Earth is more prepared for an asteroid impact than at any point in its history

Earth is not getting blasted by large impactors at the rate it once was, but its still getting a fair share of collisions.

An asteroid about the size of a football field strikes the surface approximately every 2,000 years and something large enough to threaten civilization swings by every few million years .

The Planetary Defense Coordination Office ( PDCO ) was formed in January 2016 with the goal of finding and tracking potentially hazardous near- Earth objects.

Scientists estimate that we've only discovered about 40% of the asteroids and other potential impactors out there.

Asteroids are identified through the combined efforts of observatories in space (telescopes like Hubble and NEOWISE) and on the ground.

At the time of writing, the most recent asteroid discovery occurred November 10, 2024 and the running total of near- Earth asteroids was 36,483 .

If we had a long enough lead time, we might use a large spacecraft as a gravity tractor to alter the trajectory of a hazardous asteroid.

The idea hinges on the fact that all things with mass exhibit a gravitational influence on everything else with mass.

NASA recently succeeded in a dress rehearsal with its Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission.

The mission marked the first time in history that humanity has changed the motion of a natural object in space.