We’ve all seen the movies, a threat of a dangerous asteroid colliding with our planet and humanity being destroyed forever, but now NASA has explained what we need to do if we’re ever in that dire situation.
The space agency does a lot more than just send astronauts out on a spacewalk or to the International Space Station.
It has a horde of scientists who study our climate, the solar system and beyond. It even studies UAP (UFOs) and has a planetary protection officer, but does NASA have a plan if a dangerous asteroid were to threaten everything we know?
Yes, they do, kind of – but it includes you too.
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NASA says the world has to work together if asteroid threatens life altogether
During a press conference on Thursday, June 20, Leviticus LA Lewis, said the United Nations has developed a framework for an event like this.
The UN has constructed “procedures for responding to tsunamis and other big events”, he announced.
Lewis, the US Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) detailee to NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO), explained we need to start talking about the idea of an asteroid colliding with Earth.
He said: “But for an asteroid impact, we’re thinking the scale of it is going to be such that we actually do need to discuss at this time what it would take for an international response on such a large scale.”
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If it were to happen, countries would need to jump into action, evacuating people in the potential impact zone – which would in turn be large as you cannot accurately determine the exact point of impact.
“If we talk about multiple nations and people having to move around, and responding to a very large area, that could be a challenge,” Lewis said.
“We need to organize and start discussing what it would really take to coordinate a large effort. And who would be in charge? What organization? How would we set it up? Would it be the U.N.?
“Would it be a combination of international organizations? How would we actually accomplish that? So, that’s the new challenge.”
NASA has been working on what to do if an asteroid hits, in exercises that work as a simulation in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2022 so far. The fitfh exercise, which took place in April, aimed “to inform and assess our ability as a nation to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet,” NASA officials said in a statement.
The simulation gave them a prompt, an asteroid is heading towards earth, with a 72% chance of it hitting our planet on July 12, 2038, with the impact zones believing to be Dallas, Memphis, Madrid and Algiers.
But it comes with its uncertainty, much like in a real-life scenario. The minds didn’t know how big it really is, or what it’s made out of.
“A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent,” Lindley Johnson said, the planetary defense officer emeritus at NASA.
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NASA found some asteroid answers
In the exercise did come up with some potential action plans, including flying a craft to the space rock to find out what it was made out of and it’s size, and even a manned mission, which would cost upwards of $1billion.
But they had another answer – do nothing, for the time being.
This is because the simulation said the asteroid had disappeared behind the sun so any further observations via our telescopes wouldn’t be possible for several months.
So they wanted to wait until they had the chance to see more, if it gave them more information.
But the team did explain “political realities would limit immediate action,” because trying to get the world to work together isn’t easy – if we just take climate change as an example.
One participant said: “International involvement early will be critical. That credibility is essential and must be established now.”
Although the NASA report didn’t lay down procedures in place that were direct and set in stone, but they did say the idea of an asteroid hitting Earth was ‘when’ not, ‘if’.
“The actual plan, the specific exercise results, aren’t really anything,” Johnson said. “It’s the actual going through the process of doing the planning and working together, communicating and working with each other, that is the real purpose of this exercise.”
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