New Delhi:
An asteroid strike in 2013 took the world by surprise when it entered the atmosphere undetected. The strike gave a wake-up call to NASA when the so-called Chelyabinsk Meteor highlighted the need for better defences. The US space agency is currently involved in the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), a mission meant to test NASA’s ability to push away asteroids headed for Earth.
Together, the two space agencies have dubbed their efforts the Asteroid Impact Deflection Assessment or AIDA for short. But the one space expert fears that the work being done to protect Earth from deep-space threats is simply not enough.
And if money cannot be pooled together to fight the danger, the expert said Earth will reap what it sows.
Lembit Öpik, the Chairman of Parliament for the space nation Asgardia, told Express.co.uk more needs to be done to address dangers from space. Öpik said: “They’re not doing enough to protect the Earth and so the answer is simple. “If everything that needed to happen was happening, you wouldn’t need Asgardia.”
Öpik has a track record of campaigning for more threat awareness, in particular, in regards to Near-Earth Object (NEO) asteroids and comets. He told Express.co.uk there is a 100% certainty Earth faces a major asteroid strike but we cannot predict when or where it will happen.
