What happens if an asteroid heads for earth? Well, we're all stuffed - Nasa expert

Thursday, 15 December 2016

A potentially hazardous space object generally hits Earth every 50 years, Nasa says.

A Nasa scientist has spoken out to warn that human extinction is inevitable when an asteroid, big enough, comes for us.

Not enough was being done to prepare, he suggested, despite Nasa recently opening a 'Planetary Defence Office'.

A dashboard camera view of a meteor lighting up the USA in May.

At a meeting with nuclear scientists, Nasa researcher Dr Joseph Nuth said technology could be used to 'mitigate' the possibility of wipe out if a hazardous asteroid were on course for Earth, The Guardian reported.

In 2014, a huge comet risked colliding with Mars – only 225 million km from Earth.

The comet, that was between 8 to 50km wide, could have created a crater 500km in diameter, scientists estimated. The hurtling comet was only discovered in January 2013, 22 months before it passed Mars.

Long term planning would be required to deflect or destroy an asteroid, Nasa says.

* Europe will send a rover to Mars but won't protect Earth from asteroids

* Asteroid shaves Earth, hours after astronomers spotted the space rock**

Had the comet been on path for Earth, we discovered it too late, Nuth told The Guardian.

We couldn't have done a thing.

'If you look at the schedule for high-reliability spacecraft and launching them, it takes five years to launch a spacecraft. We had 22 months of total warning,' he said.

At the American Geophysical Union meeting, Nuth and other Nasa scientists discussed measures that could be taken to save us all, if a asteroid were to come.

Sending up a nuke seemed to be a primary strategy, the scientists revealed to Gizmodo.

Nuth told the meeting he did not speak for Nasa.

Even sending a nuclear warhead to destroy an asteroid would require long-term planning, Nasa said. Technology did not yet exist that could realistically stop an asteroid of deadly size, the agency has publicly said.

'No known weapon system could stop the mass because of the velocity at which it travels,' a Nasa statement said.

2016 has been the year Governments have started to get serious about the threat asteroids pose to Earth.

June 30 was officially the first International Asteroid Day, as proclaimed by the United Nations.

The day was to 'raise public awareness of the asteroid impact hazard', a United Nations' statement said.

Earlier, in February, the US Government established a dedicated team to research the potential risks of an asteroid strike and our capability to deal with it.

A US military man was appointed to lead efforts to prepare Earth for potential asteroid Armageddon. After 23-years in the Air Force – where he was responsible for ensuring military assets didn't encounter any meteors or asteroids – Lindley Johnson was given the title of planetary defense officer.

Part of his job at Nasa involved working with the Federal Emergency Management Agency in the USA, the military and other international disaster management agencies, he told Bloomberg.

'The hazard has always been there. It's just that we began to realise it and understand it more as we were finding asteroids in orbit that came close to Earth orbit,' he said in an interview after getting the job.

Nasa's Planetary Defense Office was tasked with informing the US Government of asteroid risk and working with global agencies to attempt and deflect the asteroids, its website stated.

So far, however, there had been no actual plan, protocol or machine dedicated to deflecting asteroids.

Before deflecting the asteroids, we would need to find them first.

Nasa's own statement admitted current investments were not capable of discovering all the asteroids at risk of hitting Earth.

'Based on statistical population estimates, about 74 per cent of near Earth objects larger than 460 feet still remain to be discovered,' the agency said.

Nasa blamed the limitations of ground-based observatories, that could only operate on clear nights.

More dedicated satellites were required to monitor space for hazardous objects, the agency said.

According to Nasa, a hazardous object – similar to the asteroid that caused mass panic in Russia in 2013 – would hit Earth about once every 50-years.