"NASA already is working to find asteroids that might be a threat to our planet, and while we have found 95 percent of the large asteroids near the Earth's orbit, we need to find all those that might be a threat to Earth," said NASA Deputy Administrator Lori Garver, in a press release. "This Grand Challenge is focused on detecting and characterizing asteroids and learning how to deal with potential threats. We will also harness public engagement, open innovation and citizen science to help solve this global problem.".
Throughout recorded history there have been hundreds of Earth impacts with many of these occurrences causing death and destruction. Of course the one we are think of is the one that took out the dinosaurs 65 million years ago. There is some recent evidence that perhaps it was actually a comet that ruined everything for the dinosaurs, but even if was a comet - it was big - and it was from space.
NASA seems too be on edge about asteroid strikes these days - and with good reason. Here are just some of the recent events if you missed them:
1908 - This is one of the most infamous events in modern times. The explosion of an asteroid of Siberia, Russia destroyed 80 million trees in a remote region.
1913 - A ship was destroyed when it was struck by a meteorite while sailing between Sydney and South America.
1954 - The first recorded case of a human being injured from space rocks occurred on November 30, in Alabama.
1972 - A meteorite which ranged in size from a house to a car was filmed over the Rocky Mountains. Luckily the rock was reduced in size enough as it travelled through the atmosphere (photo below), otherwise the impact could have been a Hiroshima type event.
2000 - A fireball exploded over the city of Whitehorse in the Canadian Yukon lighting up the night sky. The space rock that exploded was estimated to weigh about 180 tons.
2007 - On September 15, a chondritic meteor crashed near the village of Carancas in southeastern Peru near Lake Titicaca, leaving a water-filled hole (photo below) and spewing gases across the surrounding area. Many residents became ill, apparently from the noxious gases shortly after the impact.
2007 - On October 7, a meteroid labeled 2008 TC3 was tracked for 20 hours as it approached Earth and as it fell through the atmosphere and impacted in Sudan. This was the first time an object was detected before it reached the atmosphere and hundreds of pieces of the meteorite were recovered from the Nubian Desert.
2013 - On February 15 an asteroid entered Earth's atmosphere (photo below) over Russia as a fireball and exploded above the city of Chelyabinsk during its passage through the Ural Mountains region. The object's air burst occurred at an altitude between 19 and 31 miles above the ground. About 1,500 people were injured, mainly by broken window glass shattered by the shock wave.
These are just a small amount of the countless documented collisions between space debris and the Earth. The problem we have is that NASA's mission has been seriously damaged by recent cuts to it's budget. In addition there are actually some things that NASA could do if a space rock was observed hurtling toward our planet, however there simply is not the money to monitor the space in a way that we should be, especially considering we are living in the 21st century and that we landed on the Moon 44 years ago.
You can learn more about NASA's Asteroid Initiative here.
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