Preparing for the Asteroid Apocalypse
The U.S. launches a new effort to better catalog Earth killers. But the big question is what to do if we find one headed our way.
A close-up view of an asteroid named Eros.
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Among Earth’s natural disasters—hurricanes, floods, earthquakes—the one humans probably ponder least is asteroids, huge objects zipping through our solar system at ludicrous speeds.
Federal officials call an asteroid or comet collision “low probability but high consequence,” NASA-speak for it will probably never happen, but if it does we’re toast. With that in mind, the U.S. and other nations have long sought to track such “near-Earth objects,” or NEOs, coordinating efforts through the International Asteroid Warning Network and the United Nations.