Chelyabinsk meteor: Ten years on from ‘wake-up call’, how safe are we from a potentially catastrophic strike? | Science & Tech News

It’s not a day for the Earth to stand still, but those who witnessed a fiery asteroid briefly shine brighter than the Sun as it sped toward the Russian city of Chelyabinsk almost certainly. Will definitely never forget.

Comparable to the size of a house and traveling at 11 miles per second, what was quickly dubbed the Chelyabinsk Meteor Meteor arrives unannounced in a way reminiscent of a sci-fi disaster movie. It was an amazing sight.

Dash cam footage from the morning of February 15, 2013, at the center Russian city ​​near the Ural Mountains, showing the small asteroid entering Earth’s atmosphere before it exploded with 30 times more force than the US atomic bomb destroy Hiroshima in World War II.

Windows were broken, buildings were damaged and hundreds of people were injured – but Chelyabinsk was lucky.

“If it flies directly over the city, the damage will be even worse,” warns NASALindley Johnson’s planetary protection officer. “It was definitely a wake-up call.”

‘We’ve never seen anything like it since’

Working with partners like the European Space Agency, Mr. Johnson’s department warns of any impacts to Earth by comets and asteroids and provides guidance on how to respond.

A standard test case is a “shooting star” asteroid spiked on the English Channel this weektracked and made public first for everyone to see for themselves.

Chelyabinsk is not a standard test case.

“We’ve never seen anything like it since we started working in the field,” said Mr Johnson, whose office inside the US space agency was just set up. 2016, said.

“It’s daylight, clearly visible in the daytime sky, and that doesn’t happen often.

“It appeared during Earth’s daytime, and we didn’t have a chance to detect it first with the ground-based observatories we used to find these objects at the time.”

What are the chances of another Chelyabinsk?

Mr. Johnson was in Vienna, Austria, on the day of Chelyabinsk’s arrival, attending meetings of the United Nations members of the Committee on the Peaceful Uses of Space.

It didn’t take long for recommendations on how to protect Earth from such events, including the international asteroid warning network.

Professor Alan Fitzsimmons, of Queen’s University, Belfast, is an expert on this so-called near-Earth object and a dedicated member of the “planetary defense community”.

“We are very open about what we find and the current state of our knowledge about potential impact risks,” he said. “All discovered asteroids are published on public websites.

“Technology has come a long way in terms of how far you can detect asteroids, even as small as Chelyabinsk, but there’s still a chance that an asteroid could slip by. And it’s very likely important asteroids. The next one we have will be unannounced.”

How are we protecting ourselves?

Chelyabinsk is considered a small asteroid – that and its appearance in the daytime is why it is so hard to spot.

Mr Johnson admitted: “We are still vulnerable to things that come from the sun.

“Most of these objects come from a main belt of asteroids between Mars and Jupiter, and when they enter the inner solar system we can find them in the night sky. But when they orbit the sun and come back out, that’s when we’re vulnerable.”

The key to being able to expect the unexpected is space-based observations, he says.

NASA is working on a $1.2bn (£985m) Near-Earth Object Surveyor (NEO) to launch in 2028, which will be the first space telescope designed specifically to hunt asteroids and comets that could be a potential danger to Earth.

Even then, Chelyabinsk is still much smaller than the asteroids that NEO will focus on. Amy Mainzer, principal investigator for the NEO Surveyor, said it would prioritize “finding an asteroid that could cause a really bad day for a lot of people”.

Also in the repertoire was the Double Asteroid Redirection Test spacecraft. During testing last yearit deliberately crashed into an asteroid and successfully changed its orbit.

What if someone else passes?

The arrival of Chelyabinsk shows the importance of quick and efficient communication – its arrival was quickly recognized around the world, Russian scientists shared their findings, Debris was collected, studied and found new homes, and this fact informed international policy.

Professor Fitzsimmons says such transparency and coordination will once again be crucial, perhaps even more so in an age where misinformation can quickly spread.

If such an asteroid were to pass through the atmosphere today, over a densely populated area, it would do so in a much more fragile geopolitical environment than it was in 2013, with Russia’s war in Ukraine And tensions escalate between the US and China over perceived threat from flying objects.

“When these types of events are identified as natural causes, the flow of information will be pretty good even in today’s environment,” Mr Johnson said. “But there’s certainly concern in quickly learning that it’s a natural event versus something man-made.

“To the human eye, the penetration and detonation of these objects by atmospheric thermal pressure can look a lot like an attack, while sophisticated equipment quickly recognizes the difference.”

‘A long way to go to find them all’

Currently, there are about 31,000 asteroids being tracked – up from about 9,500 in 2013.

It’s an indication that the possibility of a dangerous collision has become much more important since Chelyabinsk, the largest and best recorded asteroid collision on Earth since 1908. is when an asteroid explodes in the sky. Siberialeveled about 80 million trees in an explosion equivalent to 15 million tons of dynamite.

Not being near a rebuilding area is a blessing in disguise.

Russia’s sheer size is all that makes it a relative hotbed of asteroid activity in history. With 70% of the Earth covered by water, the odds are that most asteroids – discovered or not – end up in the ocean. NASA thinks an impact like Chelyabinsk might be a once-in-a-lifetime event.

Professor Fitzsimmons said none of the 31,000 asteroids we know of are predicted to hit Earth in the next 100 years, but there is still “a long way to go to find them all”.

“But I’ll reassure you – I still go to work and pay for my pension plan.”