Scientists issue warning as NASA reveals threat from thousands of undetectable 'city killer' asteroids
NASA has made an alarming admission, revealing it has no idea where thousands of ginormous asteroids are currently located.
The space rocks have terrifyingly been dubbed 'city killers' due to their vast size, which is believed to be at least 140 metres in diameters.
There is said to be around 15,000 of these mid-sized asteroids floating around in space currently unaccounted for, according to the space agency's head of planetary defence.
Dr Kelly Fast is in charge of attempts to track any objects, like asteroids and comets, that are likely to come close to Earth, and admitted that one of these 'city killers' were to hit a populated area of Earth, it could 'really cause regional damage.'
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She made the confession at the American Association for the Advancement of Science annual conference in Phoenix, where she told attendees it is the medium sized asteroids that worry her the most.
"What keeps me up at night is the asteroids we don’t know about. Small stuff is hitting us all the time so we’re not so much worried about that," she said.
"And we’re not so worried about the large ones from the movies because we know where they are. It’s the ones in between, about 140 metres and larger, that could really do regional rather than global damage and we don’t know where they are."
Dr Fast added: "It’s estimated there are about 25,000 of those and we’re only about 40 per cent of the way through. It takes time to find them, even with the best telescopes."
According to Dr Nancy Chabot, a planetary scientist at John Hopkins University, if the worst case scenario did happen, and one of the city killers did plummet into Earth, our planet would essentially have no way of defending itself.
Back in 2022, Dr Chabot led a mission called Dart, which proved that in an emergency, we could use a rocket to bash an asteroid off course, however the expert has admitted we would not be prepared to do it again if disaster were to strike.
"We worry about these city killer asteroids. Dart was a great demonstration, but we don’t have [another] sitting around ready to go if there was a threat that we needed to use it for," Dr Chabot said.
"If something like YR4 had been headed towards the Earth, we would not have any way to go and deflect it actively right now. We could be prepared for this threat. And I don’t see that investment being made."
Emma Rosemurgey