NASA Responds To Elon Musk’s Statement About Earth Being Defenseless Against Asteroids

NASA has released an official statement in response to Elon Musk’s recent tweet about Earth being defenseless against a killer asteroid. According to NASA, aside from closely monitoring near-Earth objects, it is also developing ways on effectively deflecting asteroids that are on a collision path with the planet.

Earlier this week, Musk, the founder of Tesla and SpaceX, responded to a tweet by stand-up comedian and mixed martial arts commentator Joe Rogan about the Apophis asteroid, which is expected to dangerously approach Earth in 2029.

Although Musk noted that the public shouldn’t worry about Apophis since it will most likely hit Earth, he said that he believes will still get hit by a different asteroid. Musk then ended his statement by saying that Earth currently does not have a planetary defense system in place against asteroids.

In response to the tech mogul’s claims, NASA noted that Earth is not helpless against an asteroid impact. In addition, the space agency said it has not yet detected an asteroid big enough to wipe out that planet that’s currently on a collision course with Earth.

“While no known asteroid larger than 140 meters in size has a significant chance of hitting Earth for the next 100 years, NASA and its partners are studying several different methodologies for deflecting a hazardous asteroid,” Lindley Johnson of NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office (PDCO) said in a statement according to CNN.

One of the projects that the PDCO is currently working on is the Double Asteroid Redirection Test (TEST). This is actually a mission that will send a spacecraft to the double asteroid system known as Didymos. As part of the mission, the DART spacecraft will head over to the asteroid system and intentionally collide with it.

Through this mission, NASA is hoping to see if it would be possible to safely nudge asteroids away from a collision course with Earth by hitting them with a spacecraft.

Aside from the DART mission, NASA has also discussed other methods of deflecting asteroids. One of these includes shooting an approaching asteroid with a laser mounted on an orbiting satellite in order to change its direction.