What if, in 14 years, a newly-discovered asteroid was likely to strike Earth?
But that’s not all. This threatening space rock, some 330 to 1,050 feet in diameter (or 100 to 320 meters), has just disappeared behind the sun, making crucial observations impossible for the next seven months.
To prepare for such an unsettling scenario, NASA just completed an exercise to “inform and assess our ability as a nation to respond effectively to the threat of a potentially hazardous asteroid or comet.” A possible asteroid or comet collision can pose a number of uncertainties, which the space agency continued to test during the recent fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.
“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, NASA’s planetary defense officer emeritus, said in a statement.
Support authors and subscribe to content
This is premium stuff. Subscribe to read the entire article.