It is one of the most popular illusory doomsday state of affairs, featured in films like Armageddon and Deep Impact, but the threat of an asteroid destroying life on our planet is a certainty. For years' scientists, have been trying to work out how to deal with the danger of an asteroid, which could hit us with no warning.
Now the White House has delivered an official document unfolding the plan if a meteor or asteroid was to head our way, and it displays we are under-prepared. The White House published its 'National Near-Earth Object Preparedness Strategy'. The document suggests to improve our nation's readiness to address the hazard of Near-Earth Object (NEO) impacts by improving the integration of existing national and international properties and adding important competences that are currently lacking.'
NEOs Are Asteroids Or Comets That Have An Orbit That Brings Them Near Or Into Earth's Orbit
If one of these was to skyrocket towards Earth in the future, it would not be Earth's first time. A 56-foot (17-metre) meteor that crash into Chelyabinsk, Russia, in 2013, injured more than 1,000 people came with no warning.
Therefore, one of the strategies outlined in the document is to expand on Nasa's methods of detecting NEOs early it is too late. In seven main goals defined in the document, the White House also focuses on refining modelling and predicting where NEOs will travel.
The state also plans to improve it alternative alert systems and invest in hi-tech space robots that could crush threats. The US is unsure on whether to invest and prepare costly space technology to cut off those that will not affect its own country. The document shows; however, it suggests the country is looking to join forces with other nations in the future.
'NEO bearings are a global hazard and could have major ecological, economic, and geopolitical costs detrimental to the United States, even if the impact is beyond US territory,' it says. 'Although presently a global leader in detecting and tracking NEOs, the United States will depend (in part) on international collaboration and coordination to help develop skills for classification and future capabilities related to the development and implementation of refraction and disruption aptitudes for NEOs.'
