NASA says Asteroid cannot be stopped right now
What if an Asteroid was headed towards earth or was hitting New York City. Who will save the earth or the iconic city from the imminent extinction? Will NASA or the defense forces will be able to come to the people’s rescue? Will cruise missiles and patriot missiles be able to destroy one such asteroid and save the earth? The answer to all such scenarios is a very difficult ‘no’. Nasa has said that right now no one on the earth has the capability to dismantle a huge asteroid. Any asteroid if huge can completely destroy the earth if it hits it directly. Though many such bodies are flying across the universe, but there is very remote chance of them ever hitting the earth.
There is an ongoing debate across the world over the dangers of heavenly bodies coming in direct contact with the earth or even colliding the earth. It intensified following last month’s meteorite falling in Russia and Kazakhstan that hit the earth all of a sudden without even previous warning by any space agency, neither Russian space agency nor by NASA.
A Northwestern University report while talking about the meteors says, “Asteroids are also known as “minor planets.” They are made up of much of the same stuff as planets, but they are much smaller… The rest of the asteroids range in diameter all the way down to less than 5 miles across. Asteroids with diameters of 30 miles or less no longer have a spherical shape. Most asteroids orbit the Sun between Mars and Jupiter”.
NASA administrator Charles Bolden Jr. while replying to a House of Committee inquiry, has said that everyone should “Pray” to prevent the asteroid hitting the city. As per Donald Yeomans, NASA’s manager of Near-Earth Object Program Office, it might be lucky that we have three weeks for preparing to shield the asteroid. The U.S. and the rest of the world don’t have any facility to prevent direct hits of small meteors on earth, he added. He has further added that NASA has little early warning system in place to identify such asteroids. The U.S. space agency is hugely held up with the groundwork for finding a good solution to deal with the rushing asteroid.
Others too are talking about the scenario rather seriously. “The odds of a near-Earth object strike causing massive casualties and destruction of infrastructure are very small,” says John Holdren, senior adviser to President Barrack Obama on science and tech. “But the potential consequences of such an event are so large that it makes sense to take the risk seriously, he added, admitting the chance for huge threat to humankind in effect of the asteroid fall.
On the issue of detecting asteroid to not be caught off guard it would be better to use a space-centric infrared telescope to detect such meteors, comments Yeomans. According to the NASA manager, it has two key benefits; first, the sun wouldn’t block detection of the alien objects and secondly its infrared nature is more effective. It is reported that Russia failed to give warning about the meteor fall as the sun blinded satellites. In fact, as per Michio Kaku, a CBS News contributor and physics professor use of such a telescope would be a “no brainer” in the task to find meteors. NVONews