Strategy to defend Earth from asteroid attack

WASHINGTON: In a key step to defend Earth from potentially devastating risks of near-earth objects (NEOS) — asteroids and comets — whose orbits come within 30 million miles of Earth, Nasa has released a federal planning document.

The US space agency along with the Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Federal Emergency Management Agency and several other governmental agencies have collaborated on this federal planning document for NEOS, and have charted five overarching strategic goals to reduce the risk of NEO impacts through improved understanding, forecasting, prevention and emergency preparedness.

The 20-page document, titled “National Near-earth Object Preparedness Strategy and Action Plan” aims to organise and coordinate efforts related to the NEO efforts within the federal government during the next 10 years to ensure that the nation can more effectively respond in case of such an event, which has a low-probability but can bring very high-consequence natural disasters.

“The nation already has significant scientific, technical and operation capabilities that are relevant to asteroid impact prevention,” Lindley Johnson, Nasa’s planetary defence officer said in a statement.

The action plan includes enhancing NEO detection, tracking, and characterisation capabilities; improving NEO modelling prediction, and information integration. — IANS