NASA scientists issue stark warning about 15,000 undiscovered asteroids that could destroy cities: ‘Keeping me up at night’

NASA planetary defense officer Kelly Fast said what keeps her “up at night” is “asteroids we don’t know about.” daily star.

The expert went on to say that it’s not the “big ones” that worry her because they know “where they are.” Likewise, small particles hit the Earth “all the time” and there is no need to worry. Experts stress that the roughly 500-foot-long rocks are worrisome because they are small enough to skip detection but large enough to cause serious damage.

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according to times of londonThe scientist warned that these medium-sized asteroids, known as “city killers”, could cause “regional devastation”.

She added that these objects are difficult to spot “even with the best telescopes” because their inconvenient size orbits the Sun alongside the Earth, preventing them from reflecting any amount of sunlight.

Scientists plan to launch the Near-Earth Object Surveyor space telescope next year to solve this problem. This uses heat signatures to spot early dark asteroids and comets hidden beyond Earth.

Fast states flatly that her responsibility is to “find asteroids before they find us” and to potentially develop methods to “find asteroids before they find us.” However, detection is only part of the problem. Currently, humans lack the defense capabilities to stop “urban killers”.

“We don’t have a way to actively deflect an asteroid right now,” said Nancy Chabot, director of NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirect Test (Dart). In this 2022 test, NASA crashed a spacecraft into Dimorphos’ mini-satellite at 14,000 mph, proving they could knock an asteroid out of orbit. However, Chabot noted that these conditions would be difficult to replicate for the Urban Killers because they do not have deflectors “on call at the drop of a hat.”

Chabot added that she doesn’t see space agencies investing in such measures because they “lack the funds to keep planetary defenses on standby.”

“We can be prepared for this threat. We can be in very good shape. We need to take these steps to do that,” she noted.

This is because people are worried that asteroids will become city killers YR4which has been on our radar since 2024, now has a 4% chance of hitting Earth in 2032.