NASA’s & ESA’s Asteroid Simulation
Experts from NASA and ESA recently underwent a week-long exercise during which they attempted to prevent a hypothetical threat of an asteroid capable of decimating Europe. But the results aren’t positive.
Image by Родион Журавлёв from Pixabay
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The hypothetical scenario included an asteroid at a distance of 57,000,000 kilometers away from Earth and its trajectory was heading directly for Earth. At the end of the exercise that started on the 26th of April, the scientists concluded that our current level of technology could not prevent such a catastrophe.
An Asteroid Approaches!
The goal of the exercise named Planetary Defense Conference Hypothetical Asteroid Impact Tabletop Exercise was to find out our global capabilities to react to the threat of an asteroid with current technologies and find out how current international agencies would react to a real prediction of an asteroid impact.
Every day, the participants got new information about the size and trajectory of the asteroid and simulated how the scenario would play out in real life. They had to wait until the third day to find out the impact will happen somewhere between Germany, Czechia, Slovakia, Austria, or Croatia. And only on the fourth day after initial detection, it was sure where the object called 2021PDC will fall.
NASA explains that during the exercise they tried to imagine what could be done to try to affect the asteroid before impact but the short time (less than six months) doesn’t allow for any sensible action to be taken.
The Risk Isn’t High
The risk of a collision with an object that would destroy the Earth as we know it is relatively low. Plus, the chance that the object with hit the ocean – thus somewhat mitigating its effect – is pretty high as the oceans cover 71 % of the surface of the Earth.
The biggest problem is that we don’t really know about many of the potentially dangerous objects. No clue at all. NASA estimates that about two-thirds of asteroids larger than 140 meters are still undiscovered meaning that the scenario isn’t completely unrealistic.
For example, in 2019 an asteroid the size of a football field was discovered just 24 hours before it has flown between Earth and the Moon. According to internal materials, one of the employees at NASA said it got really close.
There Are Some Positives
While the experts weren’t capable of preventing the hypothetical impact the exercise did find some positives. It showed that NASA’s instruments can very precisely pinpoint the impact zone six days before the impact. That could help the evacuations.
This was the seventh time such an exercise simulating the impact of an asteroid has taken place. These exercises show us that institutions such as NASA are working on technologies that could one day prevent the scenario from playing out. For example, the test of Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) will be the first-ever test of a technology meant to redirect an asteroid. The mission should launch at the end of this year and in the fall of 2022, the probe should hit the asteroid Dimorphos.
Sources:
- https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/news/nasa-to-participate-in-tabletop-exercise-simulating-asteroid-impact
- https://cneos.jpl.nasa.gov/pd/cs/pdc21/
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