Being wiped out by a huge space rock hitting Earth at thousands of miles per hour is one of the ways humanity could become extinct.
Worryingly, a new report suggests we are not prepared for such an eventuality, even if we detected the object 14 years in advance.
The official document, published by NASA and the US government, says that asteroid disaster management plans are “not defined.”
There is also a “limited willingness” to implement space missions that could reduce the dangers of an asteroid, as in the movie “Armageddon” with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.
In the hit 1998 movie, NASA sends a group of drillers to blow up an Earth-bound asteroid and save humanity.
On average, Earth is hit by a rock the size of a football field every 5,000 years and a civilization-ending asteroid every one million years, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program.
Billy Bob Thornton as Dan Truman, a NASA scientist, in Armageddon. Although a typical theme in science fiction movies, deflecting asteroids bound for Earth is a real concern.
The report has been prepared as part of the fifth ‘Planetary Defense Interagency Table Exercise’, a simulation event conducted by NASA and the US government.
Although there are “no known significant asteroid impact threats” in the foreseeable future, the biennial event tests the ability of top experts to prepare for such an impact.
“The process for making decisions about space missions in an asteroid threat scenario remains unclear,” the report states. report says.
“The process has not been adequately defined either in the United States or internationally,” he adds.
During the exercise, experts considered possible national and global responses to a hypothetical scenario in which a never-before-detected asteroid had a 72 percent chance of hitting Earth in about 14 years.
Representatives from NASA, FEMA and the planetary defense community participate in the fifth interagency planetary defense tabletop exercise to evaluate the ability to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially dangerous space rock.
As part of the hypothetical scenario, it was not possible to precisely determine the size, composition and long-term trajectory of the asteroid.
But models indicated that the asteroid could devastate an area on a regional or national scale if it hit.
To complicate matters, essential follow-up observations would have to be delayed by at least seven months (a critical loss of time) as the asteroid passed behind the Sun as seen from Earth.
“The uncertainties in these initial conditions for the exercise allowed participants to consider a particularly challenging set of circumstances,” said Lindley Johnson, NASA planetary defense officer emeritus in Washington.
“A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster that humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent.”
Unfortunately, the exercise found that officials do not have a good understanding of “decision-making processes and risk tolerance.”
Worryingly, “asteroid impact disaster management plans are not defined” and “timely global coordination” to raise public awareness about such a space rock needs more attention, the findings suggest.
In ‘Armageddon’ (1998), NASA sends a group of drillers to blow up an asteroid headed for Earth and save humanity.
Of course, exercises like this are a vital part of preparing for the unlikely event of a space rock impact similar to the one who killed the dinosaurs.
On average, Earth is hit by a rock the size of a football field every 5,000 years and a civilization-ending asteroid every one million years, according to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program.
NASA has already reached a hugely important milestone with the DART asteroid deflection mission.
In September 2022, the DART spacecraft intentionally crashed into Dimorphos, an asteroid 6.8 million miles away.
Although this asteroid posed no threat to Earth, the successful mission demonstrated that such a method could affect the trajectory of a space rock, if such action were necessary.
NASA’s first “planetary defense” spacecraft, sent to deflect an asteroid 6.8 million miles from Earth, reached its target on Monday, September 26.
According to a 2017 study, only asteroids measuring at least 18 meters (nearly 60 feet) in diameter are potentially lethal if headed toward Earth.
The largest known asteroid in the entire Solar System, Ceres, is 580 miles in diameter (more than 3 million feet), large enough for humans to live on.
Fortunately, the chances of Ceres hitting Earth are low because its orbit is further away, between Mars and Jupiter, and does not intersect that of Earth.
Unfortunately, there are some types of space rocks that could be difficult or impossible to deflect with any man-made object, a study suggests.
“Rubble pile” asteroids, like Itokawa, about 2 million kilometers away, are made up of loose boulders and rocks that have clumped together under the influence of gravity, making many of them empty space.
Such an asteroid would act as a “space cushion,” absorbing any energy from the impact and continuing its trajectory, the study’s authors said.
