NASA Made Public Its Plan to Keep Earth Safe from Asteroids

NASA’s plan to keep Earth safe from asteroids includes five goals

We never know when an asteroid appears from nowhere and hits our planet, causing great damages. It might be impossible to avoid such a collision, but we can at least minimize the disaster. Since we should always be ready for such an event, NASA and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP) devised a plan to stay safe from asteroids.

NASA devised a strategy and goals to stay safe from asteroids

Asteroid impacts are quite unlikely, but we still need a plan to follow in case something like this happens. This week, NASA presented its strategy to stay safe from asteroids, including five main goals that should protect our planet. The plan in question is titled “National Near-Earth-Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan”.

These goals start with improving the asteroid detection system and, then, being able to predict the exact point they would hit. Afterwards, there’s still something left to do to keep Earth safe from asteroids. NASA needs to improve our technologies against near-Earth objects, so that we might avoid or at least minimize the damage.

The danger is small, but it still exists

If asteroids of big proportions hit Earth, they can inflict a huge damage on our planet. However, the situation isn’t that bad. Since they are so big, NASA can detect them a lot more easily. It turns out it has already tracked all the potentially dangerous near-Earth objects, and none of them is even close to our planet at the moment.

However, this doesn’t mean it’s all over. Even smaller asteroids might produce a lot of damage, as previous events have showed us. From this category, there are more than 300,000 such small objects that might cause serious trouble. Since there are so many, it might be hard for NASA to spot all of them in time. Therefore, this plan is more than necessary to stay safe from asteroids for real.

Image source: NASA