by A menacing asteroid could bring together the nations that are struggling with Earth, at least for a while.
Dealing with a large, dangerous asteroid that appears to be in the crosshairs of our planet will require a healthy dose of international cooperation, experts say – and we’d better start thinking about that now, with plenty of time to spare. outline a possible answer. framework.
The United Nations (UN) has developed “procedures to respond to tsunamis and other major events,” Leviticus “LA” Lewis, detailing the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), during press. briefing on Thursday (June 20). “But with regard to the impact of an asteroid, we are thinking that its scale will be so large that we have to discuss at this time what it would take to have an international response on such a large scale,” he said.
Part of that answer would involve coordinating the evacuation of people in the potential impact zone, which would likely cover a large area of land, given how fast the asteroids move through space and how It’s hard to nail down the trajectory of a newly discovered asteroid. (Small uncertainties in that calculated path would result in large differences in the predicted point of impact on Earth. And newly discovered space rocks are the ones to worry about; none of the asteroids will large ones that we already know are a threat to our planet for the foreseeable future). .)
“If we talk about multiple nations and people who have to move around, and respond to a very large area, that can be a challenge,” Lewis said. “We need to organize and start discussing what it would really take to coordinate a major effort. And who would be in charge? Which organization? How would we set it up? Would it be the UN? Would it be a a combination of international organizations ?How would we actually do that?
Lewis was discussing the results of the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tableau Exercise, an asteroid threat simulation held April 2 and April 3 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland.
The exercise — the fifth of its kind by researchers, following similar efforts in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2022 — aimed to “inform and assess our capacity as a nation to respond effectively to the threat from potentially hazardous asteroid or comet,” NASA officials said in a statement.
The participants – nearly 100 people from US federal agencies and various international institutions – considered the following hypothetical situation: Scientists have just discovered a relatively large asteroid that appears to have impacted Earth. There is a 72% chance that it will hit our planet on July 12, 2038, on a long path that includes major cities such as Dallas, Memphis, Madrid and Algiers.
But this is only an initial view, and many key facts are still unclear or unknown. For example, it is not clear how big the asteroid is; its estimated size range is 200 feet to 2,600 feet (60 to 800 meters). And researchers do not know its composition, which is very important; a dense metallic or stony asteroid behaved differently – during possible deflection effort and on impact – than a “rubble pile” of dirt and gravel like Bennu, the space rock visited by NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe and sampled a few years ago. .
“The uncertainties in these initial conditions for the exercise allowed participants to consider an extremely challenging set of circumstances,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary protection officer emeritus at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in the same statement. “A major asteroid impact could be the only natural disaster humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent it.”
Related: Potentially dangerous asteroids (images)
The new space rock won’t be known for a while: The exercise dictated that it pass directly behind the sun from Earth’s perspective, making it unobservable by telescope for the next seven months.
Participants in the April exercise — organized by the PDCO and FEMA, with help from the US State Department’s Office of Space Affairs — talked about possible next steps.
They explored three main near-future possibilities, one of which is to do nothing until more telescope observations can be made. The other two were to begin studying, and perhaps even developing, a fact-finding mission to the menacing space rock – a rendezvous effort that would accompany or be more closely related, which would wandering to the asteroid for a long time.
The flyby would probably cost between $200 million and $400 million. The price of the rendezvous mission would be steeper – in the neighborhood of $800 million to $1 billion.
Most of the exercise’s senior leaders favored options two or three” but it was noted [that] political realities would limit immediate action,” says an initial report on the simulation, available here.
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That report includes a selection of comments from anonymous exercise participants. “The most important item this morning was the discussion about the political nature of decision-making,” read one such statement.
Another emphasized the global nature of the challenge, as did Lewis: “International involvement will soon be critical. That credibility is essential and must be established now.”
The exercise resulted in no ironclad rules that must be followed when a threatening asteroid is discovered. (And planetary defense experts say this is indeed a matter of “when” rather than “if;” at some point, a large space rock will head our way.) But no such prescription was expected; rather, the main goal was to talk through the possibilities and gain greater awareness of the steps the scientific and international community would take to deal with an incoming asteroid.
“The actual plan, the specific exercise results, is really nothing,” Johnson said in Thursday’s briefing. “The actual process of planning and working together, communicating and working with each other is the real purpose of this exercise.”
