A History of Hazardous Objects

Laura de León is a radar astronomer who studies Potentially Hazardous Objects (PHOs) such as threatening asteroids and comets at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Lab in Pasadena, California. In Los Angeles in 2020, several crises are coalescing. The first strain of SARS-CoV-2 triggers the lockdowns, the city roils with protests of Derek Chauvin’s murder of George Floyd and the police killing of Breonna Taylor, while the Bobcat Fire sweeps across the San Fernando Valley. In the midst of these emergencies, Laura is struggling to keep her family alive.

Simultaneously, Laura is trying to write the history section of a Congressional report titled the National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan. This report will advise Congress that it must develop a system to detect and deflect PHOs, and the section Laura is working on cites several historical meteorite impacts as proof that the Earth is now undefended against a significant impact event.

A story about family, love, risk, and science, A History of Hazardous Objects contemplates how experiencing trauma and pain may help us secure a safer and more just world.

Yxta Maya Murray is the author of twelve books, most recently The World Doesn’t Work That Way, but It Could: Stories, along with the books Art is Everything: A Novel and God Went Like That: A Novel. Murray has won a Whiting Award and has been named a fellow at the Huntington Library for her work on radionuclide contamination in Simi Valley, California.