Asteroid hunter calls for global network to guard against threats
The Earth is bombarded daily with almost 110 tonnes of material from space, though it's no larger than a grain of dust. But what happens when a larger object doesn't have time to burn up in the atmosphere? Dr. Franck Marchis, known as the "asteroid hunter," has revealed what NASA hasn't officially discussed.
The Earth is under constant "bombardment" by asteroids, and not all can be detected in time. A few days ago, one entered the Earth's atmosphere and exploded, turning into a fireball in Siberia.
It was only about 70 centimetres in diameter, so it didn't pose a significant threat. What is much more concerning, according to Marchis from the SETI Institute, is that the reaction time for sky observers was only... 7 hours.
If it had been slightly bigger, that would been a very different story. [...] This shows that, if we want our civilization to last for a long period of time, we need to look around us and characterize those objects — he told MailOnline.
The founder of the citizen astronomers' network highlighted the issue. Such outcomes are due to limited budgets and too few personnel actively observing the sky. He added that despite advanced equipment, it is not properly distributed, leading to many areas on the planet being "dark zones."
Dr. Marchis suggests that a feasible safeguard would be for NASA to acquire a larger number of affordable and less advanced telescopes, which could be employed worldwide. Users could even include amateur astronomers.
The novel solution was that, instead of having a handful of massive advanced systems, you could fill the dark zones with small, cheap telescopes to watch the whole sky at once — he summarized to MailOnline.
Can an asteroid heading toward Earth be destroyed?
The "asteroid hunter" didn't leave readers with a bleak future. He emphasized that it's crucial not only to detect incoming objects but also to effectively eliminate them.
Two years ago, there was a breakthrough experiment. During that time, a system was developed within which NASA — given sufficient advance notice — can neutralize the threat. Therefore, it's important for more specialists to continuously monitor the skies.
