Officials from NASA and other international agencies recently completed a pilot test to assess their ability to respond to a hypothetical asteroid that could crash into Earth in 2038.
The tabletop exercise went as planned and is largely considered a success by those involved. However, several media outlets have misreported what happened, making it seem as if the impact scenario was real, or that we are worryingly ill-equipped to deal with it – neither of which is true.
Between April 2 and 3, nearly 100 experts from more than 25 organizations in the US and abroad – including NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the State Department’s Office of Space Affairs – gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland, to participate in the Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise.
This event, in which team members informally discussed possible responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact, was the fifth and largest version of its kind, following similar meetings in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2022, Live Science’s sister site. Space.com reports this.
“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.” Lindsey Johnsonthe chief program director of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office said in a statement about the event. Simulating such a scenario can give experts experience in dealing with such situations and highlight knowledge gaps in current protocols that need to be addressed in the future, he added.
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On June 20, leading practice team members shared and discussed the results of the latest simulation in a online press conference. During this event, they also revealed to the public for the first time the hypothetical scenario used in this year’s exercise.
In the hypothetical new scenario, astronomers detect a large asteroid with a 72% chance of hitting Earth within 14 years – on July 12, 2038. Detailed information about this fictional asteroid is not immediately available, but its trajectory could put it on a collision course . with major cities including Dallas; Washington, DC; Madrid; and Algiers, Algeria. Uncertainty about the size of the space rock means that any potential impact could kill anywhere from 1,000 to 10 million people.
Some news outlets, including The times of India And NDTV News, took this scenario out of context when reporting on the briefing. They used misleading headlines suggesting that the threat outlined in the exercise was real and that NASA had “issued a warning” about the impending danger.
Other outlets – included the daily email And The register – suggested that the exercise showed that we are ill-prepared to deal with this scenario in real life. However, these reports are also incorrect.
Assessing the threat
This year’s tabletop exercise presented a unique and “particularly challenging” scenario for officials gathered in Maryland, Johnson said.
Despite having more time to consider the potential impact than previous iterations of the exercise, experts had less information about the hypothetical incoming space rock than ever before. For example, they were told that it could be anywhere from 60 to 800 meters wide. Also unclear was the asteroid’s composition, which affects how destructive it would be.
To make matters worse, the scenario involved the asteroid disappearing behind the sun for seven months shortly after it was discovered, meaning the experts had to make plans without really knowing what was going to happen.
The team considered three options: first, wait for the asteroid to reappear for more observations; second, send a spacecraft to fly by the asteroid and learn more about it; and third, launch a mission to fly by the space rock, maximizing the amount of information we can learn about it.
The consensus was to send a spacecraft to learn more about the asteroid, rather than waiting to see what happens or launching a much more expensive rendezvous mission at short notice. However, officials also expressed concerns about our ability to do this, especially given the speed at which such a mission would have to be set up and whether politicians would greenlight the funding (up to $400 million) without more clarity on the situation. As a result, 19% of participants said they thought we would not be ready to plan and execute such a mission in this scenario.
Related: Can scientists prevent a ‘planet killer’ asteroid from hitting Earth?
Some media outlets seized on this uncertainty, claiming that these potential hurdles would completely undermine our ability to deal with the asteroid. But in reality, most experts believed that such a mission was feasible.
Since the tabletop exercise simulated nothing more than the initial decision-making phase after the asteroid was discovered, there is no telling what would have happened next, making it impossible to label the event a failure, as several media outlets did.
Are we really ready?
In reality, we have never been in a better position to deal with scenarios like those in the tabletop exercise, NASA representatives wrote.
This is partly due to the recent triumph of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission successfully redirected And changed the shape of the asteroid Dimorphos after throwing a spacecraft at it on September 26, 2022. While not a perfect analogy for preventing a potentially deadly asteroid from hitting Earth (Dimorphos posed no threat to our planet), the test showed for the first time that the asteroid deflection technique, the ‘kinetic impactor’ Called, This method is a viable way to protect our planet.
NASA also plans to use the Surveyor of objects near the Earth – a space telescope aimed at searching for new asteroids near Earth – by summer 2028. Once in orbit, the telescope will increase our ability to spot dangerous space rocks, including those close to the glare from the sun, researchers wrote.
Continuing such tabletop exercises will also help improve our preparedness for a possible asteroid impact. For example, approximately 90% of participants in the recent exercise said they felt better prepared to tackle the challenges that emerged during the exercise after it was completed.