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Earlier this week, NASA launched a five-day simulation exercise that was set to help the organization better prepare for any potential asteroid impact the Earth might encounter in the near future. Though the scenario remains an unlikely situation, NASA has opted to take the better safe than sorry approach.
According to
NASA, the exercise is a pre-emptive simulation that is lead by the Center for Near Earth Object studies, which aims to test how agencies and experts from across the world would respond to a potential asteroid wipe-out situation. NASA’s own Planetary Defense Officer Lindley Johnson said, “Each time we participate in an exercise of this nature, we learn more about who the key players are in a disaster event, and who needs to know what information, and when. These exercises ultimately help the planetary defense community communicate with each other and with our governments to ensure we are all coordinated should a potential impact threat be iden
Hypothetical Asteroid Devastates Europe in Doomsday NASA Simulation
AYLIN WOODWARD & MORGAN MCFALL-JOHNSEN, BUSINESS INSIDER
3 MAY 2021
Scientists around the world have been bamboozled this week by a fictitious asteroid heading toward Earth.
A group of experts from US and European space agencies attended a week-long exercise led by NASA in which they faced a hypothetical scenario: An asteroid 35 million miles away was approaching the planet and could hit within six months.
With each passing day of the exercise, the participants learned more about the asteroid s size, trajectory, and chance of impact. Then they had to cooperate and use their technological knowledge to see if anything could be done to stop the space rock.
Earth defenceless against city-killer asteroid that could wipe out Europe, NASA finds
An international team of experts rehearsed the global response to the threat of a giant asteroid on a collision course with Earth – and concluded we d be unable to stop one
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Combined with its Super Heavy rocket Booster, SpaceX claims Starship will be “the world’s most powerful launch vehicle ever developed”, and could theoretically be used to assist missions designed to divert the path of an Earth-bound asteroid.
Nasa is already working on asteroid deflection technology and is planning a launch its first test mission of its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) system in late 2021 before reaching the asteroid Dimorphos in autumn 2022.
The mission will attempt to change the orbit of the asteroid and hopefully offer prove that such a mitigation strategy could work on dangerous near-Earth objects (NEO) in the future.
Getty/Joe Raedle
Nasa’s Center for Near Earth Object Studies began the tests earlier this week in an effort to find out how experts could respond to a killer asteroid scenario.
Nasa is taking the “better safe than sorry” approach. Earlier this week, the space agency kicked off a five-day “tabletop exercise” that simulates a hypothetical asteroid impact on Earth–a scenario that reportedly remains very unlikely at this point. The exercise, which is being lead by Center for Near Earth Object Studies, aims to test how experts and agencies across the world would respond to a potential killer-asteroid situation.