A threatening asteroid could bring Earth’s often feuding nations together, at least for a while.
Dealing with a large, dangerous asteroid that appears to have our planet in its crosshairs will require a healthy dose of international cooperation, experts say – and it’s best to start thinking about this scenario now, while we have plenty of time to define a potential response. frame.
The United Nations (UN) has developed “procedures for responding to tsunamis and other major events,” said Leviticus “LA” Lewis, the U.S. Federal Emergency Management Agency’s (FEMA) Office of Emergency Coordination. Planetary Defense (PDCO) of NASA, during a press conference. briefing Thursday (June 20). “But for an asteroid impact, we think it will be such a magnitude that we will have to discuss at this point what it would take for such a large-scale international response,” he added.
Part of this response would involve coordinating the evacuation of people in the potential impact zone, which would likely cover a wide swath of terrain, given the speed at which asteroids move through space and the difficulty of determining the trajectory of a new asteroid. (Small uncertainties in this calculated trajectory would cause large differences in the projected impact point on Earth. And the new space rocks are the ones to worry about; none of the large asteroids we already know about pose a threat to our planet for the foreseeable future.)
“If we’re talking about multiple countries and multiple people having to travel and respond to a very large area, that could be a challenge,” Lewis said. “We need to get organized and start talking about what it would actually take to coordinate a large-scale effort. And who would be responsible for it? What organization? How would we create it? Would it be the UN? Would it be a combination of international organizations? How could we actually achieve this?
Lewis was discussing the results of the Fifth Interagency Planetary Defense Simulation Exercise, an asteroid threat simulation held April 2-3 at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) in Maryland.
The exercise – the fifth of its kind carried out by researchers, following similar efforts in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2022 – aimed “to inform and assess our ability as a nation to respond effectively to the threat of an asteroid or of a potentially dangerous comet,’ NASA officials said in a statement.
The participants — nearly 100 people from various U.S. federal agencies and international institutions — considered the following hypothetical scenario: Scientists have just discovered a relatively large asteroid that appears to be on a trajectory to impact Earth. There is a 72% chance that it will reach our planet on July 12, 2038, along a long corridor that includes major cities like Dallas, Memphis, Madrid and Algiers.
But this is just a first look, with many key facts still unclear or unknown. For example, we don’t know exactly how big the asteroid is; its estimated size range is 200 feet to 2,600 feet (60 to 800 meters). And researchers don’t know its composition, which is a very important detail; a dense metallic or stony asteroid would behave quite differently – both during a potential deflection attempt and upon impact – than a “rubble pile” of earth and gravel like Bennu, the space rock that NASA’s OSIRIS-REx probe visited and sampled a few years ago. .
“The uncertainties associated with the exercise’s initial conditions allowed participants to contemplate a particularly challenging set of circumstances,” Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer emeritus at NASA Headquarters in Washington, said in the same statement. “A major asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster that humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take action to prevent.”
Related: Potentially dangerous asteroids (images)
We won’t know more about the new space rock for some time: the exercise stated that it had just disappeared behind the sun from Earth’s perspective, making further telescope observations impossible for the next seven month.
Participants in the April exercise — hosted by PDCO and FEMA, with assistance from the U.S. State Department’s Office of Outer Space Affairs — discussed potential next steps.
They looked at three main possibilities for the near future, one of which was to do nothing until more telescope observations could be made. The other two were to begin studying, and perhaps even developing, a survey mission to the menacing space rock – either a flyby or a more complex, specially designed rendezvous effort that would get closer to the asteroid for a long period.
The flyover would likely cost between $200 million and $400 million. The price tag for the rendezvous mission would be higher – in the range of $800 million to $1 billion.
Most senior leaders in the exercise favored options two or three “but noted that political realities would limit immediate action,” says an initial report on the simulation, which you can find here.
This report includes a selection of comments from anonymous participants in the exercise. “The most important point of the morning was the discussion on the political nature of decision-making,” read one such comment.
Another emphasized the global nature of the challenge, as did Lewis: “Early international participation will be crucial. This credibility is essential and must be established now. »
The exercise did not result in any strict rules that must be followed when a threatening asteroid is discovered. (And planetary defense experts say it is indeed a question of “when” rather than “if”; at some point, a large space rock will be headed our way.) But such prescriptions were not expected; rather, the main goal was to examine the possibilities and become more familiar with the actions that the scientific and international community would take to deal with the arrival of an asteroid.
“The actual plan, the specific results of the exercise, don’t amount to anything,” Johnson said during Thursday’s briefing. “It’s the process of planning and working together, communicating and working together that is what this exercise is really about.”