NASA is exploring a bizarre scenario in which an elusive asteroid heads towards Earth

What if it is likely that a newly discovered asteroid will hit Earth in fourteen years?

But that is not everything. This menacing space rock, with a diameter of about 330 to 1,050 feet (or 100 to 320 meters), has just disappeared behind the sun, making crucial observations impossible for the next seven months.

In preparation for such a disturbing one scenarioNASA 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 could pose a number of uncertainties, which the space agency continued to test during the recent fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.

“A major asteroid impact may be the only natural disaster that humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent,” Lindley Johnson, NASA planetary defense officer emeritus, said in a statement.

Importantly, no asteroids have been on a collision course with Earth for at least 100 years, and the chance of a major impact in our lifetime is extremely small, astronomers say. Planetary defense organizations have never had to raise the alarm about an impending impact – although you’ve no doubt seen sensational news about impending asteroids over the years.

“We never actually issued a warning,” Johnson previously told Mashable. (But they did educate the public on what some interesting asteroids do.)

“We never actually issued a warning.”

But at some point an impact is inevitable. “Yes, asteroids have hit Earth throughout its history, and it will happen again,” NASA notes.

Mashable speed of light

In the latest asteroid collision scenario, the space agency presented a hypothetical object with a diameter of about 100 to 300 meters, which has a 72 percent chance of turning over the Earth. Something in that range, while far from the largest class of asteroids, could be enormously destructive. Take the 180 meter deep ‘Meteor Crater’, which landed in present-day Arizona 50,000 years ago. The culprit was probably about 100 to 150 feet wide, but it caused an explosion big enough to destroy Kansas City.

As the hypothetical trajectory below shows, this asteroid will pass over some densely populated areas like Dallas, which would almost certainly cause a national emergency, even though the exact trajectory is uncertain. The impact of the scenario is expected in fourteen years, in July 2038, leaving countries with relatively little time to prepare – especially with a seven-month gap in surveillance. From the first observations, the size, composition and trajectory of the object are uncertain.

“To further complicate this year’s hypothetical scenario, vital follow-up observations would have to be delayed by at least seven months – a critical loss of time – while the asteroid passed by the Sun as seen from Earth’s vantage point in space,” it said space agency. said.

This latest planetary defense exercise underlines how crucial monitoring of near-Earth objects (i.e., objects that come within about 50 million kilometers of Earth’s orbit around the Sun) is. Fourteen years is a rushed timeline.

“You have to know what’s coming, when it’s coming and how hard it’s going to hit,” Eric Christensen, the director of the NEO-searching Catalina Sky Survey in Arizona, previously told Mashable.

“You have to know what’s coming, when it’s coming and how hard it’s going to hit.”

Among the actions discussed by NASA, FEMA and other partners were a flyby of the incoming object, which would greatly improve our understanding of its composition, rotation, speed and more. Will it break up into smaller pieces in Earth’s atmosphere? Is it rubble or solid? What are the chances of it ending up in the ocean? Also discussed was the major operation, a ‘Purpose-Built Rendezvous’, which involves using a spacecraft to deflect an object.

Deflecting asteroids is a realistic future possibility. In 2022, NASA plunged a spacecraft the size of a refrigerator into an asteroid the size of a stadium, hoping simply bump It. It was an unprecedented, successful test – proving that humanity could change the path of a menacing asteroid, should one ever come our way. The impact cut asteroid Dimorphos’ loop around its parent planet (they travel as a pair or binary system around the Sun) by as much as 33 minutes and 15 seconds – while the original goal was to change it by at least 73 seconds.

Ultimately, this final tabletop impact exercise resulted in a number of high-level takeaways. A notable problem is the uncertainties associated with planning for a likely impact. The participants recommended “developing the capability to quickly launch a NEO [near-Earth object] exploration mission,” which could include repurposing existing spacecraft.

Fortunately, NASA and its planetary defense partners will continue to field hypothetical asteroid threats. It behooves us to be prepared, even if the overall risk is low.

The risks of an asteroid impact

Here are the common risks today from asteroids and comets, both minor and very major. (Importantly, even relatively small rocks are still threatening, like the surprising 17-meter rock that exploded over Russia in 2013, blowing out people’s windows.

• Every day, about 100 tons of dust and sand particles fall through the Earth’s atmosphere and immediately burn up.

• Every year, on average, an asteroid the size of a car crashes through our skies and explodes, NASA explains.

• Impacts from objects with a diameter of about 140 meters occur every 10,000 to 20,000 years.

• A “dinosaur-killing” impact of a rock perhaps half a mile wide or larger occurs on a timescale of 100 million years.