Also, NASA determined that “if confronted with the 2021 PDC hypothetical scenario in real life we would not be able to launch any spacecraft on such short notice with current capabilities.”ĭisruption by means of nuclear explosion was considered next, but this has its own issues, as since it was impossible to determine the asteroid’s properties, the team was unable to determine to amount of force needed. The bottom line is that with our current technology, there’s nothing we can do in just six months to stop a piece of space rock hurtling toward Earth.įirst off, deflection was ruled out because too much force was needed to be applied too far in advance. Scientists can do nothing to stop it, and the team starts discussing options for evacuation.ĭuring all this time (the teams spent a week in real life turning this scenario upside down), hypothetical options for stopping the asteroid have been discussed. On simulated time October 14, the impact regions shrank even further to include only Germany, the Czech Republic, and Austria. Scientists now know the asteroid is in between 100 feet (35 meters) and 1,600 feet (500 m) in diameter. On simulated time June 30, the impact area is narrowed down to Germany, the Czech Republic, Austria, Slovenia, and Croatia. On simulated time May 2, further calculations showed the chances of an impact were now 100 percent, with the asteroid expected to impact somewhere in Europe or northern Africa. On simulated time April 26, the team discovered an asteroid 35 million miles (57 million km) from Earth, with a 5 percent chance of impacting the planet on or around October 20, 2021.
Here’s how the whole simulation all went down. Now that the conference is over, NASA published the results of this tabletop exercise, and they are not at all encouraging. On April 26, those taking part pretended to have discovered a potentially dangerous near-Earth object ( NEO) heading our way, and over the coming days they simulated the passage of time, the measures needed to be taken to stop it if need be, and of course the outcome.
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