Moscow - Up to 1,000 relatively large asteroids potentially jeopardizing the Earth are detected yearly.
“Numerous asteroids are approaching the Earth. Up to 1,000 of them are discovered each year,” Russian Academy of Sciences Astronomy Institute’s Space Astrometry Department head Lidia Rykhlova said.
About 7,000 large asteroids approaching the Earth were catalogued three years ago; the number grew to approximately 8,000 last year and some 9,400 this year.
“Some 90% of asteroids [with a diameter of one kilometer] are known; we are aware of their trajectories and they are predictable. But smaller asteroids, 40 to 50 meters in diameter, are unseen to the observers. The more we observe the skies the more of them we find,” she said.
There are two ways of stopping a space threat: a space object may be fragmented with a nuclear missile explosion or its orbit may be changed with other methods, she said.
“If a space body is traced a month in advance, its size and trajectory can be evaluated and people can think of something within a month to destroy it if it is really targeting the Earth. A nuclear missile is an emergency measure,” she noted.
A more complex operation of changing the object’s orbit will take much longer. The object needs to be found at least a year before its approach to the Earth, the researcher said.
