This NASA slide depicts the catastrophic collision of a massive comet or asteroid with earth 250 million years ago, which appears to be the reason 90 percent of all marine species and 70 percent of all land vertebrates abruptly died out.
(NASA/Newscom/File)Photos (1 of 1)
Who is responsible for averting an asteroid strike?
Column: It's time to set aside political quibbles and form an international plan.
By Robert C. Cowen | Columnist for The Christian Science Monitor/ May 14, 2009 edition
Asteroid hunters have good news – and a challenge – for the rest of us.After an extensive search for asteroids a kilometer or more across, engineer Steve Chesley says that “we can now say with confidence that no asteroids large enough to cause such a global calamity [as killing off the dinosaurs] are headed our way.”
But if one of them – or even a smaller, city-destroying rock – were detected on a collision course, would the world community be prepared to handle it? A conference of legal experts that discussed this question at the University of Nebraska in Lincoln last month answered it with a resounding “No.”
Scientists and engineers who have studied the problem of deflecting a dangerous asteroid believe the technical issues are difficult but solvable. The challenge now is figuring out the legal issues of who takes action on behalf of humankind and of what their responsibilities and liabilities will be.
Asteroid hunters believe they can give us plenty of warning. There is “a fair chance that the next Earth impactor will actually be identified with many decades and perhaps centuries of warning time,” explains Mr. Chesley of the NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., in the March/April issue of the Planetary Report.
That’s plenty of time to develop a spacecraft whose gravitational attraction might nudge an asteroid aside – or a rocket or some application of nuclear explosives to do the job.
However, if a single country – or small group of nations – tries to take the initiative on its own, the international reaction could stall any action at all.
“The international political reactions to the US shooting down one of its own satellites a year ago to prevent presumably dangerous and toxic rocket fuel from reaching Earth only foreshadows what would happen if the US would detonate nukes claiming to destroy an incoming asteroid,” said Frans von der Dunk, a University of Nebraska space law expert, at the Nebraska conference, according to Space News.
Overlooking the hype about nuclear weapons, which engineers consider an unlikely, extreme measure, Professor von der Dunk has pointed out the main issue. Averting a regional or global asteroid threat may involve unforeseen collateral damage – such as splintered chunks making their way to Earth or worse. Therefore, the world community has to have a say in how that threat is handled.
Right now, to use von der Dunk’s word, that community is “underorganized” to meet this challenge.
Getting organized for possible future action is less urgent than coping with global warming. But like any good insurance planning, it should not languish on the back burner of global politics.
This need will come into sharper focus as the new Pan-STARRS 1 telescope in Hawaii goes into action this spring. Its mission to catalogue objects across the entire sky will pick out many more asteroids, large and small.
Someday those facts may foretell a future impact. The world community should make sure that it has its response plan in order with the legal mechanism for assigning responsibilities in place.
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Comments
2. Jeff | 05.15.09
The world’s political, economic, and technological power bases are in such flux right now that it’s hard to predict who would have the means and will to do such a thing a few decades down the road.
3. Gigafalcospammer7 | 05.15.09
Well there is an asteroid headding our way its called apophis, it will reach earth in 2036.
4. Preparedness Pro | 05.15.09
Really, JP? I hadn’t heard about that. And asteroids are tricky because they’re tough to see, unlike comets, which are illuminated. The interesting thing is the White House was recently quoted as putting more money into programs to live on the moon or getting to Mars, instead of Near Earth Space Objects which could be a matter of life or death!
5. Think Again | 05.15.09
Sounds good to me.
Since we’ve acquired the ability, it may not be long before nature tests us on it.
6. Alfred | 05.15.09
With the money Bush wasted on Iraq, we could have had a modest shield by now.
Oh yeah, he expects God to swat away the rocks.
7. John Neff | 05.15.09
This discussion reminds me of the book “The Control of Nature” by John McPhee. If you nudge an impacting body to move the location of ground zero from Iowa City to Baton Rouge no doubt there would be liability issues.
8. Ed Daniels | 05.17.09
I believe that this hazard of potential Earth-impacting objects should become the driving motivator for the further development of space-based engineering capabilities and the establishment of self sufficient human space colonies. We need to be able to deflect threatening objects when possible and insure the survival of humans if we eventually detect an intersecting object of a size that is beyond our capability to deflect. This is humanity’s greatest challenge, and one that can motivate and excite generations of young scientists and engineers. ed@edaniels.com
9. Waldo5 | 05.19.09
The last asteroid which passed close to us, as I remember, was about 44,000 miles away–closer to us than the moon which is 225,000 miles away. The news did not inform anyone (except in maybe one or two fine-print, obscure tiny article buried with all the ads on a page few people care to read). Most of us heard about it after it had passed, not before. In my experienced lifetime there has been only a few months warning–at most–of an inpending close-call asteroid. In the movie, “Deep Inpact” starring Robert DuVall, there was little time to prepare for a comet-impact, and the USA government tried to coverup its coming so they could pass their budget in Congress. To me, this is a “clear and present danger” in which the United Nations should plan a carefully worked out schedule of who does what and when. With no unity now, we are wide open for chaos and for one nation taking it upon itself to act unilaterally.
10. Davido Hermoso | 05.20.09
“A conference of legal experts”?????
What in the world would the opinion of legal experts matter?
11. Jim Cumber | 05.22.09
Who let the (expletive deleted) lawyers in here, anyway?! Also, who cares about fictitious, human caused, global warming, if there is a “global killer” rock headed our way?!
It’s real simple: you spot the rock; you send something up to smack it down; and you sort out the legal stuff (if any: I suspect that the citizens of the planet would be so happy to have avoided going the way of the dinosaurs that they would be kissing the feet of those who prevented it!) later. Get a grip, people: we’re talking about species SURVIVAL, here!
Also, the UN was never designed to handle an Extinction Level Event: the UN is, at best, an ineffective, international, debating society (and I am being EXTREMELY “charitable”, here!), which would STILL be arguing over what to do when the asteroid came crashing through the roof of the “Tombstone on the East River” and took out the whole human race and everything else on the planet, except, maybe, the cockroaches!
Get real, folks…
12. close distance | 06.03.09
actually its supposed to hit us 2029 look it up, i dont know the name of it but it’s been know for decades now, look it up, 2029 astriod….
13. Todd Bailey | 06.12.09
Davido, did you not read the next paragraph?
“[T]he technical issues are difficult but solvable. The challenge now is figuring out the LEGAL issues of who takes action on behalf of humankind and of what their responsibilities and liabilities will be.”
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1. J.P. Azog | 05.14.09
Didn’t they just miss one a few months ago? Nobody saw the asteroid until it passed what , 1/3 or 1/5 of the distance to the Moon from Earth? Liability? to who? Every man for himself!