Protecting Earth from Space Threats: NASA’s Planetary Defense Program – Latest Tech Update on Window to the World

The earth is bombarded with hundreds of tons of small objects every day, and program Planet defenseZ is an effort to monitor and protect the earth from Asteroids and comets And other objects in space, attract Gravity More than 100 tons (more than 90 metric tons) of small objects and dust are thrown from space every day, according to a NASA statement. space

NASA indicated that most of these materials burn in the atmosphere without any effect on the planet. Large shards might produce a bright streak of light to see in the night sky or a small meteor for a rock hunter to find, and Earth’s atmosphere, which is thicker and more protective than the more exposed surfaces of Mercury or the Moon, mitigate the risks of these small impacts.

But life on Earth was radically changed by asteroid impacts before; crater Chicxulub for example, is evidence of a strike that shook the planet and led to the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs.

Planetary defense systems identify potentially harmful objects PHOs in NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office terminology) near Earth, while these systems have not yet identified or dealt with any major threats, NASA and the European Space Agency (ESA) And other organizations are preparing to redirect or destroy dangerous objects one day.

Today, telescopes around the world regularly scan the sky to identify any objects at risk of colliding with our planet, catalogs like this one from NASA’s Center for Near-Earth Object Studies (CNEOS) It lists threat levels and other data about these organisms, so that there is warning before any known organisms collide with the planet. Meanwhile, researchers are developing ways to physically alter the course of PHOs and defend the planet from catastrophic collisions.