NASA carries out emergency asteroid drills as space experts warn a strike WILL happen
Boffins say it is a ‘matter of when not if’ a huge rock mass slams into Earth and causes catastrophe as scientists simulate hypothetical collision in 2020
A SPACE expert has said it is a ‘matter of when not if’ an asteroid slams into Earth and causes catastrophe.
The possibility of such a terrible event is considered by many to be small but boffins at NASA say it is something mankind should be taking seriously.
Thomas Zurbuchen, who works for the iconic American space organisation, said: “It’s not a matter of if – but when – we will deal with such a situation.”
NASA have teamed up with FEMA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA, .
Their latest exercise involved experts preparing for the aftermath of a hypothetical object 300-800 feet wide that is approaching the Earth far too quickly for it to be redirected.
This would need a mass evacuation of areas where there was a 100% chance of impact – like the metropolitan Los Angeles area.
The simulation was carried out on October 25 in El Segundo, California, and allowed the scientists to demonstrate the ways in which it would collect, analyse, and share data about an asteroid collision.
Emergency workers also tried to figure out ways in which this data could be used to prepare and warn the public in response to a potential hit.
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Mr Zurbuchen added: “Unlike any other time in our history, we now have the ability to respond to an impact threat through continued observations, predictions, response planning and mitigation.”
Craig Fugate, from FEMA, said: “It is critical to exercise these kinds of low-probability but high-consequence disaster scenarios.
“By working through our emergency response plans now, we will be better prepared if and when we need to respond to such an event.”
In the made-up scenario researchers detected the fictitious asteroid this autumn with a 2 percent probability impact with Earth on September 20, 2020.
Initial estimates stated that the impact could happen anywhere on a long stretch of Earth, including a band that crossed the entire USA.
But, in the fictitious scenario, observations from telescopes tracking the object for three months determined the chance of impact would actually be 65 percent.
Subsequent observations were then delayed four months due to the asteroid’s positon relative to the sun, and when they resume in May 2017, the hypothetical impact probability had jumped to 100 percent.
By November of that year, the researchers say the made-up asteroid would strike somewhere along a path between Southern California and the coast of the Pacific Ocean.
This scenario describes a timeframe that’s too short to feasibly conduct a deflection mission, meaning the emergency managers must evacuate the region.
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