To what extent do asteroids pose a danger to your daily life?

Thanks to men and women like Ed Lu of the Asteroid Institute of the B612 Foundation, human beings are a little more protected from dangers out of the world.

"Let's just say you lived about 100 years. This means that there is about a one in 10,000 chance that, during your lifetime, human civilization will end because of an asteroidal impact, "said the former astronaut of NASA at InsideEdition.com.

An asteroid is the rest of a planet, he explained.

"Most are rocks – some small, some big, some metal – but they are mostly objects, small planets, if you prefer, orbiting the sun," said Lu, executive director of l & # 39; organization. "Some of them are extraordinarily small, literally grains of sand. Some of them are quite big, the size of the mountains. "

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The Asteroid Institute of the B612 Foundation studies asteroids that pose a threat to humanity.

Although small compared to planets, asteroids are powerful. Lu explained that they were traveling 10 or 15 miles per second – about three or five times faster than an average space shuttle – and that they could cause significant damage during the impact with the Earth.

"If you have a rock, call it the size of a large building, but moving three times faster than the space shuttle, it will eliminate a big city," he said.

This is where Lu and his team come in. Their job is to discover, identify and track remote asteroids, then predict how they will travel to see if any of them could become a threat to the Earth and human existence.

"The goal is to find and follow the majority – not all – but the majority of these asteroids," he said. "Those who would have between 100 and 200 football stadiums and more, we should have a good grasp of most of them here in 10 years.

Once they are able to identify and track asteroids that could pose a threat, they attach themselves to never colliding with our planet.

"Diverting an asteroid is actually relatively simple if you do it more than 10 years in advance," he said. "It turns out that you will not need to push him very far from his trajectory. In fact, a ridiculously small amount to make him miss the Earth. "

It's as simple as sending a small spaceship in his direction and touching it gently.

"That's it, the end of the story, you're done," he said.

And even though the idea that human beings protect themselves from the dangers of outer space seems to come out of a sci-fi movie, Lu says the concept is very real and is an example of how humanity continues to advance our society.

"We humans have for the first time at their fingertips the power to protect ourselves against something, a process that has been happening on this planet for billions of years," he said. "This engineering concept of the solar system to prevent celestial bodies from hitting the Earth is quite surprising. I am amazed by myself, even though I am there. "