5 January 2016
The White House has published a 25-page report
on ‘National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy,’ detailing preparations
in the event that a celestial object such as a ‘killer asteroid’ is found to be
on a collision course with Earth.
The report was written by the Interagency
Working Group (IWG) for Detecting and Mitigating the Impact
of Earth-bound Near-Earth Objects (DAMIEN). The document's purpose is to
"seek to improve our Nation's preparedness to address the hazard
of near-Earth object (NEO) impacts by enhancing the integration
of existing national and international assets and adding important
capabilities that are currently lacking." It outlined seven strategic
goals, including to improve the detection and characterization of NEO's,
to improve modeling and predictions of their behavior,
to develop methods to deflect and disturb them, to develop
emergency procedures in an impact scenario, to establish impact
response and recovery procedures, to leverage and support international
cooperation in the event of a potential NEO impact, as well
as to coordinate communications of related US government agencies and
establish a series of procedures if a potential NEO impact is detected.
The White House's
National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy Report
The report comes in the wake
of December 2016 comments from NASA senior scientist Joseph Nuth
saying there is "not a hell of a lot we can do about" an
asteroid strike. Nuth claimed that if a NEO of significant size is found
to be on a collision course with Earth, there would not be ample
time to construct a deflection device.
In August 2015, NASA published a report saying
that all known Potentially Hazardous Asteroids have a "less than a
0.01% chance of impacting Earth in the next 100 years." However,
it is always possible that a previously undetected "killer asteroid"
could appear. The B612 Foundation, a NEO-hunting nonprofit, says that there are
"1 million smaller asteroids that might only wipe out a city or
perhaps collapse the world economy" that NASA has not identified.
The report identifies potential NEO impacts
as a low-probability, high consequence hazard that "[poses] a
significant and complex challenge." Even fairly small asteroids, such
as the Chelyabinsk meteorite that burst over Russia in 2013, can
cause enormous amounts of damage. A large one, such as the Chicxulub
meteor that struck Earth some 66 million years ago, could kill most life
on the planet's surface.
Full text of the report
White House link (PDF) : Here
Source : SPUTNIK NEWS
Others news :
SPACE.COM : White House Releases Dangerous-AsteroidStrategy
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