The movie managed to show us, sometimes exaggerated and unrealistic, the impact of a large asteroid crashing into planet Earth. Despite the fact that these are fictional works, the danger does exist, and NASA Among other space agencies, they are always on the lookout for the possibility of one of these asteroids colliding with the planet.

according to NASAasteroid 460 meters in diameter is capable of destroying an entire city if it hits the planet, while a 6-mile asteroid has the ability to cause global consequences up to the destruction of all life on the planet.

And in order to avoid or at least be prepared to deal with such an event, NASA has taken some actions with other space agencies, including locating and tracking these asteroids, but so far only 40% of these cosmic bodies have been identified, which represents about 28,266 objects measuring 130 meters or more and more than 800 of those bodies discovered so far are large enough to cause global consequences if they collide with the planet.

This is very small, since we still have many other smaller bodies that can hit us. Similar to the one that hit the Tunguska River in Siberia in 1908. The body was 50 meters high and it is estimated that some 80 million trees were flattened over an area of ​​more than 2,150 square kilometers as a result of its impact. So that we can feel more secure, ideally we need to identify them before they approach our orbit, and that is where the plane is NASA.

Space telescope and measurements against asteroids

To fill this gap, NASA plans to develop a space telescope that will use infrared to detect and describe any object within 30 million miles of Earth’s orbit.

There are other plans in the works, like tests”Double Asteroid Redirection Test(Double asteroid redirect test) or just DARTwhich consists of a spacecraft designed to collide with asteroids in order to change the course of its flight.

This plan has even been tested by NASA and one of these DART spacecraft is expected to hit its target. Didymos B (an asteroid approximately 780 meters), later this year. Earth transit forecast October 4, 2022, at a distance of about 11 million km. This is 20 times the distance to the moon.

It is because of this distance from our planet that NASA conducted this test in practice, which will be the first deflection mission ever recorded.

Yet another alternative to containing one of these bodies, and it brings us back to the movie. Armageddon 2006 is to hit an asteroid with a nuclear warhead to try and change its course. In this case, this alternative is one of those that are planned to be used for cases of really very large cosmic bodies.

For smaller bodies, an alternative would be to launch smaller spacecraft close to asteroids to use the spacecraft’s gravity to change the flight’s orbit.

These are just a few of NASA’s measures at the moment, at the moment the main goal is to be able to identify and track each of these bodies before they enter the Earth’s orbit, because only in this way can the planet Earth be ready properly deal with each of them. , one of these risks. That is, the faster the space telescope is built, the more chances we have to cope with the disaster.

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Source: BGR, BigThink, CBC.