Space Agencies to Simulate All-Out Doomsday Asteroid Scenario

An asteroid, named 2019 PDC, approximately the size of a football stadium is on a collision course towards Earth, space agencies in the United States and Europe have predicted it has 1-in-100 chance of smashing into our planet on April 29, 2027. Scientists have just eight years to plan and execute a response.

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And though it sounds like a perfect plot for a blockbuster movie, this is the hypothetical asteroid impact scenario that the National Aeronautics and Space Agency (NASA), Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA) and international partners including the European Space Agency (ESA) are conducting as a realistic “tabletop exercise” to simulate how a planetary asteroid emergency would play out in real time.

A tabletop exercise of a simulated emergency is commonly used in disaster management planning to help inform involved players of important aspects of a possible disaster and identify issues for accomplishing a successful response. The doomsday scenario is part of the 2019 IAA Planetary Defense Conference (PDC) to be held in the U.S. from April 29 to May 3. 

"This exercise will help us develop more effective communications with each other and with our governments," NASA's Planetary Defense Officer, Lindley Johnson said. 

For more than two decades years, space agencies have been scanning the skies for near-Earth objects (NEOs), which are asteroids and comets that orbit the Sun and come within 30 million miles (50 million kilometers) of Earth’s orbit. And even though, scientists agree that the probability of one of these space rocks to hit Earth is very unlikely (one in 50,000 chance), “the first step in protecting our planet is knowing what's out there," says the ESA's Head of Planetary Defence, Rüdiger Jehn.

The simulation is not tightly scripted, as it aims to examine how NEO observers, space agency officials, emergency managers, decision makers, and citizens might respond to an actual impact prediction and evolving information. 

That is why this exercise will be developed as close to a real situation would be handled, with initial discovery and constant tracing of the object as it comes to the fictional doomsday date of April 29, 2027, which can be tracked by enthusiasts with daily updates at the ESA's Twitter page and the 2019's PDC orbital trajectory at the Center for Near Earth Object Studies website.

NASA has participated in six NEO impact exercises so far – three at Planetary Defense Conferences (2013, 2015, 2017) and three jointly with the Federal Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). The three NASA-FEMA exercises included representatives of several other federal agencies, including the Departments of Defense and State. Each exercise builds on lessons learned in the previous exercise.