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NASA works with a global coalition of astronomers to find and track dangerous asteroids.
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In the event of an impending hazardous asteroid strike, NASA already has a plan to notify the public.
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It is only a matter of time if he could save the Earth from such a disaster.
When the Chicxulub impactor, a six-mile-wide asteroid, hit Earth 66 million years ago, the dinosaurs had no warning.
If an asteroid of that size hit Earth today, a shock wave two million times more powerful than a hydrogen bomb would melt forests and trigger a tsunami. A seismic pulse the size of an earthquake would collapse 10 cities. And long after the impact, a cloud of hot dust, ash and steam would blot out the sun, plunging Earth into freezing cold.
But at least we probably knew it was coming ahead of time. And if NASA has anything to say about it, we might even be able to prevent the apocalypse.
NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office is tasked with finding, tracking and assessing the risk of potentially hazardous asteroids in our solar system.
“We certainly want to find them all before they find us,” it was said Lindley JohnsonProgram Chief for the Office of Planetary Defense Coordination.
To do that, NASA works with a global coalition of astronomers called the International Asteroid Warning Network (IAWN).
Here’s what they would do if there was an apocalyptic asteroid strike towards Earth.
International warning system
In the event that a dangerous asteroid is heading towards Earth, IAWN has procedures in place to notify the public.
First, party members who sensed the threat would share their views across the IAWN network to verify their findings and assess the danger.
As soon as all parties agree that Earth should deal with an impact, NASA would send an alert.
“I don’t have a red phone on my desk or anything,” Johnson said. “But we have formal procedures whereby a serious impact notice would be provided.”
If the asteroid was sent towards the US, NASA would notify the White House, and the government would release a formal statement to the public. If it were large enough to pose an international threat, IAWN would notify the United Nations Office for Outer Space Affairs.
Hunting for asteroids
An asteroid is considered “potentially hazardous” if it is more than about 460 feet across and crosses Earth’s orbit at a minimum distance of 0.5 astronomical units, which is half the distance between Earth and the sun .
There are about 2,300 potentially hazardous asteroids out there, and about 153 of them are larger than 0.6 miles across. That’s big enough to trigger a catastrophe if one were to hit Earth.
To find and track them, NASA and the other IAWN partners look for new asteroids as well as track already discovered ones. All their observations are compiled into a database at the Minor Planet Centre.
To date, IAWN has discovered more than 34,000 near-Earth asteroids. With enough observational data, NASA can confidently predict their orbit at least a century into the future, Johnson said.
There is a slim chance that the potentially hazardous asteroid Bennu could hit the Earth in 159 years, which causes an explosion equal to 24 nuclear bombs. But the chance of that happening is only around one in 2,700, according to the 2021 study.
If Bennu heads towards Earth, NASA has some tricks to protect our planet.
Protecting the Earth
Most of the time, IAWN catches emerging asteroids long before they become an immediate threat to Earth, according to Johnson. But NASA would need at least five to 10 years of advance notice to prevent the apocalypse from an approaching asteroid.
In 2021, NASA launched its first planetary defense test mission. He rammed an uncrewed spacecraft into an asteroid to shift its orbit away from Earth.
The mission was a success, and NASA plans to test more deflection techniques in the future. A “gravity tractor” technique that is being developed would send a spacecraft to stay close to the asteroid and allow the gravitational interaction to pull the asteroid out of its orbit. NASA is also working on a technique that uses an ion beam to change the course of an asteroid.
But if the threat was coming in less than five years, NASA wouldn’t have time to deflect the asteroid. Then, he could resort to destruction to reduce and spread the impact.
If only NASA had a few months warning, then there is not much he could do to save the Earth.
Thankfully, IAWN’s strategy is to find asteroids decades, if not centuries, before impact.
“That gives us enough time to then try to do something about them while they’re still in space, so that we completely avoid any catastrophe here on Earth,” Johnson said.
Read the original article on Business Insider
