NASA war-games an asteroid impact disaster and it goes badly

NASA and a number of other federal, state and local organizations war-gamed an asteroid impact on Winston-Salem, North Carolina, according to Scientific American. The scenario depicted an asteroid measuring 70 meters in diameter being detected shortly before it entered the Earth’s atmosphere. The asteroid would explode eight miles above the city with a force of a 10-megaton nuclear bomb. The explosion would lay the city and surrounding areas waste, with casualties in the thousands.

The exercise presented a number of sobering conclusions.

First, a few days, a few weeks, or even, likely, a few months would be too late to detect a destructive space rock headed to Earth for a deep impact. No means exists for stopping a killer asteroid at that point. Even the science-fiction movie method of launching a nuclear weapon at it would only make the problem worse, creating many little radioactive rocks out of one big rock, to fall over a wider area.

Second, people have become so distrustful of authority, whether it’s from the political class or the media, that an announcement of a killer asteroid on the way would not be believed by a significant number of people. The evacuation of a strike zone would be challenging enough if everyone were willing to leave, but it’s likely many people would flatly refuse to go.

Of course, every problem presents several solutions.

NASA’s recent Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission that diverted the course of a far-off asteroid was a great success. However, DART took five years of planning and execution to happen. We need a system for diverting asteroids that can essentially launch on-demand. That technology needs to be tested constantly against Earth-approaching asteroids. The U.S. Space Force should be tasked with developing, testing and maintaining an asteroid diversion unit.

A systematic survey of the solar system to locate and categorize Earth-approaching objects needs to start as soon as possible. The NEO Surveyor telescope should be launched and put into operation. To supplement that effort, the government should pay amateur astronomers a bounty for each hitherto unknow Earth-approaching object they discover.

The exercise also revealed the prevalence of misinformation and disinformation likely to accompany the impending impact of an asteroid, which lacks a quick, technological fix. Social media and ideologically biased TV news are perfect vectors for spurring confusion and misinformation. An impending asteroid impact needs the united effort of humanity to ward off and, if the worst happens, to mitigate.

Widespread public ignorance on space issues has already been documented. But it is alarming that a certain percentage of people would not believe an announcement of an imminent asteroid impact. Some people would refuse to evacuate from a strike zone no matter what authorities tell them — meaning they would die if an asteroid destroyed their communities.

How could government authorities convince the public that the threat of an asteroid strike is real? The exercise noted that NASA has a lot of credibility concerning space issues. Perhaps part of a solution would be to assign the space agency the lead in disseminating information about the impending catastrophe.

The best way to deal with an asteroid impact is to stop it from happening. While an asteroid impact and its aftermath may make for exciting cinema, in real life, such an event would be a catastrophe in terms of lives and treasure lost.

The asteroid described in the exercise was a relatively small one. The asteroid that killed the dinosaurs 66 million years ago is thought to have been about 12 kilometers wide, the size of a mountain. Such an asteroid impact today would wipe out most life on this planet and would end the human species. No mitigation strategy exists for such a catastrophe.

To guard the planet against asteroid impacts, an effective detection and diversion system must be brought into being as soon as possible. Asteroid defense may be expensive but allowing even a relatively small space rock to get through would be even more expensive.

Some have observed that the dinosaurs died because they lacked a space program. Humans have a space program, several of them in fact. No excuse exists for not undertaking efforts to prevent doomsday from coming from the heavens.

Mark R. Whittington is the author of space exploration studies “Why is It So Hard to Go Back to the Moon?” as well as “The Moon, Mars and Beyond,” and “Why is America Going Back to the Moon?” He blogs at Curmudgeons Corner.