Imagine this: Scientists have just detected an asteroid hurtling toward Earth. According to their calculations, the damage would be catastrophic, and we don’t have long to prepare. Experts determine that the best plan of action would be to launch armed spacecraft , perhaps with nukes, to rendezvous with the asteroid.
Though this sounds suspiciously like the plot of
Armageddon, it’s
also the plot of the sixth International Academy of Astronautics Planetary Defense Conference. Representatives from NASA, the Federal Emergency Management Agency, the European Space Agency, the U.N., and other international space experts have gathered in College Park, Maryland, this week to do a cosmic fire drill. The premise of this role-play universe begins with an imaginary asteroid called 2019 PDC, which has a 1 in 100 chance of striking Earth in 2027. According to
NASA, those odds were selected for this drill because experts worldwide generally agree that that’s the threshold for when we should take collective action.
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A great deal of discussion has focused on how best to deflect the asteroid’s path. Some suggested deploying kinetic impactors, launched to collide with the asteroid and knock it into a different path, as well as launching nuclear weapons. The problem is that scientists aren’t yet sure exactly how each method would move the asteroid because they’re not sure of the asteroid’s mass, which, as you may guess, matters a lot when it comes to physics. The logistics of this exercise assume that humankind will send a probe up to study the asteroid more closely, but given the lag in how long it takes for spacecraft to reach the asteroid, scientists will need to make a decision about their deflection method
before the probe sends back additional data.