NASA has joined hands with the Federal Emergency Management Agency to develop procedures to protect us from asteroids so we do not end up like the dinosaurs.
The inverse reports that NASA is actively monitoring the local asteroid population, which is estimated to be around 10,000. This after many tales circulated that asteroids just missing earth by a whisker.
Almost 10 percent of objects in space near Earth are reportedly 3,300 meters in diameter, which could result in a real life Armageddon. So what if one of these asteroids is found hurtling towards earth?
According to the report, NASA and FEMA held a meeting on Oct. 25 to discuss how they would manage an asteroid catastrophe.
Lindley Johnson, NASA's planetary defense officer, said in a news release that such exercises are very important for people in the asteroid science community, who are responsible for engaging with FEMA on this event, Inverse added.
Johnson added that the agency received numerous feedbacks from emergency managers to ascertain which information would be critical to their decision making at the time when such event occurs. It also include on the communication process on how NASA would communicate information to FEMA about a predicted impact.
NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory website revealed that a simulated exercise was conducted where they envisioned an event when an imaginary asteroid could hit Earth on 2020. The simulated asteroid is reportedly between 300 and 800 feet in size, and has the possibility of hitting earth at anywhere in its vast surface, including the U.S.
In the played out scenario,observers reportedly continue to follow the asteroid for three months from 2016 using telescopic observations and the possible impact goes up to 65 percent. The report adds that the next observations had to be delayed until may of 2017,and the possibility of impact jumped to 100 percent. By november 2017, it is simulated that the asteroid would hit somewhere in the narrow band across Southern california.
According to the article by NASA, this particular exercise was designed and simulated in such a way that a deflection mission could not be possible, and only an evacuation of metropolitan Los Angeles would be feasible at the time. The exercise was meant to test and challenge emergency managers, although actual simulated deflection missions have been conducted in previous exercises.
The report says that those who attended the simulation have to consider ways to give out accurate, timely and useful information to the alarmed public on this eventuality , and also train themselves on how to deny rumours in the years leading to the simulated imaginary impact.
