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Officials fromNASAand other international organizations recently complete a mock trial run to assess their power to reply to a hypothetical asteroid potentially crash into Earth in 2038 .
The tabletop exercise went as planned and has largely been deemed a success by those involved . However , several medium exit have misreported what happened , either get it seem like the shock scenario was veridical or that we are worryingly poorly - equipped to deal with it — neither of which is dead on target .
Multiple outlets have misreported newly released findings from the fifth Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise. These misleading headlines either suggest that the hypothetical scenario used in the exercise was real or that officials somehow failed the test.
Between April 2 and April 3 , intimately 100 experts from more than 25 organization in the U.S. and afield — including NASA ’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office , the Federal Emergency Management Agency ( FEMA ) and the Department of State ’s Office of Space Affairs — met at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel , Maryland , to enter in the Planetary Defense Interagency Tabletop Exercise .
This result , which involved team members conversationally discourse potential answer to a hypothetical asteroid tap , was the 5th and largest interlingual rendition of its sort , travel along standardized meetings in 2013 , 2014 , 2016 and 2022 , Live Science ’s baby siteSpace.com reported .
" A large asteroid impact is potentially the only natural calamity mankind has the technology to betoken years in advance and take action to prevent,“Lindley Johnson , the lead program executive director for NASA ’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office , said in astatement about the event . simulate such a scenario can help give experts experience in deal with such situations and spotlight knowledge gaps in current protocols that demand to be addressed in the futurity , he summate .
Officials gathered at the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory in Laurel, Maryland to participate in the tabletop exercise.
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On June 20 , leading member of the exercise team partake and discourse theresults of the latest simulationin anonline news league . During this issue , they also revealed the hypothetic scenario used in this year ’s exercise to the public for the first time .
In the hypothetical new scenario , astronomers discover 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 flight could put it on a collision line with major cities , including Dallas ; Washington , D.C. ; Madrid ; and Algiers , Algeria . Uncertainty over the size of the blank space rock means that any potential impact could kill anywhere from 1,000 and 10 million people .
A slide from the exercise results shows the limited information given to experts about the hypothetical asteroid impact.
Some news program outlets , includingThe Times of IndiaandNDTV News , took this scenario out of linguistic context while reporting on the briefing . They used shoddy newspaper headline that suggested the threat lay out in the exercise was actual and that NASA had " issued a warning " about the impendent peril .
Other electric receptacle — includingthe Daily MailandThe Register — indicate that the exercise show up we are badly disposed to deal with this scenario in real life . However , these report are also inaccurate .
Assessing the threat
This year ’s tabletop exercise present a unequalled and " particularly challenge " scenario to the officials gathered in Maryland , Johnson said .
Despite having more time before the possible impact than in previous iterations of the exercise , experts had less information about the supposititious incoming distance rock than ever before . For representative , they were tell it could be anywhere between 200 and 2,600 feet ( 60 to 800 meters ) astray . Also unclear was the asteroid ’s composition , which affect how destructive it would be .
To make matters worse , the scenario involved the asteroid disappearing behindthe sunfor seven month presently after it was discovered , meaning the expert had to make plans without really knowing what was going to chance .
NASA’s DART mission recently demonstrated that humanity does have the capability to redirect potentially hazardous asteroids to some degree.
The squad considered three option : first , wait for the asteroid to re-emerge for more observance ; second , send a spacecraft to pilot past the asteroid and teach more about it ; and third , launch a mission to vanish alongside the space careen , which would maximize the amount of information we could study about it .
The consensus was to ship a space vehicle to instruct more about the asteroid rather than waiting to see what happens or establish a much more expensive rendezvous delegacy on poor notice . However , the officials also raised concerns about our power to do this , particularly because of how chop-chop such a charge would necessitate to be put together and whether politicians would green - get off the funding ( up to $ 400 million ) without more clarification about the position . As a event , 19 % of the participant said they thought we would be unready to design and carry out such a mission in this scenario .
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Some outlets latched on to this uncertainness , exact that these potential hurdle race would completely trip out up our power to deal with the asteroid . But in reality , most of the experts believed such a military mission was feasible .
Because the tabletop exercise did not simulate anything beyond the initial decision - make stage after the asteroid was discovered , there is also no telling what would have encounter afterward , which makes it unacceptable to pronounce the event as a nonstarter , as several outlets did .
Are we really ready?
In reality , we have never been in a better placement to deal with scenarios like the one in the tabletop use , NASA representative write .
This is partially due to the late triumph of NASA ’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test ( DART ) mission , whichsuccessfully divertedandaltered the physical body ofthe asteroid Dimorphos aftersmashing a spacecraft into iton Sept. 26 , 2022 . Although it ’s not a perfect analogue for stop a potentially deadly asteroid from hitting Earth ( Dimorphos posed no threat to our planet ) , the test exhibit for the first time that the asteroid - bending technique call the " kinetic impactor " method acting is a viable way of protect our planet .
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NASA also plans to launch theNear - Earth Object Surveyor — a space scope dedicated to searching for young near - Earth asteroids — by the summer of 2028 . Once in sphere , the telescope will increase our power to spot dangerous space rocks , including those located close to the sun ’s glare , research worker write .
chronic tabletop exercises like these will also aid improve our zeal for a potential asteroid ten-strike . For example , around 90 % of the player in the late exercise said they felt more prepared to deal with the challenge raised in the physical exertion after it had concluded .
