NASA warns of meteors

April 30, 2019, 15:09 UTC / Source: CNBC.com

By Chloe Taylor, CNBC

Meteors likely to destroy a US state pose a real threat to the Earth, warned NASA's chief on Monday.

Speaking at the NASA planetary defense conference in Washington, Jim Bridenstine, warned that the risk posed by meteor storms was not taken seriously.

"It's not Hollywood or movies, but ultimately protecting the only planet we know today to welcome life," he said.

Bridenstine pointed to the meteorite that exploded on the Russian city of Chelyabinsk in 2013, which had "30 times the energy of the atomic bomb of Hiroshima" and had injured about 1,500 people. Just 16 hours after the crash, NASA detected an even larger object that approached Earth but did not land on it, he revealed.

"I would like to be able to tell you that these events are exceptionally unique, but they are not," said Bridenstine. "These events are not uncommon, they happen. It is up to us to ensure that we characterize, detect and track all near-Earth objects that could pose a threat to the world. "

According to scientific modeling systems, such events should occur once every 60 years – but Bridenstine pointed out that destructive meteorites have been crushed on the earth three times in the last century.

In 2018, the White House released a plan of action forcing NASA to detect, track, and characterize 90% of near-Earth objects measuring 140 meters in diameter – but Bridenstine admitted Monday that the space agency had a long way to go to achieve this goal.

"We are only a third of the way," he said. "We want more international partners to join us in this effort. We want to have more systems on the face of the Earth capable of detecting and tracking these objects, and we want to be able to integrate all these data into a single operating system in order to have the best and the best data at the end of the day. accurate possible. possibly get. "

Bridenstine warned that not investing in such a network could have catastrophic consequences.

"(At 140 meters), it's big enough to destroy an American state," he said. "He's big enough to destroy an entire European country."

"We know that the dinosaurs did not have a space program," he added. "But we do it, and we have to use it."

Earlier this month, NASA awarded Elon Musk SpaceX a contract to launch the launch services company for the agency's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission. The $ 69 million mission, scheduled for launch in 2021, will test the Earth's ability to deflect an asteroid by striking a high-speed spacecraft.

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