta and DART missions, which represent milestones in the study of these celestial bodies and in testing techniques to protect Earth from potentially dangerous asteroids.

The DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which successfully altered the orbit of the asteroid Dimorphos in 2022, demonstrated humanity’s growing capability to defend against potential asteroid threats. The European Space Agency’s Rosetta mission, meanwhile, provided unprecedented insights into the composition and behavior of comets and asteroids.

Contemporary Asteroid Monitoring Efforts

According to NASA’s Center for NEO Studies, there are over 36,000 Near Earth Asteroids discovered. Near-Earth objects (NEOs) are asteroids and comets whose orbit brings them closer than 1.3 astronomical units, or approximately 195 million kilometers, to the Sun. NEOs that are closer than 0.05 astronomical units to Earth’s orbit (about 7.5 million kilometers) and larger than about 140 meters in size represent potentially catastrophic threats to our planet.

International coordination has become central to asteroid detection and response planning. The International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN) uses well-defined communication plans and protocols to assist governments in analyzing possible consequences of an asteroid impact and supporting planning of mitigation responses. The Space Mission Planning Advisory Group (SMPAG) is an inter-space agency forum that identifies technologies needed for near-Earth Object deflection and aims to build consensus on recommendations for planetary defense measures.

Looking Toward 2029

In 2024, the General Assembly declared 2029 the International Year of Asteroid Awareness and Planetary Defence to take advantage of the close approach of asteroid 99942 Apophis. On April 13, 2029, this asteroid will pass safely at a distance of about 32,000 kilometers above Earth’s surface, within the geostationary orbit, posing no threat to the planet. This extremely close approach will make the asteroid visible to billions of people with the naked eye in clear night sky.

The Foundation Behind the Movement

Asteroid Day is a program of the Asteroid Foundation, a non-profit organization based in Luxembourg that celebrates educators, scientists, and technologists who dedicate their work to studying asteroids. Each year it adds allies across the five continents to achieve a global audience of millions.

The holiday’s founders created the 100X Asteroid Declaration, which aims for scientists to work to increase the rate of asteroid discovery to 100,000 per year within a decade. Currently, scientists have discovered only about one percent of the more than one million asteroids in space that could potentially strike Earth.

The celebration in Yucatán connects global scientific awareness efforts with local geological significance, offering residents and visitors the opportunity to explore humanity’s relationship with these ancient remnants of solar system formation at the very location where one such encounter reshaped the planet’s biological trajectory.

For those unable to attend the Mérida event, live broadcasts from the official Luxembourg celebrations will be available on the Asteroid Day website, covering both the Space Lecture and the Asteroid Day Festival.