Mark Megahan
The DART test was crucial for planetary asteroid defense but it’s not the only thing experts are focusing on. This past February they ran a series of threat drills to practice the official plan. The good news is that a plan is out there for everyone to follow. Bad news is that following it didn’t go real well. Officials are terrified by what would happen in a real life impact scenario. Bottom line seems to be that the public is better off not knowing before it happens.
Asteroid Armageddon drills
Our official planetary defense experts got together and decided to wipe out Winston-Salem, North Carolina, just for fun. The scenario they role played through for practice was meant to mirror reality as closely as possible. As part of the exercise, “an approximately 70-meter asteroid entered Earth’s atmosphere.”
The date they picked for destruction was August 16, 2022. A fictitious press release would have reported “at 2:02:10 P.M. EDT, the space rock exploded eight miles over Winston-Salem, N.C., with the energy of 10 megatons of TNT. The airburst virtually leveled the city and surrounding area. Casualties were in the thousands.”
This was actually the “fourth Planetary Defense Tabletop Exercise” and was hosted by NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office. Space debris avoidance simulations brought together “academics, scientists and government officials” to “practice how the United States would respond to a real planet-threatening asteroid.”
From February 23–24 all the relevant parties were available either virtually or in-person. Overall, the “exercise included more than 200 participants from 16 different federal, state and local organizations.” The final report didn’t come out until August 5. We flunked. Humanity is doomed. Unless, that is, we get better at getting things done. A lot better.
In defense of our defenders, the “exercise was meant to be hard—practically unwinnable.” They were hoping for better results than they got though. “We designed it to fall right into the gap in our capabilities,” APL senior scientist Emma Rainey explains. They set the asteroid scenario up so “the participants could do nothing to prevent the impact.”
They wanted to test the post-impact response. “We want to see how effective operations and communications are between U.S. government agencies and the other organizations that would be involved, and then identify shortcomings,” adds Lindley Johnson, planetary defense officer at NASA headquarters.
Shortcomings were identified
We know for sure that we do not have “the capability to intercept small, fast-moving asteroids.” Our ability to even see an asteroid is limited. Deflecting them is still science fiction, no matter how great DART worked. That mission took a full five years to complete and every aspect was chosen for optimal effect.
Nuclear weapons really aren’t an option except as an absolute last resort and probably won’t work then either. Their biggest problem is “misinformation.” Once the word leaks out, social media madness takes over and the truth gets drowned out by the clamoring ignorant and unwashed masses.
Angela Stickle, a senior research scientist at APL who helped design and facilitate the exercise is miffed. “Misinformation is not going away. We put it into the simulation because we wanted feedback on how to counteract it and take action if it was malicious.”
Social media madness is more dangerous than an asteroid impact. The first three tabletop exercises created the plan. This year they got to test it out. It spells out who is supposed to do what and when.
They started with announcing the sighting of an incoming space rock. Data indicated it was too late to stop. As soon as they informed the public, the wheels fell off. “Within the simulated timeline, misinformation was constant. Many online news stories about the impact were factually incorrect, while ‘asteroid deniers‘ and claims of ‘fake news‘ grew unabated.”
Evacuation was only one of the wake up calls. “When we discussed evacuation, we were told that 20 percent of people would not leave because it was all fake news or the government was lying or some other reason. That was about 200,000 people, all spread out. So here I am, not sure we’d even be able to evacuate the hospitals and prisons, and then we have people that can leave, refusing to leave.“
