“All the busy little creatures chasing out their destinies; living in their pools they soon forget about the sea”¦”
— “Natural Science,” Rush
It’s pretty crazy to think that, at any moment, we could all be obliterated by a meteor the size of Texas. The details of our day-to-day lives tend to become all-consuming, from carting the kids to their activities to making sure there are groceries in the house, and we seldom pause to reflect on the fact that we are but minuscule blips on a speck of dirt hurling through an apparently infinite galaxy among many other galaxies. We’re too busy with our car repairs, fashion tips and latte flavors to mull the end of the world, and after all, there are a lot more imminent threats to consider on any given day, from distracted drivers to ebola.
That’s probably why most of us don’t waste much time thinking about dangerous space rocks, with the exception of the deep, philosophical discussions that typically follow viewings of “Armageddon.” We are, however, paying a bunch of people to not only think about this unlikely possibility, but to predict it and hopefully help us avert a mass smushing.
Those people are the ones employed at NASA’s Near Earth Objects program, and their eyes are to the sky at all times to look out for any comets, asteroids or fragments thereof that have the potential to enter our atmosphere. In fact, they have a lookout for all objects within 28 million miles of Earth, according to a recent Associated Press report. That’s a lot of space to cover.
It might seem silly to be funding an entire program to watch for space rocks that have the potential of causing a Hollywood-style cataclysm, but it’s actually an important job. It’s true that most near-Earth objects disintegrate before even coming close to posing a threat to those of us on this planet, but some of them do make it through. Just last year, a 60-foot meteor exploded over Russia, causing extensive damage and injuring about 1,200 people. It was completed unpredicted.
The Sentinel telescope, expected to be online by 2018, will be able to spot these objects much more efficiently, so governments can seek to redirect or destroy the meteor before it reaches us. In the meantime, the official suggestion of NASA Chief Charles Bolden, should a meteor be on a collision course with Earth, is to pray. Not very comforting.
Just 13 people are employed by the NEO program, with offices in Massachusetts and California, and they’ve spent the past decade tracking any nearby space objects bigger than 460 feet across. Thing is, NASA had a goal to catalog 90 percent of these objects by 2020, and there is no way that deadline is going to be met. As of now, only 11,000 near-Earth objects’ orbits have been plotted, which amounts to about 10 percent ”“ far from the goal, which is only six years away.
Documenting the orbits of these objects is the best way to tell whether or not they are on a collision course with us, and with so few being watched closely, it seems likely that one or more of the other 90 percent will sneak by, and we’ll never know what hit us. Of course, a staff of 13 can’t be expected to document all of the objects in a 28 million mile radius in only 20 years, so it seems logical to agree with NASA’s Inspector General Paul Martin, whose recent 44-page report on NEO recommends that the program have a bigger staff, with better organization and management, too.
He also recommends that NASA coordinate with other nations, which certainly makes sense considering these collisions are a concern for the entire planet, not just the U.S. Working together is easier said than done, especially considering the tension between many nations, but if we learned anything from “Independ-ence Day,” it’s that nothing brings us together like a common enemy. I’d like to think a giant meteor qualifies as such.
Here’s hoping the report doesn’t fall on deaf ears and the NEO program gets more support and direction, to give us peace of mind in knowing that we won’t unexpectedly be decimated by a giant meteor, despite the low odds. Even if there’s nothing our governments can do about it when the big one is identified, at least we’ll know ahead of time, so we’ll have time to get one more customized latte and raise a final toast to the human race.
— Kristen Schulze Muszynski is the managing editor of the Journal Tribune newsroom.
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