How to Spot Killer Asteroid Years in Advance Before it Hits Earth

Scientists from NASA and other space agencies all over the world last month experienced a disturbing hypothetical scenario: A bizarre asteroid had just been found 35 million miles away, and it was on its way to Earth. In six months the space rock was anticipated to hit.

(Photo : Getty Images)

The Short-warning Scenario 

The situation was imaginary, part of a week-long exercise that mimicked an approaching asteroid in order to assist US and international scientists rehearse on how to react to such a situation. The simulation made the group learn a difficult lesson: If an asteroid that is Earth-bound were discovered with just that little warning, no one could do anything to keep it from hitting the planet.

The scientists found out that no ever-existing technologies could prevent the asteroid from striking, given the six-month window of the scenario. There is no spacecraft that has the capability of destroying an asteroid or taking it off its path that could fly off the ground and get to the rock within that time frame.

Manager of NASA's Center for Near-Earth Object Studies, Paul Chodas, assisted in hosting the current simulation, and also five past ones like it. He said this operation set the members up for failure. He told Insider: "It's what we refer to as a short-warning scenario, It was very challenging by design." Actually, if an asteroid like that imaginary one were going to Earth,  experts would need not months, but years of warning. 

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The Hazardous Space Rocks 

They would need a minimum of five years, as stated by Chodas. The rest like MIT astronomer Richard Binzel, say experts would need not less than a decade. Binzel told Insider: " The most crucial commodity you could possibly wish for is time if confronted with an actual asteroid threat."

But experts haven't recognized most of the dangerous space rocks that pass close to our planet, which makes the chances that they would get a warning period of five- or 10-year very slim. Congress made effort to address this problem in 2005 by decreeing that NASA discover and track 90% of all objects near the Earth 460 feet (140 meters) or larger.

(Photo : Getty Images)

Impacts of Asteroid

Asteroids could wipe out a city the size of New York at that size. But to date, NASA has only identified around 40% of those objects."What that implies is, for now, we are depending on luck to safeguard us from serious asteroid impacts," Binzel said. "But the plan isn't luck." 

In NASA's current simulation, the scientists involved had no idea how enormous the hypothetical asteroid was until a week before it was ready to hit Earth. A researcher at the Planetary Science Institute, Sarah Sonnett, who was involved in the exercise, told Insider they were not aware if the object was 500 meters across or 35 meters across. And that makes a lot of difference. 

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