During April 2 and 3, which were the days in which this exercise was carried out, the more than 100 experts who participated discussed the possible responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact.
Photo: EFE – CRISTOBAL HERRERA-ULASHKEVICH
In recent days, some media outlets have published reports talking about “a colossal asteroid that will approach Earth in the near future” and pointing out that NASA had “issued a warning about the imminent danger of this.”
However, these headlines took out of context the simulated test that NASA officials and other international organizations had recently completed. The goal of this test, the agency said during a press conference, was to evaluate its ability to respond to a hypothetical asteroid that could hit Earth by 2038.
The results of this exercise, officially called the Interinstitutional Planetary Defense Theoretical Exercise, were classified by NASA as successful. During April 2 and 3, which were the days in which this exercise was carried out, the more than 100 experts who participated discussed the possible responses to a hypothetical asteroid impact.
In the statement, Lindley Johnson, the chief program executive for NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office, explained that “the impact of a large asteroid is potentially the only natural disaster that humanity has the technology to predict with years of in advance and take measures to prevent it.”
Therefore, he added that simulating a scenario with these types of possibilities can give them “an experience in dealing with these types of situations and highlight key points in current protocols that need to be addressed in the future.” These results were officially announced on June 20.
At the press conference, the experts explained that they used this exercise to pose a hypothetical scenario. In this, astronomers detected a large asteroid with a 72% chance of hitting Earth in 14 years.
Although at the event they reiterated that it was a hypothetical scenario, several people and media outlets took this exercise out of context. “Although there are no known significant asteroid impact threats in the foreseeable future, what-if exercises provide valuable information when exploring the risks,” NASA clarified.
This exercise was the first to use data from the DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) mission, which is the first demonstration in space of a technology to defend the Earth against possible asteroid impacts.
