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 (Photo courtesy of NASA) |
While not big enough to ruffle your hair, an unexpected near-miss by two asteroids speeding past Earth earlier this week shows our planet spins in a precarious position, a top NASA official warns.
And Lindley Johnson, program executive of the Near-Earth Object program at NASA headquarters in Washington, tells QMI Agency the misses bolster the argument to build a better surveillance network so something much bigger doesn’t take us all by surprise.
On Wednesday, a pair of asteroids did a flyby of Earth — both within the orbit of the Moon and the closest coming about 248,000 km above our heads. But what’s more alarming is scientists didn’t stumble on their arrival until last Sunday.
NASA officials — representing the planet’s largest celestial watchdog — say they need more money to keep a far better lookout.
“It’s not a technology problem,” Johnson said from his Washington office.
“It’s a question of making a decision on funding. We’re talking about a system robust enough to find (threats) … years to decades in advance.”
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As of now, he said Earth is open to being hit by something big enough to take out an entire city with very little warning.
An improved monitoring system would cost around a billion dollars, spread out over the next decade or so.
Since the two asteroids, 2010 RX30 and 2010 RF12, were only about 10 meters in diameter — an object 30 to 50 meters in size could badly damage a city — the pair would have likely burned up had they hit our atmosphere.
Johnson notes it’s only been in the past 20 years that man has understood the number of potential threats from the heavens.
And the double flybys are being seen as a reminder of our vulnerability.
Dr. Donald Yeomans, a manager at the Near-Earth Object program, told the UK Telegraph: “I think this is Mother Nature’s way of firing a shot over the bow and warning Earth-based astronomers that we have a lot of work to do.”