Officials from NASA and other international organizations recently completed a mock test to assess their ability to respond to a hypothetical asteroid that could hit Earth in 2038.
The tabletop exercise went as planned and was largely considered a success by stakeholders. However, several media outlets misreported what happened, making it appear either that the impact scenario was real or that we were alarmingly ill-equipped to deal with it – neither of which is true.
Between April 2 and April 3, nearly 100 experts from more than 25 organizations in the U.S. and abroad—including NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA), and the State Department’s Office of Space Affairs—met at Johns. Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland to participate in an interagency planetary defense tabletop exercise.
The event, in which team members informally discussed potential responses to a hypothetical asteroid strike, was the fifth and largest of its kind, following similar meetings in 2013, 2014, 2016 and 2022, according to sister site Live Science. This was reported by the Space.com server.
“A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural disaster that humanity has the technology to predict years in advance and take measures to prevent,” Lindley Johnsonprogram manager for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, said the Rev statement of action. Simulating such a scenario can help provide experts with experience in dealing with such situations and highlight knowledge gaps in current protocols that need to be addressed in the future, he added.
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On June 20, senior members of the exercise team shared and discussed the the results of the latest simulation in an online press conference. During this event, the hypothetical scenario used in this year’s exercise was also revealed to the public for the first time.
In a hypothetical new scenario, astronomers detect a large asteroid with a 72% chance of hitting Earth in 14 years – on July 12, 2038. Detailed information about this fictional asteroid is not immediately available, but its trajectory could be on a collision course. with major cities, including Dallas; Washington DC; Madrid; and Algiers, Algeria. Uncertainty about the size of the space rock means that any potential impact could kill anywhere from 1,000 to 10 million people.
Some news media, incl The Times of India and NDTV News, took that scenario out of context when reporting on the briefing. They used misleading headlines suggesting that the threat presented in the exercise was real and that NASA had “issued a warning” about the impending danger.
Other stores – included Daily Mail and Registration — suggested that the exercise showed us ill-prepared to deal with this real-life scenario. However, these reports are also inaccurate.
Threat assessment
This year’s tabletop exercise presented a unique and “particularly challenging” scenario for officials gathered in Maryland, Johnson said.
Despite having more time before a potential impact than in previous iterations of the exercise, experts had less information about the hypothetical incoming space rock than ever before. For example, they were told it could be 200 to 2,600 feet (60 to 800 meters) wide. Also unclear was the asteroid’s composition, which affects how destructive it will be.
To make matters worse, the scenario involved the asteroid disappearing behind the Sun for seven months shortly after it was discovered, meaning experts had to make plans without really knowing what would happen.
The team considered three options: first, to wait for the asteroid to reappear to make further observations; second, send a spacecraft to fly by the asteroid and learn more about it; and third, launch a mission with a flyby of the space rock, which would maximize the amount of information we could learn about it.
The consensus was to send a spacecraft to learn more about the asteroid, rather than waiting to see what would happen, or to launch a much more expensive encounter at short notice. But officials also expressed concern about whether we could do it, particularly because of how quickly such a mission would need to be put together and whether politicians would greenlight funding (up to $400 million) without further clarification. As a result, 19% of participants said they thought we would not be prepared to plan and execute such a mission in this scenario.
Related: Could scientists stop a ‘planet killer’ asteroid from hitting Earth?
Some outlets have seized on this uncertainty, arguing that these potential obstacles will completely undermine our ability to deal with the asteroid. However, in reality, most experts believed that such a mission was feasible.
Because the tabletop exercise didn’t simulate anything beyond the initial decision-making phase after the asteroid was discovered, there’s also no telling what would happen afterward, making it impossible to call the event a failure, as several outlets have done.
Are we really ready?
In fact, we have never been in a better position to deal with scenarios like the one in the tabletop exercise, NASA officials wrote.
This is due in part to the recent triumph of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission, which successfully diverted and changed shape after the asteroid Dimorphos crash a spaceship into it on September 26, 2022. Although not a perfect analogy for stopping a potentially deadly asteroid from impacting Earth (Dimorphos posed no threat to our planet), the test showed for the first time that an asteroid deflection technique called a “kinetic impactor” method is a viable way to protect our planets.
NASA also plans to launch Surveyor of near-Earth objects — a space telescope dedicated to searching for new near-Earth asteroids — by the summer of 2028. Once in orbit, the telescope will increase our ability to spot dangerous space rocks, including those located near solar radiation, the researchers wrote.
Continuing tabletop exercises like these will also help improve our preparedness for a potential asteroid strike. For example, approximately 90% of participants in a recent exercise said they felt prepared to deal with the challenges the exercise raised after it ended.