In a serious step to safeguard Earth from potential disaster, Nasa has launched its technique to counter “planet killer” asteroids, drawing inspiration from the extinction occasion that worn out the dinosaurs 66 million years in the past.
The plan outlined in Nasa’s Nationwide Preparedness Technique and Motion Plan for Close to-Earth Objects (NEOs) and Hazards, particulars a multi-pronged method to defend in opposition to harmful NEOs.
The plan: Spacecraft armies or nukes?
Whereas there isn’t any rapid asteroid menace, Nasa is making ready for worst-case eventualities. One choice entails sending a “1,000-strong military” of spacecraft to intercept and deflect a big asteroid hurtling towards Earth.
In additional excessive instances, Nasa is contemplating a nuclear resolution—echoing the plot of the 1998 movie “Armageddon”—the place a nuclear machine could be used to interrupt up or divert an asteroid on a collision course with the planet.
Profitable testing: DART mission
Nasa’s first line of defence contains kinetic impactors. In 2022, the company efficiently examined the Double Asteroid Redirection Check (DART) mission, slamming a spacecraft right into a non-threatening asteroid and altering its trajectory.
This take a look at demonstrated Nasa’s functionality to redirect hazardous house rocks, proving a key technique of their planetary defence technique.
Nuclear contingency plan
In conditions the place an asteroid is detected with little time to behave, Nasa could resort to nuclear explosives. If a large asteroid is barely months away from impression, a nuclear blast might deflect or fragment it, stopping a planet-wide catastrophe.
Potential consequence of a strike
Nasa’s planning comes with the popularity of what might occur if a planet-killer asteroid, related in dimension to the one which brought on the Chicxulub occasion, have been to strike Earth.
The impression would trigger intense warmth, vaporise supplies, and ship mud clouds into the environment, blocking daylight and triggering an “impression winter.” Such situations might result in mass extinction, just like the occasion that ended the age of the dinosaurs.
