There are many ways our civilization could come to an abrupt end, but only a handful of them involve forces so powerful and beyond our control that they would be impossible to stop. An asteroid strike is one of those doomsday events that we would be completely defenseless against, and the more we try to find ways around them, the more we realize it’s nearly impossible.
According to the latest count, the number of near-Earth objects (that is, asteroids and comets), meaning those that are close enough to our planet to pose a potential danger to it, is over 20,000. We know the orbits and behavior of many of them, but not all of them, and this has worried many people in powerful places. So much so, in fact, that some are actively trying to do something about it.
In 2013, for example, the US space agency launched a series of meetings called the Interagency Planetary Defense Tabletop Exercise. Dedicated to all those who have a say in planetary defense, the exercise takes place every two years and each time focuses on a new impact scenario for which solutions need to be found.
We’ve known about such things for a while now. In 2021, for example, during the 7th IAA Planetary Defense Conference, the name of the game was responding to an asteroid strike happening somewhere in Europe.
This scenario from three years ago called for Earthlings to know about the asteroid six months before the time of impact and try to find ways to stop the rock. When it was all said and done, it turned out that six months isn’t nearly enough time for us to do anything about an incoming asteroid. So the exercise eventually turned from an active operation into an evacuation game for the populations of Germany, the Czech Republic and Austria, where the scenario said the asteroid would hit.
But how about 14 years? Would this be enough time for us to find a more proactive solution?
Photo: NASA
14 years is the time frame from the discovery of an asteroid to one hitting our planet in the latest tabletop exercise conducted as part of the fifth interagency meeting on planetary defense, which took place in April at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory Hopkins in Laurel, Maryland. .
We are talking about this exercise now because a preliminary report on it was recently published, and even if it presents a rather incomplete picture of what we can do about such a threat, it makes me feel once again that if a asteroid is coming, were pretty drunk.
The exercise scenario, designed by NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, the group that calculates the orbit of every known near-Earth object, revolved around an asteroid “maybe a few hundred meters across” being seen coming our way.
Simulated math carried out as part of the scenario said it had a 72 percent chance of hitting our world 14 years after the discovery, with impact zones estimated to be nondescript, heavily populated areas in North America, Southern Europe and Northern Africa.
According to the rules of the board game, the asteroid would play a sort of game of hide and seek. It would be visible to our tracking methods for months at a time, but then it would move too close to the Sun, making it impossible for humans to continue tracking it for months at a time.
The idea behind this scenario was to see what could be done to stop the asteroid or mitigate the effects of its impact.
Photo: NASA
About 100 scientists from US and international organizations scratched their heads trying to figure out the best course of action. They considered almost everything, from sending a reconnaissance spacecraft to learn more about the asteroid’s size, composition and orbit, to trying to change its trajectory as the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft showed ( DART) that we could easily do.
We are not told exactly which solution for this scenario turned out to be the best, if any. What NASA says is this “any diversionary or reconnaissance mission would require many years of preparation,” and in my book, that means no, not even 14 years of advanced warning would be enough to protect us from space damage.
The good thing is that, according to NASA, “Major asteroid hitting Earth is highly unlikely for the foreseeable future.” At least that’s what we know for now, because later this month, the world’s only space telescope dedicated to finding these things, the Wide-Field Infrared Survey Explorer of Near-Earth Objects (NEOWISE), will die at work.
A new telescope, “First purpose-built infrared space telescope dedicated to hunting dangerous near-Earth objects”, will be launched in 2027. NASA hopes that by using it, we will learn about more than 90 percent of the dangerous pieces of rock that orbit our planet within a radius of 30 million miles (48 million km).
We’re told to expect “a full after-action report on the tabletop exercise,” including strengths, gaps and recommendations, so we’ll update this story as soon as we know more.