NASA’s Asteroid Impact Defenses Won’t Work, Expert Warns

An official from the space micronation of Asgardia, who once served as a politician in the U.K., warned that NASA’s proposed efforts to protect Earth against a killer asteroid will not work. The official noted that if space agencies don’t act soon, there’s a huge chance that another extinction-level event caused by an asteroid will happen again.

The dire warning came from Lembit Opik, the current Chairman of Parliament of the Space Kingdom of Asgardia, a micronation that is focused on protecting Earth from cosmic threats. Before becoming an official in Asgardia, Opik was a former Member of Parliament in the U.K.

During a recent interview, Opik commented on NASA’s upcoming joint mission with the European Space Agency (ESA). The mission involves deflecting an asteroid by crashing a spacecraft into it. According to Opik, this mission will not be enough to protect Earth from an asteroid impact.

“They’re not doing enough to protect the Earth so the answer is simple,” he told Express. “If everything that needed to happen was happening, you wouldn’t need Asgardia.”

For Opik, space agencies and governments around the world should invest in more sophisticated systems that are focused on preventing impact events from happening. As what various astronomers and scientists have previously pointed out, agencies like NASA and the ESA need better monitoring systems that can detect every asteroid that might approach Earth.

Through an advanced monitoring system, the agencies will be able to identify potentially hazardous asteroids before it’s too late. This will give them enough time to ensure that their asteroid deflection missions and other planetary defenses will successfully work.

“In terms of Earth, we are behaving in an insanely irresponsible way of not investing the tiny amounts you need to protect and deflect,” Opik said. “And by tiny amounts, we are talking about a few tens of billions of pounds for a global defense system.”

“If the human race isn’t willing to pay such a modest insurance policy, then it deserves what it gets,” he added. “It would be an act of unforgivable neglect if we carry on doing it, so it’s good NASA is doing some of these experiments but the amount their investing is still trivial.”