The Earth is poorly prepared for an asteroid impact

• Report suggests we are ill-prepared in the unlikely event of a space rock impact
• READ MORE: NASA detects ‘cataclysmic’ collision of giant asteroids

The extinction of humanity by a huge boulder from space hitting the Earth at thousands of kilometers per hour is one of the possible causes.

A new report raises concerns: It suggests that we are not prepared for such an eventuality – even if we had discovered the object 14 years ago.

The official NASA and US government document states that asteroid disaster management plans are “not defined.”

In addition, there is a “limited willingness” to carry out space missions that could reduce the risk of an asteroid impact – as in the film “Armageddon” with Bruce Willis and Ben Affleck.

In this 1998 blockbuster, NASA sends a team of drillers to blow up a near-Earth asteroid and save humanity.

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The report was written as part of the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise, a simulation event organized by NASA and the US government.

Although there are “no significant known threats from asteroid impacts in the foreseeable future,” the biennial event assesses the ability of leading experts to prepare for such an impact.

“The decision-making process for space missions in the event of an asteroid threat remains unclear,” the report says.

“The process is not sufficiently defined either in the United States or internationally,” it continues.

During the exercise, experts considered possible national and global responses to a hypothetical scenario in which a never-before-discovered asteroid had a 72 percent probability of hitting Earth in about 14 years.

In the hypothetical scenario, it was not possible to accurately determine the size, composition and long-term trajectory of the asteroid.

However, models suggested that if the asteroid were to hit, it could cause devastating damage on the scale of a region or country.

To make matters worse, important follow-up observations would have to be postponed by at least seven months – a critical loss of time – as the asteroid passes behind the Sun as seen from Earth.

“The uncertainties of this exercise baseline allowed participants to consider a number of particularly challenging circumstances,” said Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer emeritus at NASA Headquarters in Washington.

“The impact of a large asteroid may be the only natural disaster that humanity can predict and prevent years in advance thanks to its technology.”

Unfortunately, the investigation found that officials do not have a good understanding of decision-making processes and risk tolerance.

What is worrying is that, according to the findings, “no disaster management plans have been defined in the event of an asteroid impact” and more attention needs to be paid to “timely global coordination” to raise public awareness of the danger posed by such a space rock.

Of course, exercises like these are an important part of preparing for the unlikely event of a rock impact in space, similar to the one who wiped out the dinosaurs.

According to NASA’s Near-Earth Object Program, on average the Earth will be hit by a football-field-sized rock every 5,000 years and by an asteroid every million years that could mean the end of civilization.

With the asteroid deflection mission DART, NASA has already reached an extremely important milestone.

In September 2022, the DART spacecraft was intentionally guided towards the asteroid Dimorphos, 11 million kilometers away.

Although this asteroid posed no threat to Earth, the successful mission proved that such a method could – if necessary – influence the trajectory of a space rock.

According to a 2017 study, only asteroids with a diameter of at least 18 meters (almost 60 feet) are potentially fatal if they head toward Earth.

Ceres, the largest known asteroid in the entire solar system, has a diameter of 580 miles (more than 3 million feet) – large enough to support humans.

Fortunately, the chances of Ceres hitting Earth are low because its orbit is further away between Mars and Jupiter and does not intersect with Earth.

Unfortunately, there are some types of space rocks that are difficult or impossible to intercept with man-made objects, a study shows.

“Rubble pile” asteroids – such as Itokawa, about 1.9 million kilometers away – consist of loose boulders and rocks that clump together under the influence of gravity, so that much of them consists of empty space.

Such an asteroid would act as a “space cushion” by absorbing the impact energy and continuing its trajectory, the study authors claimed.