Nasa unveils programme aimed at preventing an asteroid apocalypse

Among Earth’s natural disasters – hurricanes, floods, earthquakes – the one humans probably ponder least is asteroids, huge objects zipping through our solar system at ludicrous speeds.

Federal officials call an asteroid or comet collision “low probability but high consequence”, Nasa-speak for it will probably never happen, but if it does we’re toast. With that in mind, the US and other nations have long sought to track such “near-Earth objects” (NEOs) and coordinated efforts through the International Asteroid Warning Network and the United Nations.

The Trump Administration now wants to enhance those efforts to detect and track potential planet killers, and to develop more capable means to deflect any that appear to be on a collision course.

“Fortunately, this type of destructive event is extremely rare,” said Aaron Miles, an official with the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy. But just to be safe, the government unveiled new goals this week for Nasa’s work on countering NEOs over the next decade. 

More than 300,000 objects larger than 40 metres (131 feet) wide orbit the sun as NEOs, Nasa estimates, many being difficult to detect more than a few days in advance. 

Forty metres is about the size an object must be to make it through the atmosphere without burning up; thousands of much-smaller meteors disintegrate harmlessly each day far above the planet. The meteor that injured more than 1,000 people in Chelyabinsk, Russia in February 2013, mainly by glass shattered from the shock wave of its explosion, was believed to be about 20 metres (65 feet) wide.