Lindley Johnson, NASA’s Planetary Defense Officer, told FLORIDA TODAY that two fragments from the comet Shoemaker Levy-9 slammed into Jupiter in 1994 and resulted in impact sites large enough to be spotted by the Hubble telescope. It wiped out the dinosaurs and led to the extinction of about 75% of the plant and animal species on Earth. Given the vastness of space and our ability to constantly scan the skies for such threats the chance of a planet-killer taking us out by surprise is extremely slimĮarth regularly takes hits from plenty of small asteroids and meteors, but getting hit by anything larger than half a mile in size could be devastating.Īn asteroid much larger than that crashed into what is now the Yucatan Peninsula in Mexico 65 million years ago. 'We are all crew members on spaceship Earth, and it’s our job to protect and improve life on our home planet,' wrote NASA Administrator Bill Nelson in a USA Today column after that mission. 'It’s the only one we have.' A present threat While that tiny asteroid posed no threat to Earth, the mission proved for the first time that the trajectory of a space object could be artificially altered. 'Really, there are many people involved around the world,' she said.Īnd those people contributed to the first-ever planetary-defense mission in September when a NASA spacecraft managed to nudge an asteroid into a new orbit. Kelly Fast, a program manager in NASA's Planetary Defense Coordination Office, told FLORIDA TODAY, 'the movies tend to show just a few scientists trying to run around and tell everybody what's happening.' Updates: NASA's SpaceX space station resupply mission launched from KSC on Saturday NASA: Artemis rocket's 'eye-watering' power damaged mobile launcher at KSC WATCH: NASA's Artemis I Orion moon mission animation The reality is the nation's leaders are very aware of the threat of such a collision and have tasked NASA with defending the planet from wayward space rocks. Thankfully, experts say, this is a scenario strictly reserved for big-budget Hollywood films. But when it becomes clear that the scientists were right, space agencies race to hastily launch rockets armed with nuclear warheads to blow the asteroid apart in a last-ditch effort to save humanity.

Journalism like this takes time and resources. Please support it with a subscription here.Īn asteroid the size of Texas hurtles straight toward Earth, threatening to kill most living things on the planet. Small teams of scientists scramble to alert world leaders that repeatedly dismiss the warnings. Space is important to us and that's why we're working to bring you top coverage of the industry and Florida launches.

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